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

caLike the "I'm a Little Teapot" idea, and the rubber chicken...

No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs - WSJ.com:

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

Companies Ban Sitting to Speed Things Up; Ralph the Chicken Decides Next Speaker

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 or tune out. Francesca Donner has details on Lunch Break.

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.

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.

Paul J. Hart

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

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."

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

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Sitting All Day Is Damaging Your Body and How You Can Counteract It, courtesy of lifehacker

So stand up already (every hour)! Plus more.

Nice article, I hope it's true, because I think I can do it. :-)

How Sitting All Day Is Damaging Your Body and How You Can Counteract It:

"

Do you sit in an office chair or on your couch for more than six hours a day? Then here are some disturbing facts: Your risk of heart disease has increased by up to 64 percent. You're shaving off seven years of quality life. You're also more at risk for certain types of cancer. Simply put, sitting is killing you. That's the bad news. The good news: It's easy to counteract no matter how lazy you are.

Photo remixed from Lack-O'Keen/Shutterstock and Nip/Shutterstock.

Let's start with the basics. Since childhood you've known being a couch potato is bad. But why? Simply put, our bodies weren't made to sit all day. Sitting for long periods of time, even with exercise, has a negative effect on our health. What's worse, many of us sit up to 15 hours a day. That means some of us spend the bulk of our waking moments on the couch, in an office chair, or in a car.

Sitting all day long isn't hard to counteract, but you have to keep your eye on two details: your daily activity and the amount of time you sit. Let's start by taking a look at what sitting all day does to your body.

An Estimated Timeline of the Effects of Sitting

It's difficult to get an accurate assessment of what sitting all day will do to you because the effects work in tandem with diet and other risk factors. So we're going to start with a relatively healthy person who does not drink in excess, smoke, and who isn't overweight. Then we'll estimate the effects of sitting for over six hours a day based on what starts happening immediately after you sit down. For a general overview of the effects, take a look at this chart from Medical Billing and Coding to see a breakdown of what that happens in your body when you sit down. (If the majority of your sitting time takes place at a desk, keep in mind that a standing desk has its own problems, too.)

Immediately After Sitting

Right after you sit down, the electrical activity in your muscles slows down and your calorie-burning rate drops to one calorie per minute. This is about a third of what it does if you're walking. If you sit for a full 24-hour period, you experience a 40 percent reduction in glucose uptake in insulin, which can eventually cause type 2 diabetes.

After Two Weeks of Sitting for More Than Six Hours a Day

Within five days of changing to a sedentary lifestyle, your body increases plasma triglycerides (fatty molecules), LDL cholesterol (aka bad cholesterol), and insulin resistance. This means your muscles aren't taking in fat and your blood sugar levels go up, putting you at risk for weight gain. After just two weeks your muscles start to atrophy and your maximum oxygen consumption drops. This makes stairs harder to climb and walks harder to take. Even if you were working out every day the deterioration starts the second you stop moving.

After One Year of Sitting More Than Six Hours a Day

After a year, the longer term effects of sitting can start to manifest subtly. According to this study by Nature, you might start to experience weight gain and high cholesterol. Studies in woman suggest you can lose up to 1 percent of bone mass a year by sitting for over six hours a day.

After 10-20 Years of Sitting More Than Six Hours a Day

Sitting for over six hours a day for a decade or two can cut away about seven quality adjusted life years (the kind you want). It increases your risk of dying of heart disease by 64 percent and your overall risk of prostate or breast cancer increases 30 percent.

If this looks bad, don't worry. We're going to show you how to counteract the negative effects of sitting without totally altering your lifestyle. Photo by John O'Nolan.

Counteract the Consequences of Sitting and Still Maintain Your Current Lifestyle

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Happlily, you only need to do two things to counter the effects of sitting all day:

1. Remember to stand once an hour.
2. Get about 30 minutes of activity per day.

Whether you're a couch potato watching marathons of Firefly or an office worker sitting in front of a computer, an Australian study suggests short breaks from sitting once an hour can alleviate most of the problemsdescribed above. This isn't about working out (which is positive in its own right but doesn't counteract the effects of long periods of sitting). It's about creating pockets of moderate activity throughout the day and giving your body a respite from sitting.

What exactly is moderate activity? I talked with Dr. Brian Parr, associate professor in the Department of Exercise and Health Sciences at the University of South Carolina Aiken to find out. He points out the distinction between moderate activity and exercise:

We usually tell people moderate activity is equivalent to a brisk walk. This would include yard work or cleaning your house — anything that gets you moving counts. You don't have to do what people think of as exercise.

