Everybody get up

Last week, I asked you to think about the origins of a regular meeting you’ve been having. Hopefully you didn’t just think about it, you wrote your thoughts down.

Let’s talk about Standup. The format varies from team to team, but the idea is familiar: get together regularly, share your todos for the day and mention when you need help. Over time, though, a short, frequent meeting can decay in quality much quicker than others, turning into a routine people go through without really listening.

This week’s small thing is simple: pay attention.

A few minutes before standup, write down what you’re planning to say when it’s your turn. Then, during the meeting, listen to everyone else’s updates. If you’re on Zoom, jot down what people say. If you’re together in person, try to remember the updates and spend five minutes afterward writing down what you recall. This isn’t an evaluation of your teammates, and you don’t need a perfect transcript. You’re just capturing what you hear. Whether you lead the team or contribute as an IC, you can try this.

The next day, before standup, read over your notes. Write down what you’re planning to say, then listen again as people share their updates. Are people repeating the same update from yesterday? Does someone sound anxious about work they hoped to finish? Are they explaining a delay of their own because a bug came up, someone needed their help, and a review is still waiting? Don’t do anything with those observations yet. Just note them.

Day three, do it again. Go into standup with two days’ worth of notes and observations. What are folks saying today? Some are probably saying the exact same thing as the first day. Someone is probably begging for the third day in a row for someone to review their pull request.

Listening across several days can help you notice what’s difficult to see when everyone is focused on their own update. People may be missing that someone else needs their help. No project gets completed by one person, and when everyone looks down at their own box of parts, deep-rooted patterns of dysfunction can go unchecked or unaddressed.

For now, don’t try to fix anything. Just keep your notes and see what patterns you notice. Is standup helping the team coordinate, or has it become a series of updates people deliver while thinking about what they’ll say next?

The point isn’t to catch anyone doing standup wrong. It’s to find out what the meeting is making visible and what it might be hiding. That’s something you can only notice if you listen.