No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

Atomic Object, a Grand Rapids, Mich., software-development firm, holds company meetings first thing in the morning.
Employees follow strict rules: Attendance is mandatory, nonwork chitchat is kept to a minimum and, above all, everyone has to stand up.
Stand-up meetings are part of a fast-moving tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with sloth. The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play Angry Birds on their cellphones or tune out.
Atomic Object even frowns upon tables during meetings. "They make it too easy to lean or rest laptops," explains Michael Marsiglia, vice president. At the end of the meetings, which rarely last more than five minutes, employees typically do a quick stretch and then "go on with their day," he says.
Holding meetings standing up isn't new. Some military leaders did it during World War I, according to Allen Bluedorn, a business professor at the University of Missouri. A number of companies have adopted stand-up meetings over the years. Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same.
The current wave of stand-up meeting is being fueled by the growing use of "Agile," an approach to software development, crystallized in a manifesto published by 17 software professionals in 2001. The method calls for compressing development projects into short pieces. It also involves daily stand-up meetings where participants are supposed to quickly update their peers with three things: What they have done since yesterday's meeting; what they are doing today; and any obstacles that stand in the way of getting work done.

Paul J. Hart A large stand-up meeting at Grand Rapids, Mich., tech firm Atomic Object.

If employees are late to this meeting, often called a "daily scrum," they sometimes must sing a song like "I'm a Little Teapot," do a lap around the office building or pay a small fine, says Mike Cohn, president of Mountain Goat Software, Lafayette, Colo., an Agile consultant and trainer. If someone is rambling on for too long, an employee may hold up a rubber rat indicating it is time to move on. Companies make exceptions to their no-sitting rules if a worker is sick, injured or pregnant—but usually not for workers outside the office telecommuting on Skype.
One Microsoft Corp. development group holds daily meeting in which participants toss around a rubber chicken named Ralph to determine who gets to speak next, says group member Aaron Bjork.
As Agile has become more widely adopted, stand-ups have spread along with it. VersionOne, which makes Agile-development software, polled 6,042 tech employees around the world in a 2011 survey and found that 78% held daily stand-up-meetings.
Office outfitters are responding by designing work spaces with standing sessions in mind. Furniture maker Steelcase Inc.'s Turnstone division, for example, recently introduced the "Big Table," a large standing-height table designed for quick meetings.
Mitch Lacey, a Bellevue, Wash., tech consultant and a former Microsoft employee says that some of his former colleagues used to hold stand-ups in an unheated stairwell to keep meetings brief.
Holding meetings before lunch also speeds things up. Mark Tonkelowitz, an engineering manager for Facebook Inc.'s News Feed feature, holds 15-minute stand-ups at noon, sharp. The proximity to lunch serves "as motivation to keep updates short," he says.
Sometimes people cheat a bit. "We have some very good slouchers and leaners," says T.A. McCann, founder of Gist, a Seattle contact-organization tool acquired last year by Research In Motion, which holds a 10 a.m. stand-up three days a week.
Obie Fernandez, founder of Hashrocket, a Jacksonville, Fla., software design firm, says his team passes around a 10-pound medicine ball during stand-ups. For newcomers unaware of the practice, "it's pretty mean," he says, "but really the main thing you want is to avoid people pontificating."
Participants frown upon late arrivals, and some data-obsessed engineers have even computed the costs of tardiness. Ian Witucki, a program manager at software firm Adobe Systems Inc., calculated the cumulative cost over the course of a typical 18-month product release cycle of starting the stand-up just a little bit late every day.
The total—about six weeks of work for two employees—equaled the amount of time the firm could spend building one major feature on each product, he says.
Soon after, the team imposed a $1 fine for latecomers. Now staffers run down the hall to make it on time, says Mr. Witucki.
Jason Yip, a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks in Sydney, Australia, plays music such as Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up," to round up colleagues. "It acts like a Pavlovian bell," he says.
Meanwhile, the Starr Conspiracy, a Fort Worth, Texas, advertising, marketing and branding agency, signals its daily stand-up—which it calls "the huddle"—with a few bars of the song, "Whoomp! (There It Is)," says partner Steve Smith.
"I'll be at a football game, hear the song and all of a sudden I have the urge to huddle up," says Mr. Smith.
Steelcase's Turnstone unit, which has been doing stand-up meetings for about a decade, for years played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," to begin meetings. It recently switched to Elvis's "A Little Less Conversation"—a reminder to keep meetings brief, says general manager Kevin Kuske.
There are occasions when even a stand-up takes too much time.
At Freshbooks.com, a Toronto-based company that makes online accounting software, teams try to do daily 10 a.m. stand-ups. But on days when everyone is too swamped to gather around the company Ping-Pong table, team members will shout out their status updates from their desks, which are arranged in a circle.
They call those meetings "sit-downs."