Of course, couch potatoes and office workers don't always have thirty minutes to spare. After all, a Firefly bender might take up an entire evening. Here's the good news: you can break up that thirty minutes throughout the day. Dr. Parr continues:

This is the best part. We usually tell people to break it up into ten minute segments, but that's because it's the most practical. If I tell you that you can spread it out throughout the day, you're going to say, "Well, I stood up and walked across the room to my soda." What was that, about ten seconds? You'll start to micromanage. From my perspective, that's not how people should do it. But you could do it that way.

The main reason you want to shoot for the ten minute chunks is because you're creating a mini-stress in your body that helps increase your endurance. In the real world, this means you won't get tired halfway up the stairs. Think of it this way: you don't train for a marathon by sprinting for ten minutes every day. Instead, you increase your endurance with longer jogs. The same goes for daily activity, you want to sustain activity for long enough to make it useful in your daily life.

Let's look at how you can estimate your daily activity and make sure you get out of the office chair throughout the day. Photo by cell105.

Start by Finding Your Daily Baseline with a Pedometer

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The first thing to do is track how much activity you get in a regular day. For me, the easiest way to do this is a pedometer that tracks the number of footsteps I take. You can purchase a cheap $3 pedometer like this one from Amazon, or use an app on your iPhone or Android.

The first step is to take a 30-minute walk and see how many steps you take. My total was a little short of 4,000. Yours will vary based on how quickly you walk and how large your steps are.

Next, you want to find a baseline of your daily activity. Start using the pedometer when you wake up in the morning and keep it in your pocket (or running on your phone) until you go to bed. This will give you an estimate of your regular daily activity.

For me, this was frighteningly low on the days I didn't purposely exercise. My total number of steps? Under 2,000. This is downright horrible and equates to less than a mile a day. Clearly, I need to get up and move around more often. Photo by Adam Engelhart.

Meet Your Daily Activity Target by Slightly Altering Your Behavior

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If you're like me, you're well under your target exercise range. A few simple changes to your daily behavior will help you reach your goal. Here are a few ideas for how to do it without really trying:

• Park near the back of the parking lot.
• Stand up to visit the file cabinet instead of rolling your chair.
• Walk over and talk to a coworker instead of emailing them.
• Take the scenic route to the bathroom instead of the most direct.

Since I work from home, I have to make a more concentrated effort to meet these goals. I've started walking to a nearby coffee shop in the afternoon and I hop on an indoor bicycle for at least 10-20 minutes a day. If all else fails, I'll do laundry because I have to walk down two sets of stairs.

Meeting your target activity level is just the first step. The second part is much simpler and only requires you stand up now and again. Here's how I remind myself to do it. Photo by o5com.

Set an Hourly Standing Alarm to Remind You to Stand

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We know that if you stand up for just one or two minutes every hour, it can reduce the negative effect of sitting all day. Technically, you don't even have to move, the act of standing alone helps. When you're in the moment and working hard, it's difficult to remember. I found enabling the hourly announcement in OS X the best reminder. To set this, click Settings > Date & Time > Announce the time. Windows users can set up a similar hourly reminder as a task by clicking Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler.

If the alarm isn't enough, you can download dedicated software to remind you. Windows users can use free programs like, Workrave or Breaker to set up automated alerts. For Macs, Time Outseems the best free option. These programs will remind you to stand and dim the desktop to force you out of your chair.

It's up to you how you use these micro-breaks. You don't even have to move if you don't want to, but if you want to get a little activity in that minute, here's a quick way to do it without leaving your desk area:

• Stand up.
• March in place for twenty seconds.
• Reach down and try to touch your toes for twenty seconds.
• Wander around and pick up or reorganize for the last twenty seconds (eventually your desk area may even be clean).

I also set up an iCade at a standing level so I have something to occupy me when I stand up. Personally, I need objectives and I'm not good at just idling for a few minutes. The iCade adds a sense of purpose if I don't want to stretch.

Turn those Crappy Commercials into an Excuse to Get Up

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TV commercials suck. Instead of wasting time watching the same car commercial you've seen for the last 20 years, consider the commercial break a chance to stand and stretch.

To help me find constructive things to do during commercials (or the credits when I'm in the midst Netflix marathon), I keep a to-do list on the coffee table as opposed to at my desk. This works as a gentle reminder to take out the trash, do the dishes, clean the litter box, or whatever else needs to get done. The best part? I don't have to watch commercials.

