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I really liked this article. A lot of the things mentioned seem to be necessary because the author has “passing privilege”, but some are necessary due to poor m
by pridkett 7y ago
I really liked this article. A lot of the things mentioned seem to be necessary because the author has “passing privilege”, but some are necessary due to poor management practices. Stand ups and in person meetings are two spots where this frequently happens.
I’ve inherited teams where everyone needs to stand during standup, or worse, where they do the push-up/plank thing if you want to speak. It shouldn’t take a great manager to realize these actions are exclusionary and have nothing to do with their job. Yes, I've gotten pushback from teams when I've told them to stop doing it during "their standup", but that's something we need to do as leaders.
Likewise for meetings, if you’re holding a meeting and people are standing or sitting on the floor, ask yourself, why are they there, how should they participate, and what should they take out of a meeting. It’s unlikely they’ll be able to meet those goals in the physical space you’ve secured. As the person running the meeting, it's your job to change the location rather than drumming on because it two weeks to schedule the meeting.
Great managers think about these things ahead of time rather than setting up exclusionary environments.
- Jare 7y ago> they do the push-up/plank thing if you want to speak I don't know what that specific practice is, and I think I really really don't want to know.
- chrisseaton 7y agoYou have to plank while speaking, in order to motivate people to speak succinctly. Obviously disadvantages people who aren’t physically fit as they literally don’t get to contribute as much!
- mixmastamyk 7y agoWhat does "plank" mean in this situation? Dict doesn't seem to help.
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- captainbland 7y agoIt's a sort of exercise where you hold yourself in a position as though you're going to do a push up, so supporting your body weight on your feet and either hands or your forearms while suspending your body a few inches off the floor. The aim is to just hold this position for as long as you can, normally. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_(exercise) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plank_(exercise) Good core exercise, probably inappropriate for meetings.
- NortySpock 7y agoThe plank exercise is very similar to a pushup exercise move. It comes from making your body straight as a board (plank of wood). The position is face-down on the ground, with all of your weight supported by your toes and forearms. It is generally difficult to hold that position in proper form for long periods of time (or at least your muscles start to ache)
- stanski 7y agoSorry, just to be clear. Everyone stands around in a circle and one person drops down on the floor in a plank to talk? Maybe it's just me but I'd have a hard time taking this seriously.
- barrkel 7y agoThat sounds like a practice suitable for 13 year old boys, not professionals.
- Jare 7y agoI did search twitter and found 3-5 year olds! https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=default&q=push%20up%20plank%20meeting&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=default&q=push%... Actually I found a more recent tweet depicting the actual practice, which has since been deleted. For the record, it was the same photo that appears in https://medium.com/@william.liu/daily-plank-meeting-732456e6f7b1 https://medium.com/@william.liu/daily-plank-meeting-732456e6... , a post that advises (!) this practice.
- astura 7y agoNot physically fit OR disabled OR actually dressed for an office environment, not a gym (last one is especially relevant for females).
- cgriswald 7y ago> Obviously disadvantages people who aren’t physically fit as they literally don’t get to contribute as much! If I am quiet in a meeting when I have a contribution to make--and make no mistake, I'm not speaking up regardless of my fitness level--my employer suffers, not me. He suffers again when his messed up culture inevitably causes me to find another employer.
- neilv 7y agoIn such a software development organization, at the end of each meeting, everyone immediately has a moment of mindfulness, then pops another pill, shotguns a Red Bull, crushes the empty can on their forehead, shouts "Yo! Bro!", and crashes through the loft meeting room window, down to the open-plan work tables below. If you want to make a culture fit, you have to break a few eggs.
- nickpeterson 7y agoWhen an industry recruits 22 year old men, is it surprising when the workplace resembles a barracks?
- llampx 7y agoWhat would the workplace resemble if they were hiring 22 year old females? Can you give an answer with a straight face that doesn't patronize 50+% of the world population?
- coldtea 7y agoWell, like 22 year old men have certain tendencies that will prevail (e.g. a bro office culture), the same way a company of 22 year old females will have other tendencies that will prevail. People not understanding statistics doesn't mean there are not some dominant traits in each group, even if they are not shared by all members of the group -- nor that it is patronizing to mention them (as if someone making a general statement about a group outcome is patronizing if they don't describe exactly what each and every individual involved in that group would be like and do).
- astura 7y ago>the same way a company of 22 year old females will have other tendencies that will prevail. ... Such as? Btw, the issue isn't really "the tendencies 22 year old men" so much as it is people hiring for friends and drinking buddies instead of hiring for employees and colleagues
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- pjc50 7y ago> why are they there, how should they participate, and what should they take out of a meeting. Vital for any meeting, but so often forgotten. So many meetings with nebulous goals and zero takeaways.
- sopooneo 7y agoI want to play the devil's advocate here, but one motivation for meetings generally, is a memory, in some managers head, of a three million dollar disaster that occured strictly because some trivial piece of understanding had not passed from one group to another. It was a piece of knowledge that the first team considered so obvious that it didn't even bear stating. But the second team had no idea. "Jim", the CEO said to the manager after that incident, "you're a good person, so we want you to stay here. But if we lose another seven figures because the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing on your staff again, it's over." But there are such better ways of solving that problem!!! Yes, probably, but we have to know that's a problem we're trying to solve.
- Igelau 7y ago> the push-up/plank thing if you want to speak. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Do you get to talk over someone out of turn by doing a harder plank variation? I kind of wish you hadn't said this. Somewhere someone is reading this and thinking it's actually not a bad idea.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoNow we know why software is, as a rule, crap. Can you imagine a team of chemical engineers designing a plant, there are sub-teams for the different subsystems, and during an integration meeting, whenever someone raises a points or has concerns about this or that working nice with the rest of the design, they have to drop to the floor and give ten so that the meeting is over faster! We wouldn't tolerate bridges and sewage plants built like that! It's fucking unthinkable, except in software!
- walshemj 7y agoHow was the person responsible for this idea still there for the next meeting.
- chucksmash 7y agoSoftware was, as a rule, crap long before this ridiculous fad. Most standups I've participated in (four orgs now) have been ICs giving daily status reports for the benefit of the manager in the room. People making up silly rules to hurry through the thing (like, say, "we all have to stand for this meeting") makes more sense in that context.
- delinka 7y ago> they do the push-up/plank thing if you want to speak Is this punishment for having standup? Fine, let's get rid of it. Instead, let's have a team meeting over coffee for 15min every morning where we discuss our challenges from yesterday, and what we think we'll do today, and anything keeping us from working.
- wool_gather 7y agoI always read it as a kind of pushback against the meeting; the engineers saying "fuck this" to the project manager. But, I agree, whether it's self-inflicted masochism or basic corporate sadism, it's stupid either way.
- hodgesrm 7y ago> they do the push-up/plank thing if you want to speak It never ceases to amaze me that businesses do this kind of thing (and many more besides) and still succeed. The induced drag from from stupid management practices is not that different from using crappy technology.
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- bigred100 7y agoI don’t want to act like other groups are shining examples of competence and sanity, but after moving back to graduate school and technology type stuff (after working as a programmer in an accounting group) I was astounded by the sheer amount of insanity/mental illness in these apparently successful people. Plenty of manipulative narcissists in accounting but I never saw someone start ranting about the Jews and then start sprinting around the office and try to fight people about Postgres vs. MySQL