Weeknotes 296
Did:
Objectives
I’ve been working on how we can use annual objectives in a more effective way to drive improvements for our team. We each have five objects and we’ve come up with themes for each to help us align them and make sure we’re all working on similar things. We’re going have monthly review sessions to keep us on track and make any changes we think we need. It’ll be interesting to see if we can turn objectives into something that is useful for the team.
Magix Teams
I bought a domain name and starting writing some notes about what use a website about magix teams could be, and when I get time I’ll get the website set up. So far, the hardest part of the ideas is the rationale for using a magix approach to organising teams but it seems like it might only be relevant for small, resource-constrained organisations (like charities).
Our systems treat us as objects
This week’s Irregular Ideas newsletter was inspired by my recent hospital experience and explores how systems can only treat people as objects with a set of attributes, which seems like it might have been a bot of what Baudrillard was talking about with the triumph of the object.
Read:
How to decide what to work on
This is an interesting look at opportunity and focus that applies well to side-projects. I’ve been struggling to focus over the past two months so I’m keen to back into working on various side-projects, and sometimes reading something like this is part of getting back on track.
Digital Enquirer
The Become A Digital Enquirer website is interesting, not just because it’s about online safety which is something I’m interested in, but because it uses online learning to get the message across and develop skills, which is an approach I’m keen on (that’s why so many of my side-projects are email courses)
Goodbye Standups, Hello Wrap-Ups
Goodbye Standups, Hello Wrap-Ups looks like an interesting experiment in rethinking team alignment for asynchronous, remote work.
My reading list
Thought:
Building confidence
If you want to be good racing driver you need to have lots and lots of practise laps. The more times you drive around the track the better you become, and that builds your confidence. If you only practice one section of the track, however good you become at the section you’ll never become good at the whole track track. And if you only practice that section a few times a year you don’t get enough reps in to hone your skills you’ll have less confidence. Teams feeling confident in their problem solving ability only comes from getting the reps in.
No frameworks
An anti-framework position has been showing up in some of my thinking recently, from how to become more agile at work to thinking about how frameworks reduce creative problem solving.
Ideas in progress
I’ve had a few attempts at trying to create a more cohesive collection of my ideas, and I’ve been thinking about updating the home page on my website as a starting point, so it’s on my to do list for next week.