Most standups exist because someone read a Scrum book. Not because they help. The typical standup: 5-15 people take turns reporting what they did yesterday, what they're doing today, what blockers them. This is 15 minutes of meetings that could have been a Slack message. The waste isn't the meeting. It's the format.
What standups actually accomplish: Good standups surface blockers and create accountability. But 90% of standups don't do either — they're just status reports masquerading as collaboration.
A better format: Instead of round-robin status updates, try the blocker-focused standup. Each person states their biggest blocker. That's it. If there are no blockers, the meeting is 2 minutes. If there are blockers, spend 10 minutes solving them. Or try the async standup — everyone writes their update in a shared doc before the meeting.
The real standup killer: The worst failure mode is people bringing problems to standup that should have been solved in a 1:1. The standup becomes a crutch for poor communication. If you're having the same standup problem three weeks in a row, the standup isn't the solution. A conversation is.
I put together a kit for running better meetings: standup formats, async update templates, decision logs, and conflict resolution guides.
Get Team Coach Kit https://kineticgoods.gumroad.com/l/team-coach-kit
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