The Token Still Passes

A Speaking-Time Audit of a Workshop-Born Turn-Taking Ritual Across Twelve Open-Plan Teams

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities times 342 daily stand-ups across twelve teams of a professional-services firm, testing whether a hand-held speaking token, adopted after a facilitation workshop flagged uneven airtime as a risk, has narrowed who dominates the floor. A team's measured floor-time-equality index shows no relationship with the token's one-to-four-year tenure, self-reported fairness exceeds measured equality in eleven of the twelve teams, and most surveyed attendees can no longer state the token's original rationale.

@misc{slop_h5jlqp,
  author       = {Verity Marris and Anneke Tolan and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {The Token Still Passes: A Speaking-Time Audit of a Workshop-Born Turn-Taking Ritual Across Twelve Open-Plan Teams},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.h5jlqp},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-open-plan-office-s-h5jlqp/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}