On a similar note, when playing video games online, I use the end of a match as a notification to stand up. If I'm playing a single player game, I stand during loading screens.

The point is that most of the activities we sit down to enjoy have these types of natural breaks in them. If you're reading you can stand up after a chapter or two. If you're playing board games you can stand up after each match. Instead of sitting and turning your mind off, stand and do it. It's really that simple. Photo by annethelibrarian.

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The moral here is two-fold: stand up once an hour and get at least 30 minutes of activity in a day. That's it. Unless you're overweight, you don't have to start exercising or going to the gym to counteract the negative effects of sitting. You just have to make sure you're moving throughout the day. You don't even have to give up your TV marathons—you just need to accent them with a little hourly effort.

Contact Thorin Klosowski:

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So You Think Your Manager is Slimy, Courtesy of Liz Ryan and Business Week

I have had a lot of managers, excellent, and less-so...

In each case, my immediate manager and maybe their manager have been the single greatest factor in my work satisfaction.

(I can make my own decisions regarding the long-term prospects of a job, company, or industry, so that is in my control, and good managers tend to collect good employees for you to work with (while bad make them scatter) ).

Hope this cheers or cautions you, whether you are employed or no... :-)

Connie "Been There, Done That" O'Dell

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http://www.businessweek.com/printer/management/so-you-think-your-manager-is-slimy-01272012.html

CORPORATE PROVOCATEUR January 27, 2012, 11:56 AM EST

So You Think Your Manager is Slimy

Check out five tales of managerial dirtbags, from the guy who grabbed his protégé's job offer to the one who stockpiled 'hires' for free consulting

By Liz Ryan

I collect workplace stories. I love to read about clever ideas, employee-motivation schemes, and wise leaders working their magic in the workplace. Still, there's something gripping (if horrifying) about bad-manager stories. Maybe that's because they remind us that whatever we're dealing with at work, someone, somewhere, has it even worse. Or maybe it's because the stories get us to wonder: "How would I react if that were to happen to me?" Here are five stories (out of many more shared with me) about horrendous managers. Enjoy.

REFERENCE? SURE, I'LL TAKE THAT JOB

"Our company was being acquired. We were mostly forbidden to talk to our counterparts at the acquiring company in the weeks leading up to the closing of the deal. But one of my colleagues, Debra, got permission from our general counsel to have dinner with her counterpart manager while both of them attended a conference in Salt Lake City. Debra told us about the dinner. 'The guy was dying to tell me how he got his job,' she said. It turns out that he has a protégé, a young woman who's worked for him in a couple of different companies. This woman (call her Annie) asked him whether he'd be a reference for her. 'Of course,' he said. He got on the phone with a recruiter to give Annie her reference, and while he was listening to the recruiter's description of the position Annie was up for, he decided he wanted the job for himself. 'No way,' we all screamed. The employer let the guy steal a job out from under his protégé's nose? 'They did,' she said, 'and now he tells the story proudly. He called it 'out of the box thinking' to stab his protégé in the back and take the job away from her.'"
What I love about this story: Not only is this manager a first-class dirtbag, but so is the hiring manager who let him turn a job-reference call into an employment pitch. Let's not forget the recruiter, either. In this story, there are slimeballs everywhere you look. At least we can be happy for Annie. The young woman was spared the fate of working with any of these turkeys.

DIGGING YOUR DAUGHTER'S PROBLEMS

A human resources colleague shared this story with me. In her last company, a weaselly HR manager played both sides of the fence. He presented himself as the employees' friend and adviser, encouraging people to open up to him and share the most sensitive details of their work and home lives. At the same time, he used the information he gained to curry favor with higher-ups and to improve his own position. "You can be onto a guy like that and still fall victim to his wiles from time to time, especially when you are feeling vulnerable," my colleague reminded me. One day, a middle-aged employee shared a sad family situation with the HR counselor. "I'm distraught," he said. "My daughter dropped out of high school, moved in with some very unsavory people, and is working as a stripper at a club in town." "Oh, that's awful," said the HR guy. He was as understanding as a person could be. "Let me look up some resources that might help your daughter."
A few weeks later, the heavy-hearted dad and some co-workers were crossing the parking lot, returning to work after a departmental lunch. The HR guy got out of his car and joined them. "You'll never believe what I did over my lunch break," he said to the assembly. "I went up to the Whistle Stop Lounge and watched Doug's daughter on the pole. She's flexible!" It's a miracle the HR guy didn't get his nose broken right there in the parking lot.
The Lesson: When you need a shoulder to cry on, use extreme caution. Lots of people will want to hear your tale of woe, but that doesn't mean they have your best interests at heart.

