May 3, 2017

Late For Stand Up!

Late For Stand Up!

I'm sure a lot of teams have had the issues with people being late for stand up. In the past, I have been on teams that have tried things such as having to buy the team coffee, or putting money in a piggy bank for us to purchase lunch at some time. While this did motivate people to be on time, it did start to cause unhappiness and friction within the teams, which is the last thing that you want.

Enter the Bean!

Ever since having those experiences, I felt that it would be better off not implementing something like that and have have a happy team that was sometimes late.

One day, one of the team members suggested that we should get some of the Bean Boozled jelly beans and who ever is late had to eat one.

For those of you that don't know these are different types of jelly beans that come in various colours. However, each colour can either have a sweet taste, or something terrible, so you never know what you will get. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the flavour combinations:

  • Dead Fish or Strawberry Banana Smoothie
  • Spoiled Milk or Coconut
  • Stinky Socks or Tutti-Fruitti
  • Rotten Egg or Buttered Popcorn
  • Barf or Peach.
  • Canned Dog Food or Chocolate Pudding

As you can see there are some really disgusting flavours there and the strange thing about all of this is that it really works in making people be on time. I mean, I have seen people run to stand up few minutes before it even starts :)

Bean Boozled

Personally, I believe that this works better than the coffee/money approach, as people don't have that grudge that they are giving up money, which can be add up to quite a bit over time. Instead, as a team we can have a good laugh at the reaction when someone gets an ugly one. When it is the flip-side and you have to eat one, it is like playing Russian Roulette, you don't know what you going to get.

Overall, I would call this a success!

Until next time...keep learning!