Those who have worked closely with me in my teams will be intimately familiar with the phrase "I'm feeling very Olympic today."

If you are not familiar with the quote you should:

1. Feel ashamed, and
2. Immediately go away and watch "Cool Runnings"

I often quoted this 90's motion picture masterpiece in my daily stand-up meetings with my teams, which varies greatly to the strict instructions I received when I was first taught about daily stand up meetings.

They said "You must say what you did yesterday, what you plan to do today, and what blockers you might have. Nothing else!"

Like a religious procession, we were instructed to stick to the script and say nothing else. We were even given cards on the words we were allowed to say. Others that I have heard of since pass around a literal talking stick when it's your turn to talk.

What a crock!

While I still cover those 3 topic items in my stand-ups to this day, it took me all of 2 minutes to scale back the intensity of my stand ups. I figure that the people I work with are adults, so I treat them as such. If people are talking over each other, tell them to stop. If people are off topic, bring them back on.

I think this strict behaviour goes a long way to contributing to Agile getting a bad wrap. That and mistaking Agile principles for flying by the seat of your pants.

The way that I think about it, for a leader, the daily stand up meeting is your opportunity to pump up your team's tyres at the start of the day, and make sure the priorities are crystal clear. You want your team to walk away feeling:

1. energised and preferably smiling
2. heard - if they have something holding them back that they got clarity on how to resolve it, and
3. clear on their priorities

I always incorporate what I have come to think of as C.A.L.M. into my stand up meetings. Culture. Art. Literature. Music. Not necessarily every day, but once in a while I think its healthy to spend some time talking about these topics. And this does not just mean we reel off our Netflix "watch it again" list. I love TV a more than most people, but I deliberately stick to the formula.

The obvious question. Did I start with the word "calm" and work the acronym back from there? God's honest truth is no. Just a happy coincidence - and M.A.L.C. didn't have the same ring to it.

Second obvious question. What the hell does C.A.L.M. (or M.A.L.C. if you're that way inclined) have to do with running a digital team. It serves a couple of different purposes.

Firstly, its fun and a good way to lighten the mood. In the current environment, this is even more important. Our people are battered by news that can be confronting and disturbing. They get up in the morning and hear more bad statistics. They open social media which can be even more disturbing. The last thing that you want is carrying that energy throughout the day. Work can be enjoyable, if you let it, and this is a good way to reset at the beginning of a work day, and focus on the task at hand for a couple of hours.

Secondly it teaches you about those around you. You get to know them a little better than the mundane small talk of "What are you doing on the weekend?" Those that know me know I hate small talk. I may be the Ron Swanson of data analytics, but I definitely prefer medium to large talk, and talking about what people choose to seek out in the C.A.L.M. realm is definitely a good way to kick a conversation beyond "How bad is the weather out there?" and into medium talk.

But finally, I think that Culture, Art, Literature and Music play a big role in teaching us what beauty looks like. I think we need to give ourselves time to think about, and be inspired by, the beautiful things that exist in our world.

In these things, we see what good design looks like. We see how powerful blank space can be a page. We see how colours can interact, and collide, and evoke emotion. One of my favourite artists is the late Christo. His use of colour, texture and scale to reimagine our environment amazes me. In music, we see how words can be combined to evoke emotion. Similarly, in food culture (although it branches into Art), I never tire of seeing how Massimo Bottura and his team plates up food. Again, the use of colour, texture and blank space is a thing of beauty.

When I set out to do things, I set out to do them well. And while data analytics requires the use of software and data, our output is a visual medium at the end of the day. The visual beauty of our product evokes trust, and can make absorbing the message more effective. I don't want a cluttered mess of numbers and shapes from my teams. I also don't want them to aspire to mediocrity. I want them to aspire to create work that they can be proud of and I find that my people are more engaged when they know that I am pushing them for more in visual design.

Now obviously, I don't ask my teams to go back and work on that dashboard until they have the Tableau version of Picasso. The point isn't to dwell on visual design until its perfect. I started work life as an Accountant, and I understand the commercial realities of business.

The point is that I want my teams to expose themselves to beautiful design so that they start to absorb it by osmosis and spend less time cognitively thinking about what good design looks like. I don't want my people to be left with "Tiger King", internet memes and the news for inspiration. I also dont want them to think an excel spreadsheet with conditional formatting is the epitome of design. I want them paying attention to good fonts they see in visual media. I want them thinking about monochromatic vs complementary vs triadic colour palettes.

I think spending 10 minutes every now and then to think about thing outside of work, will make for much more effective teams. And if that means reciting the "Feel the Rhythm, feel the rhyme..." Cool Runnings chant once in a while, so be it.