Stand-up meetings stand out with Precision Q+A

Unstructured meetings waste time and energy. Recent articles, like this one in the Wall Street Journal, document the growing popularity of “stand-up” meetings as a way to avoid the wasteful meetings of old. Just standing up, however, isn’t the answer. Better meetings require better structure. Stand-up meetings offer some structural innovations that can help improve our workplace interactions. But meeting formats become even more powerful when they are combined with discussion formats that also support concise, efficient workplace discussion. That’s why stand-ups stand out when you incorporate Precision Q+A.

Facilitating a workshop recently, we listened as a group of colleagues listed reasons why their meetings were dragging down their productivity. Among their top reasons for unproductive meetings:

• Meetings rarely had focused agendas
• Everyone must be invited to every meeting since the issues under discussion aren’t evident in advance
• Once in a meeting, those who aren’t involved turn to reading email or doing other work, but don’t leave the meeting in case they are needed later
• A growing cultural inability to refuse a meeting request, in order not to seem irrelevant or disengaged

This group is actually lucky to have the time and space to articulate the main reasons their meetings are wasting their time and energy. In many workplaces, these same dynamics surround meetings in an unspoken manner, continuing the practice of meetings that no one wants to attend.

If meetings are so painful and wasteful, why do we persist in holding them? Like it or not, discussion is our most common work tool! We need structured times to hold conversations that move our work forward. Problems crop up when we reserve the time for conversation, but drop the structure.

In an effort to create better structure for meetings, some proponents of daily short status meetings, or “scrums,” argue that stand-up meetings make a difference to productivity. Recent articles like the one in the Wall Street Journal and on the blog Freakonomics have popularized the practice. Of course, just standing up doesn’t actually change meetings much! Some authors, like Martin Fowler, have attempted to convey the array of ground rules, in addition to standing up, that actually make these meetings work.

The main ideas behind stand-up meetings are these:

• Teams meet regularly, usually daily, to brief each other on their work
• In order to maximize efficiency and minimize entropy, stand-up meetings are short – not more than 15 minutes
• True to their name, participants stand in a circle or gather around a storyboard or workflow display rather than sitting at a table
• To mark participation, contributors share a token or artifact of some kind (even a rubber chicken!) to mark who is holding the floor
• Three guiding questions govern contributions: 1) what did you do yesterday? 2) what are you working on today? 3) what obstacles are getting in the way of your progress?

Physical structure matters in our work – hence, standing up in a circle and using a physical artifact to mark the sharing of the floor make a difference in the quality of meetings. Social structure also matters – so things like mandatory participation across the hierarchy and ground rules about being on time, combined with social consequences for being late, make a difference in the quality of meetings as well. What might be easier to overlook, however, is that linguistic structure also matters. That’s why Precision Q+A can make a big difference in the quality of stand-up meetings.

MAKE YOUR QUESTIONS COUNT

Two ways to make questions count in stand-up meetings: first, make the governing questions more precise; and second, insist on unscripted interaction using Precision Q+A in the meeting.

Thinking about those governing questions, one principle of Precision Q+A holds: general questions invite long answers. A question such as: “What did you do yesterday?” invites a story as an answer. Many of the structures in stand-up meetings are designed to prevent such storytelling or “pontificating,” but the linguistic structure is inadvertently prompting the opposite of what we want! Instead of imposing more rules, change the linguistic structure. A technique such as Precision Q+A shifts the emphasis to crafting more precise governing questions that prompt better answers.

With its focus on brief status updates, the stand-up meeting limits opportunities to ask unscripted questions. It is crucial, therefore, that when we use questions in this format, we use the most precise questions we can. Insist on precise questions that get right to the heart of the matter as the only kind of questions allowed at stand-up meetings.

MAKE YOUR ANSWERS COUNT

Two ways to make answers count in stand-up meetings: first, answer the governing questions with crisp and concise bullet points or lists; and second, always start with the core answer when responding to questions.

The heart of the stand-up meeting is the status update that comes from answering the governing questions. With time limitations built into the meeting structure, everyone benefits from answering crisply and concisely. While it might seem that daily stand-up meetings don’t require much preparation, it is very difficult to articulate crisp, clear lists in the moment. To make your contributions count, keep a written set of bullet points that you update daily, and rehearse a 30-second update prior to the meeting.

When answering questions posed during a stand-up meeting, concise answers count. Always start with what we call the core answers: yes, no, a number, a date, I don’t know plus a next step, or a structured list, such as “two main reasons….” Because of the time limitations and the focus on status updates, core answers themselves will often be enough. If a conversation requires more than a core answer or two, suggest that you take the issue off-line.

THIS MONTH’S PRACTICE

Stand-up meetings, when they run efficiently, place a premium on focus and brevity. Stand-up meetings benefit from adopting linguistic rules that support the same rules as the physical and social rules that govern these meetings. Stand-up meetings truly stand out when participants are prepared to use Precision Q+A.

PRACTICE 1
Use your stand-up meetings as the perfect place to practice asking precise questions. When you want to clarify an obstacle, make sure your clarification question is precise rather than a general, “What do you mean?” When checking for supporting evidence, ask a precise BCQ. To probe causation, practice precise causal questions. Shed light on impacts with precise questions of effects. Ask follow-up questions with a respectful tone that encourages precise answers.

PRACTICE 2
Challenge yourself to come to every day’s stand-up meeting prepared, meaning that you can give a bullet-structured update in 30 seconds or less. Of course, stand-up meetings are designed to surface obstacles, so candor is required, including admitting when you don’t know something. When obstacles surface that require significant thinking, be quick to suggest taking a conversation off-line.

PRACTICE 3
While the physical design of the stand-up meeting—no chairs, limited time—nudges the participants toward brevity, some work requires depth. Begin to recognize what is a “stand-up” issue and what warrants a “sit-down” conversation. If your work requires you to share additional information with a colleague, use a separate meeting, establish an agenda, and continue to use effective questions and answers to drive your thinking deeper.