The unreasonable effectiveness of the pancake rule

Being chronically late to meetings sucks.

Not only is it very rude, but you’re signalling that you don’t value your coworkers’ time.

However, I’ve picked up a technique that works unreasonably well within a team.¹

If you are late to the first meeting of the day three times within a quarter, then you will have to make pancakes for the whole team.

Let’s say that you have a daily stand-up taking place at 10:00.

Arriving at 10:00:59: completely OK.

Arriving at 10:01:00: You’re one step closer to making pancakes!

Keep in mind that you may hit some obstacles when implementing this rule, so feel free to adjust it. When proposing this idea in my current team, I learned that the office does not offer pancake-making facilities. The pancakes can be substituted for other types of cake or bringing in something else, as long as the team gives prior approval of that modification.

The pancake strikes can also be pooled together and spent with your teammates if they wish to do so.

If you’re struggling with your team being late to your daily meeting(s), then go ahead and add this rule to the working agreement. You do have a working agreement set up, right? Right?

And a free security tech tip to close out: if you see an unlocked work laptop at the office, open your internal chat application of choice on it and try posting to a public channel that you’ll be bringing cake/beers/candy to the office. Works wonders for enforcing the habit of locking your laptop up when leaving the desk!