Weeknotes 415
This week I did:
Clouds and clocks
I’ve been trying to think about my work using Popper’s clouds and clocks metaphor. It suggests all problems are clouds or clocks. A cloud is a dynamic system that can’t be taken apart, only understood in a holistic way. A clock can be taken to pieces to analyse the parts and work out how it works. My conclusion is that nothing is either/or. Everything is a cloud and a clock depending on how you choose to define the system you’re looking at. And I did a few other things too:
- Talked about ‘leaders at every level’ and how we might create the affordances that make leading the easy, default thing to do.
- Took part in a couple of journey mapping workshops.
- Interviewed a senior delivery manager. I think there should be only one question, “Who is Jonny Williams?” If they don’t know, they don’t get the job.
- Did some product strategy work to figure out the four factors that affect our success, and realised that we’re not in control of one of them.
- Lined up some future work for the team that brings together a few things we’re working on now. I like it when that happens. I think product managers should be looking to the future so it’s good to know the stuff we’re working on now it the right stuff.
- Tried to grasp how I’ve become the people person for the team. Me?!? The least people person I know.
The numbers
- Completed 39 tasks.
- Spoke to 29 people, 76 times.
- Only 18 hours of meetings this week.
Impact webinar
I took part in a webinar. It was fun. Scary but fun. I froze a bit and couldn’t keep the question in my head to form any kind of coherent response. Luckily, Nicola is brilliant and answered all the questions properly.
How product managers and service designers work together
Following a conversation with a colleague, I wrote some thoughts on how product managers and service designers work together. The TLDR is; talk to each other.
Simple product strategy
Wrote a short post about how a simple product strategy has three parts: A worthwhile problem to solve, a hypothesis about how to solve the problem, and a way to know if the problem has been solved.
I read/watched:
The what not the how of service design
Sarah Drummond wrote about commoditising service design, making it all about following the process and using the methods.
I know it’s a very product-y perspective, but when people say things like, we need a journey map or a daily stand-ups, or a process, I always ask (mostly in my head so I’m not too annoying), if a journey map is the solution, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? If daily stand-ups are the solution, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? If a process is the solution, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve?
When we face uncertainty we turn to tangible outputs. Maybe the answer is to practice embracing uncertainty and the discomfort that comes with it. Resist rushing towards easy answers.
What it means to be a team
Tim’s definition of a team is a “multi-person shared headspace where all the participants are actively pursuing at least one common goal they intend to achieve together as a unit.” If they never share any work items, have separate areas of responsibility, and avoid communicating with each other, they aren’t a team.
Searching through my website for something else, I found this post from almost a year ago. It’s an observation from watching a football game where the same three phases were used by a team, which made me think about Tim’s point about how important communication is for effective team work. Obviously organisations are far more complex than a football game, but team’s developing a shared language is a good thing.
The resource utilisation trap
And I thought about:
Leading indicator of culture change
I think the number of people leaders talk to is a leading indicator of culture change in an organisation. If leaders only talk to peers and direct reports, culture change will be slow. If leaders talk to lots of different people all across the organisation, culture change will be quicker.
Everyone wants to lead the transformation
Agile transformation, product-led transformation, service-led transformation, content-led transformation. Everyone wants to lead the transformation. I’ll let you into a little secret, if you’re centering power on one group and giving those that don’t ‘fit’ less power, you aren’t transforming anything, you’re reinforcing existing power structures.
Imperfections everywhere
Every problem is a combination of upstream and downstream problems.