BABIES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE

I got an e-mail message from an administrative director at a white-shoe law firm on the East Coast. "I need some advice in a hurry," she wrote. "I have an employee who must be pregnant—she stopped smoking and she's getting a definite baby bump. I need to find a way to fire her before she tells anyone she's expecting." "Why would you want to fire her?" I asked. "I can't have her staying here until she delivers," wrote the clueless manager. "That'll cost us a temp to replace her and I'm sure she'll start missing work once she has the baby, dealing with colds and whatever else babies get." "Are you serious?" I replied. "It's illegal to fire an employee because of her pregnancy." "That's why I want to do it fast, before she says anything," the manager wrote back.
At that point, I abandoned my usual "no free consulting" rule and called the lady. I was able to talk her out of the termination, but only by sweetly threatening to share our e-mail thread with the firm's partners if she wouldn't back off her plan. "Do you really believe that people who work shouldn't have babies?" I asked her. "I think it's appropriate to choose motherhood or a career," she said. "Not both."
The Lesson: This story and a steady stream of others like it serve to remind me that just because people are adults and manage others, they aren't necessarily up-to-date on the laws, don't necessarily have good judgment, and (most of all) don't necessarily feel any need to keep their private beliefs and their professional decision-making separate.

THE JOB IS YOURS—ALL OF YOU

I've worked with some jaw-droppingly lousy managers over the years, but one in particular stands out. Looking back, I'm certain that Kevin was (and is) a sociopath—conniving, me-first, incapable of empathy, and blissfully unaware of (or insensitive to) any harm that his actions might cause. One day, Kevin came into my office, grinning from ear to ear. "I'm set with my purchasing agent hire," he said. "I'm golden. I've got five guys doing free consulting for me right now." Which candidate is getting the offer? I asked. "They all are—the top five of them," said Kevin. "I wrote to each of them and called a couple of them to say 'the job is yours.' Then I sent them a bunch of things I want them to look into and research for me. That will save me thousands in consulting fees, not to mention time. I'll have a huge amount of useful industry information within a few days."
"Wait a second!" I said. "You told all five of them 'the job is yours?'" "I did," said Kevin. "That way, they'll be so gung-ho, they'll write plans for me, research the heck out of our competition, and generally work for free right up until the time I hire someone else, if I do that—maybe even longer."

"So who will actually get the job?" I asked. "I may not hire anybody," said Kevin. "I may not need to. I can string these five guys along for weeks."
The upshot: Kevin's evil plan was foiled once I made the vice-president of manufacturing aware of it. Kevin himself was booted a few months later (for an unrelated, running-a-side-business-that-competed-with-ours scam), but the 'job is yours' story kept me mindful of the moral lows that an unethical manager (or leadership team) can reach when so inclined.

HELP WITH RÉSUMÉ … AND DINNER

The worst hire I ever made was a divisional HR vice-president who turned out to have a problem with comely young women, including a 20-year-old who was temping for me in the corporate HR group. When her temp assignment ended abruptly after a disappointing quarter, the young woman stayed in touch with some of my colleagues. I'll always be grateful that she did. The HR vice-president saw an opportunity to be a mentor to the young woman. As he had just started the job, he was staying alone in Chicago while his wife wrapped up their household in Texas, so he called the ex-temp to say: "I'll help you with your résumé." He picked her up at her parents' house and took her straight to his rented suite, where dinner—complete with candles and wine—awaited. "As soon as he opened the door, I got the picture," the young lady later said. There was a physical tussle, but she wriggled free and got home on her own. There, she called her best friend in the company and related her tale. It's never fun to fire a person, but I'll admit that firing Mr. Skeevy came close to it. (He protested mightily that he didn't even know the young lady in question; our security chief reminded him of hundreds of calls he had placed to the young lady's cell phone. Maybe it wasn't fun, but it was satisfying.
The Epilogue: The Skeevster was a major player in a lawsuit when he tried to engineer an off-the-books sweetheart deal for the executive team in a company merger a few years later. His ex-wife threw him under the bus by spilling the beans on the side deal. When you imagine what her married life had been like, can you blame her?

Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace and a former Fortune 500 HR executive.