Weeknotes 423
I did:
Back in the saddle
I’very been doing some delivery work week, which has slowed the product work but that’s why we prioritise, right.
- Ran six kick-off workshops. And enjoyed them more than I thought I would. It’s been a while since I’ve done that kind of facilitation but I kept one eye on the short-term goal of starting this work together and the other on the long-term goal of demonstrating the benefits of adopting modern working practices like starting together.
- Set up a Planner board for the next seven weeks of focused work. I know it’s weird, but I really like Planner and I’m glad to be using it again.
- Wrote a one-pager for a new piece of work, partly as an exercise for myself to see if I can explain the work succinctly, but also to help with some stakeholder discussions coming up.
- Had some interesting chats about how people know what to work on, what expectations are for them and the work, and how they check they’re aligned, etc. Basically, ‘what does self-organising actually look like’ -type conversations. I definitely lean towards more trust and freedom, and supporting people to talk to each other rather than (enforced) proxy coordination via software.
- Had another interesting chat about the mindsets and assumptions people bring from one work context and apply to another (not always fully aware of how different they are). Maybe context sense is more useful than product sense.
- Chatted about the difference between being a line manager when you’re involved in the work and when you’re not. And how they require different approaches and skills. With the former, you can give more direct feedback, whereas the latter requires more of a coaching approach.
- Got told off for not including someone in an email and resisted the urge to include them in every email I ever send. I hope you’re impressed with my maturity.
I read:
Escaping the snail
Andrew Greenaway writes about the need for universities to get on with their digital transformation. I agree, the need is immediate. My hypothesis is that the mean time to transform correlates with an organisation’s natural staff turnover rate. Bringing new people in, with different skills and experience is great, but it isn’t equal in power to the drag factor of incumbent mindsets, assumptions and ways of doing things. We have to accept it. Transformation rushed is transformation failed.
Mental models
Thought provoking piece by Clare Reucroft and Nia Campbell about whether we should design something to fit someone’s mental model or design to change it. Often there are constraining reasons for why things work the way they do but that doesn’t always mean they’ve been designed to help people understand how they work. I’ve been wondering about ‘anticipation’ in user journeys, how one step sets people up for the next, how they know what to expect. And mental models are a part of the answer.
Working in the open is good for you
I’m a believer. Hidden work is risky. Working in the open is a great way to reduce risk and make things better. But… it requires an enabling environment that knows what to do with it, it needs people to understand why a team might want to be open in this way, it needs agreement about how to respond, it needs the assumption of best intentions. Working in the open without doing the hard work of making easy for those reading isn’t really any different than than broadcast comms into the wind. It’s doing not achieving. It’s output not outcome. So, working in the open… in enabling environments… is good for you.
Evolving and re-shaping delivery management at Greenwich
Really nice piece from Beth Mindham on delivery management as a solution to the coordination problem. She says, delivery management needs to move from an “emphasis on technology change and delivering products” to “large scale service transformation and organisational change with a focus on delivering ‘value’.” I agree.
And I agree about not having hard and fast boundaries between roles and responsibilities. In my experience, it creates gaps for things to fall down, so it’s better to have lots of overlap.
North Star Playbook
Quickly re-read Amplitude’s North Star Playbook just in case it comes in handy over the next few weeks.
I thought about:
Now, next, later
I know lots of product manager’s get drawn into delivering the work in the Now column on their roadmap. I get it. Responsibility, and all that (see above). But generally, I think product manager’s should be putting most of their focus into what’s in the Later section of their roadmaps (when I say roadmap, I use that term really loosely and only because I don’t think we have a tool that does what I’m suggesting). The more time a product manager spends in Now and involved in feature development, the less time they have to be thinking strategically and long-term about the business model for their product and how it drives value for users and the organisation.
Embrace the mess
Work is messy. It doesn’t fit in neat little boxes. Embrace the mess.
Insight of the week
When it comes to defining things (like what is a product or a services), who defines it matters more than the definition, because power.