Week 6, 2024
Another week - sometimes they really fly by.
Work
Ran a retro with a group of people who want to be better at getting things done together and it took a lot longer than it normally would have done - and we didn’t come out the other side with crunchy actions in the way that I’d hoped, but did build trust and a shared understanding of what they’d like to do differently. Reflection: the first retro for a struggling team unaccustomed to retros needs to be quite a bit longer than the same for a high performing team that routinely reflects together. And it is absolutely critical to spend a hefty chunk of time creating psychological safety through discussion of the agile prime directive, agreeing group norms for the session, and sharing what worked well and what they appreciated from each other. Because retros like these aren’t just retros, they’re relationship-resets.
Spent quite a bit of time thinking through research design for a new engagement and found it really quite frustrating for my usual reason: the amount of user research I think is needed doesn’t match the time/budget available for it. I know that poor research can be worse than no research - if it ends up giving false confidence, false information or leading people to false conclusions. So rather than try to do #AllTheResearch poorly, we needed to identify the highest impact research and figure out how to do that most efficiently. Reflection: I know we can only ever be partially informed, but deciding which parts to go and get informed about (effectively choosing which gaps to ignore) isn’t comfortable. In the past I’ve often relied on a really great Delivery Manager to force me to take a knife to the plan and descope the lower value activities - I think because I find it easier to “kill my darlings” when the person I’m working with has a laser focus on deliverability.
Facilitated a full-day workshop - so in addition to the day itself, I spent a lot of time with the team planning and preparing for the different sessions in advance, as well as making sure logistics were in hand. These workshops are a monthly occurrence and I’m struck by just how much effort and thought we need to invest in order to make sure the sessions are attractive, interesting/fun, and high value enough for participants to come and keep coming each month. For a small engagement this level of investment means the workshops can’t just be “about the work”, they need to be “the work” itself - because if we can’t deliver through these sessions, these monthly workshops are just too high an opportunity cost to justify. Reflection: when you’re working in the open and collaboratively across siloes you can find yourself with the opportunity to make progress on research, design, strategy, policy, stakeholder engagement and comms all at once. But you need to invest the time to seize that opportunity - if your sessions are boring, and attendance drops, it becomes just another time-suck.
Wrapped up an awesome engagement. Just the best team, and a great client. I love it when I leave an engagement having had loads of fun and confident I brought my A game. Reflection: this didn’t happen by chance - I asked to work with this team and this partner; we made having fun an explicit objective; and and I scheduled the time I need to do a good job into the diary so it didn’t get crowded out.
Leaned into a potentially awkward but necessary conversation with a client. It’s one of those situations where you don’t know if they’re aware of an issue, if they care, if they want to do something about it, if they’re willing to prioritise putting the hard work (time/emotional energy) to fix it, and if they’ll appreciate you raising it or feel you’re overstepping. I worry about making these calls sometimes as I’m more of a risk-taker (in pursuit of outcomes) than many of my colleagues, and though I’m happy to have a reputation for being bolder in my approach, I don’t want one for poor judgment. The gamble paid off - the client bit my hand off to work with them on the issue, and so now we’ll get the chance to grow the conditions for success of the wider engagement. Reflection: I trusted my gut and raised the issue, sensitively and showing that I genuinely care about helping them as a leader to get the results they’re looking for. Over the next six months I want to move from self-doubt (but doing it anyway) to solid confidence that my judgment is just fine and my default high-empathy non-avoidant approach is a super-power not a liability.
Home and personal
My youngest has figured heavily in my thoughts and activities. This week I recognised her leg pain symptoms as shin splints, and realised she’s probably inherited my hypermobility - so I took her to the GP to get a referral to be checked out. Reflection: Hereditary health issues are a weird sort of parental guilt, aren’t they? She’s happy though - I can tell because she’s currently singing in the shower (my kids, like me, sing to themselves when they’re happy).
Our 18 year old base-model Honda Jazz’s head gasket got a crack in it last month, so I used the work salary sacrifice scheme to lease an electric vehicle. It arrived this week. It is weird driving a non-manual car - and the risk of pedal confusion has me more than a little stressed. Reflection: muscle memory is a powerful thing - it won’t take me long to get used to the controls on this car. Where might I have developed muscle memory at work - and it is helpful or hindering me? Thinking in terms of ingrained habits and defaults, where would more muscle memory be useful - and how can I start building those muscles?
I found myself worrying after a report from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association that said that the minimum income required for a comfortable retirement is £43,000. I don’t know precisely how much my pension is currently worth, because it’s dotted around in some many different places - I do know I’m not on trajectory for a comfortable retirement. But money is tight right now and it’s going to get harder still, over the next few years, to increase my contributions. Reflection: this is wasted emotional energy. I need to go and find out what I’ve built up, cut back on our spend more, and consider returning to a five-day working week (possibly on a trial, to see how it affects my well-being).
Perimenopausal weirdness led to astonishing levels of blood loss this week - movie crime-scene levels - causing a crash that sent me to bed at 9pm a number of days in a row. Reflection: I’m more emotionally self-aware than physically self-aware. I shouldn’t need massive blood loss as a trigger to check in with myself physically and realise that I need rest/water/food. I’ve been lucky so far with my health - but I’m getting to an age now where this meatsack isn’t going to be up to the task if I don’t look after it better.