A techie with foodie ambitions

©Thor Swift
It is just before noon on a Monday in San Francisco’s financial district and already a line is forming for lunch at one of the city’s newest restaurant chains.
However the queue seems a little unusual – on two counts. First, office workers seem to be fallin g over themselves to pay top-dollar for something they could almost as easily make themselves – melted cheese on toast. Second, The Melt restaurant has installed a high-tech ordering system that means there should, in fact, never be a need to stand in line – you can just scan a code displayed on your smartphone’s screen and your order is on its way.
Neither of these issues disquiets Jonathan Kaplan, founder of the The Melt, as he surveys the scene in the white-tiled outlet with some satisfaction, wearing the same dark work-shirt as his employees, on which “the crew” is embroidered.
After all, the previous business he started – the Flip video camera – was successful, despite there being no perceived need for another camcorder at the time. But millions of people soon “got” the simple one-button recording of the Flip and he thinks they are likely to adapt to online meal purchasing in the same short order.
What is hard to grasp is why an established tech entrepreneur, backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists, would want to follow up a consumer electronics success – more than 2m Flips were sold before Cisco bought his company, Pure Digital, for $590m – by trying to start a national chain of melted-cheese sandwich joints.
“I think of the business the way I thought about Flip,” he says, watching me sample Brie on wheat with a wild mushroom soup side dish and a sharp cheddar on potato bread with a tomato and basil broth. As with the camera, he says, the plan is to “create a great customer product, regardless of what the world says is possible or not possible, and deliver that in a way that makes money for our investors and employees and is a great value for consumers.”
For Mr Kaplan – who is not alone as a tech entrepreneur who has gone on to explore his foodie inclinations (see box) – there is no boyhood obsession for American jack cheese nor nostalgia for the fare of classic American diners.
Nor is a love of Welsh rarebit behind the backing he got from Wales-born Michael Moritz, a board member of The Melt and managing partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
“He didn’t know a heck of a lot about the video camera business before getting into that,” Mr Moritz says of Mr Kaplan. “What you want in an entrepreneur is someone who has a really good idea, is not afraid to admit that he doesn’t know a whole raft of things, surrounds himself with people who have the skills and then orchestrates the whole hullabaloo.”
In keeping with Mr Kaplan’s tech background, ordering online generates a unique “QR code” – a kind of barcode – for scanning in-store and avoiding the regular order queue.
While his talent is more technological than culinary, Mr Kaplan and his backers believe he has assembled the ingredients – in food and management terms – for a successful business.
Here is his people recipe: first, take two venture capitalists – in this case, Mr Moritz and Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark Capital. “They have pattern recognition,” he says. “They have done this so many times they can see the mistakes before they happen – they are like the chess players that know the fourth move from now, whereas the entrepreneur only has the experience of their own companies, three or four in my case, but not 50 or 60 like them.”
VCs are also vital for helping to arrange the equity and debt financing for a large-scale venture. The aim is to open 500 Melts nationwide in five years at a cost of half a million dollars each. Currently, Mr Kaplan has enough capital for the first 50 and the San Francisco Bay Area is home to the first four.
Next, add someone with knowledge of the restaurant business – Michael Mina, whose eponymous San Francisco establishment was Esquire’s 2011 restaurant of the year in the US.
“He helps us to figure out what goes in this sandwich . . . and how to make it taste the same in Hawaii or on the East Coast, with no stabilisers, nothing that’s bad for you,” Mr Kaplan says. The Melt belongs to the growing “fast casual” sector, which offers high-quality food made with fresh produce and costing $5 to $10, compared with under-$5 fast food. He points to Chipotle, the Mexican fast-casual chain that has grown quickly to reach an $11bn-plus market capitalisation.
The next ingredient is to add a master retailer at board level – in this case, Ron Johnson, who created Apple’s minimalist design and hugely popular stores before becoming chief executive of the JC Penney department store chain last year.
“The right location is critical, he’s commented on design and the customer experience – how you are treated when you come in . . . when you go to an Apple store not only is it beautifully designed and in the right location, but the experience is great,” enthuses Mr Kaplan. The slick service at the financial district’s The Melt certainly seems to match Apple’s.
Finally, sprinkle the concoction with some magical theme-park seasoning from Disney. The Melt’s restaurants have hourly-paid workers rather than full-time staff, so Mr Kaplan consulted a Disney executive on how to keep them committed to a company’s culture. On their first day, The Melt workers do not go near the food, but learn about issues such as conflict resolution and being part of a team – “the crew”.
For blending his actual ingredients, Mr Kaplan struck an exclusive deal with Electrolux, the appliance maker, to produce a customised version of its panini makers, so the bread is not pressed down as hard – still melting the cheese but ensuring the bread stays light and aerated. Similarly, customised tureens heat the soup side dishes very slowly and whip them to a fluffy creaminess without the chemical stabilisers that are common elsewhere.
Customers have a choice of five $8.75 combos, and they can follow up with desserts including a S’more – marshmallow and chocolate melted between toasted bread.
In keeping with a clientele interested in high-quality fast food, The Melt adds a dash of philanthropy and eco-awareness to its menu – ingredients are fresh and local, everything is recyclable and customers are encouraged to round up payment to the nearest dollar, so the difference can be donated to charity.
“Maybe we’ll be selling in the millions one day, just like we did with the Flip,” says Mr Kaplan. “But right now there’s a line every day and that’s enough to tell me we’ve found another product people love.”