So having a standup every single day is more efficient than meeting once a week with your manager? You'd rather have to take time out every single day to hear other people talk about stuff that may have no relevance to what you do, rather than meet with your manager once a week - a meeting that might take only a few minutes if there turns out to be little to discuss?

OK, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

If I have an issue blocking me now, yes it's more efficient to raise that at standup today with the group of people who might be able to help, than wait until next Thursday to discuss it 1:1 with the manager and then wait for the manger to find help for me.

But I'm not a huge fan of standups either, don't get me wrong. They aren't a great use of time, I just think they are better than weekly 1:1s to communicate things like "what I'm working on" or "what's blocking me."

The point of a stand is for the team to synchronize and raise potential issues. If the team is small, cross-functional, and working in the same area, it has a lot of value. You seem to be looking at this from the perspective of "what can I, the manager, get out of this" instead of "what can the team get out of this."

That's laughable - my team does not want stand-ups and after I asked them many times whether they would like regular meetings, they suggested doing a team meeting every few weeks, so you have no idea how I am looking at this.

You opened this line of conversation with "As a manager it is critically important that I have a sense of what my staff is doing." Not "it's very important to my team that they have X process." I only know what you tell me.

If they're work has no relevance to yours, I don't think you're on the same logical team? You don't need cross team stand-ups unless you're working on a project together