Weeknotes 495
I did:
Cohesive collectives
Some of the groups I’m part of are well-formed and others are less so, and I noticed that more intentionally this week. I think groups work better when they have something to coalese around so I need to think more about what those things are beyond organisational structures. Anyway, I also did this other stuff…
- Had an interesting session with our new team members and others that work on the same product in different ways. It wasn’t nearly long enough because there’s so much to know, but it was the first time I thought of all nine of us as a single collective.
- One of our product managers wrote some amazing outcome-focused objectives and key results. I need to up my game.
- Talked about product management and product managers developing a USP.
- Had a business review meeting, which I really enjoyed, and think it’s going to be the driver for product managers joining up their thinking so we can present more cohesively and being more about outcome-focused.
- Took part in a show and tell. I really want to make our show and tells less progress update and more agile governance, but I’ve already got lots to do.
- Met our new director of product strategy and talked about product’s relationship with other things in the university.
- Talked about the nature of product development and how you can’t be delayed if you don’t have a deadline.
- Started researching how to make course credit machine-readable (because of digital transformation).
- Started designing a methodology for metrics and reporting for complex change across the university, so no pressure.
I read/listened to:
Guides slow learning
Actually, guides that feel complete can slow learning. That’s the point Harry Bailey makes, which is an interesting challenge outside agency project management. How much information is too much? How much space for figuring things out is just enough? My go-to thinking for this is, where is this thing in the ‘experiment-optimise-standardise’ process? If you’re doing something completely new, then don’t follow a guide, experiment and share what you learn for others to optimise. If you’re doing something that has been done lots of times before, then follow the guide, use standardised patterns because it’s more efficient.
Invisible work
Invisible work is an interesting idea. Rian van der Merwe talks about the shadow backlog as a symptom of a roadmap that doesn’t reflect reality.
It got me thinking, what does it mean to make work visible? It’s a principle I believe in but have never really questioned. Why should work be visible, which work, and visible to who?
Often it’s the meta-work that is invisible and seen as non-productive (see glue and grease below), but the more complex an organisation becomes the higher the ratio of meta-work to work (if you don’t believe me just count how many people in your organisation do productive work and how many managers there are).
Taking that idea of all work being visible to the extreme, imagine an organisation where every activity has to be agreed and planned in advance. It would be a coordination nightmare. No one could do anything without permission. No creativity. No spontaneity. We don’t want that, so celebrate the meta-work, the invisible work, the glue and the grease work.
How to lead without authority
Sean Flaherty talking about behavioural science on the product experience podcast. Although I don’t agree with everything he says, it’s nice to hear more people talking about behavioural science in product management. We really need to figure out how to apply behaviour change techniques more consciously to our products.
I thought:
I blame Total Quality Management
The concept of ‘internal customers’ is one of the worst ideas in business. I’m all for customer-focus, although it has it’s issues, but when it treats colleagues as customers it creates a dysfunctional relationship with an unhealthy power dynamic.
Deadlines
A few different conversations got me thinking about deadlines and theory x theory y management. Deadlines, as we usually thinking about them, are an extrinsic motivators from theory x. Understanding the context and impact of certain dates is an intrinsic motivator from theory y. But the thing is, in most cases for most teams, neither of those make any difference because the factors that affect whether they deliver on time are outside the team.
Glue people and grease people
I was thinking about glue people and what that means when serendipity sent me Duncan Stephen’s blog post in which he says that glue people are “superconnectors”. Glue people connect other people, they are all about relationships. They join-up ideas and stick things together. They are important and necessary people to have in organisations.
And then there are grease people. They move things along. They are bothered about progress and momentum, about getting stuff done. They are important and necessary people to have in organisations too.
You need both (and all the other types of people).