Standups Are Mutual Aid (and I may have just killed it)

"I got something to say / I killed your baby today / And it doesn't matter much to me / As long as it's dead"

— The Misfits (Last Caress)

Mark,

Six weeks in and I've killed the standup.

Not reformed it. Not improved it. Killed it.

We used to meet every morning. Fifteen minutes of roll call—everyone reciting yesterday/today/blockers while everyone else tuned out waiting for their turn. No conversation. No collaboration. Process over people.

I replaced it with a Slack bot. Every morning, automated thread: "What are you working on? Any blockers? Need more to do?"

People answer when they get to it. Time zones respected. Flow states preserved. Product gets their status updates without bogging down the team. No more synchronous status theater.

Nobody's asking for the meetings back.

And it feels completely hollow.

What I Thought I Was Fixing

The old standup was performance art. Developers reporting to managers instead of coordinating with each other. Status theater—the three questions (yesterday/today/blockers) optimizing for individual reporting, not team coordination.

The "15-minute lie." It always stretches past time. People have conversations—not because they like to talk, but because this is the only time we're all together. They could say "let's take this offline" but they don't, or if they do they forget to follow up. We're working toward fixing that.

Async seemed obvious. If it's just status updates, Slack handles that better. Respects the time zones (we span CET to PST). Doesn't break flow—it takes 30 minutes to return to deep work after an interruption.

I was removing the bad thing.

What I've Actually Done

Here's what I'm seeing: The coordination still happens... eventually. Right now people DM me or the Product Manager rather than start a Slack thread on the team channel. I think because they're not used to leaning on each other.

People forget the async standup. They don't post in the thread.

Which makes me wonder: Did I fix it? Or did I just move the ceremony out of the way so now we're a Slack channel of people working on the same Jira board?

Because while we still have synchronous meetings, they're not really the daily touch-point they should be. A time when we can all be humans, not just Slack handles. The coordination may be happening, but the connecting isn't.

The Psychological Safety Question

Standup is supposed to provide positive effects on team performance. Teams that have psychological safety use moments of high bandwidth communication to prep for the day, not give a status report.

I've removed the status report. We need the psychological safety.

Psychological safety isn't built through Slack threads. It's built through seeing someone's face, hearing their voice, watching how they respond. Humans are still very social creatures. We need to learn how each other works so we know how to best support each other, and we need to trust that they'll support us.

What Standup Was Supposed To Be

Standup is supposed to be punk as hell. It was originally designed to be mutual aid. Developers helping each other coordinate, taking 15 minutes to circle up and figure out WTF is stopping us from Getting Shit Done.

Then managers showed up to verify people were working. Probably because they were being pushed on "when's it gonna be done?" or worse "whose fault is it we're not done yet?". Standup became status reports so managers could provide cover (for themselves or for the team I'll let you be the judge). The form remained, but the purpose inverted. From mutual aid to demonstrating for authority.

It's 924 Gilman versus Lollapalooza. DIY shows are communities organizing themselves. Corporate sponsorship keeps the aesthetic (loud, fast, aggressive) but changes the substance. You're not building community. You're selling tickets.

I killed Lollapalooza, but did I restore 924 Gilman? Or have I just killed the venue entirely?

The Uncomfortable Questions

Async standup is the current "best practice" for distributed teams. I solved the status theater. But I haven't solved the connection problem.

And I don't know if it can be solved async. Maybe the status theater was doing something useful despite itself—forcing us into the same room (virtual or otherwise) where connection could happen. Maybe the ceremony was in-efficient scaffolding for something we actually needed.

I keep thinking about what the synchronous time should be for if not status updates. Lean Coffee? Weekly team sync front-loaded with social time? Something else entirely?

But those require trust. They require people believing it's safe to bring their real selves to standup. Believe it's safe to bring up what's really blocking them. Believe it's safe to ask for help.

And maybe they do feel that safety and I'm just over thinking this? How can I tell?

What I'm Not Doing (Yet)

I'm not adding back synchronous status time. I'm not suggesting new formats or frameworks.

Because here's what I've learned from watching everything get commercialized: the problem isn't the ritual. The problem is who the ritual serves.

Async standup may be the current fashion. But fashion isn't wisdom. How can I tell if I'm being smart, or just following a trend?

So I watch. Slack threads happen, eventually. The work gets coordinated with some help. The blockers get surfaced and solved.

But is anybody developing the relationships that would make them be able to lean on each other? I've created efficiency by removing the bad thing. But I haven't created the good thing yet ... connection.

For Mark

You've seen this pattern before. Teams burned by ceremony after ceremony, manager after manager.

I've eliminated the status theater, but I haven't figured out how to enable the human connections.

Can you build psychological safety asynchronously? Or must remote teams have some synchronous time—not for status, but for the connection?

And if they do need it, how do you make it about mutual aid instead of status theater? How do you get a team into the habit of leaning on each other when they've been trained not to?

What should I be doing to show myself they're being people to each other and not just resources on a Jira board or handles on a Slack channel?

I killed standup. Good riddance. I just don't know what comes next.