The frog and the pan

If you’ve read my original posts on this space you know I have a good friend, the frog. So this is the story about the frog in the pan and how it has followed me all my working life.

Like the frog, if we are thrown into a pan of boiling water we would jump straight out. We know it’s too much, we know it will kill us immediately.

But, if every day we warm up the pan a little bit, almost unnoticeable, then the frog starts to cook slowly but doesn’t realise as he adapts to the new temperature. The frog will end up cooked but won’t even realise it was time to jump a while back.

We are intelligent people, we think, there’s no way I would allow myself to “cook” (aka burn out). Let me bring you some stats: 79% of the UK workers will end up facing burn out (article here) especially if we consider the environment for more than 2 years. Personal life and office life become blurred and like the frog in the pan we are starting to boil without noticing. Though I do believe we actually notice but we end up without knowing what to do. It’s not so simple to jump out (even though we are in the midst of the great resignation).

Don’t be fooled, change in itself also adds to stress. Will you like your new job? Will you be able to adapt quickly? Will you like your new colleagues? Is it the company for you? What about your boss? Of course all of that would be thought through before you actually say yes but there’s nothing like being there to truly find out what it means for you. Many of us end up preferring to stay “with the evil you know” than jump into the unknown. So you stay.

You try to think about ways you can make the solution better, but before you realise your normal routines kick in and you’re not really changing until you really boil. 

Also there is something else that plays quite a big factor here. In some cases yes you are in the wrong company and your values don’t align with the company, your team could be the worst out there or your boss could be an ass. In those cases, by all means, face the jump and get out.

But… hands up if you believe the enemy is actually yourself. You can keep on changing companies but a few months on and you realise you are exactly following the same patterns of your old company. We are our worst enemy. Having the right boss – and I prefer to say line manager – will keep you grounded and challenge you to think about your ways of working so you can indeed make changes that help you long term. But mostly it’s actually self-inflicted.

• We like to be busy – or put another way – no one likes to say I have a lot of free time. It feels you are doing something wrong, that you are not making enough, that mind you, that you’re not cool because everyone else around you is super busy. It’s addictive. Yes, yes it is.
• Ego – I wrote a few times already but ego plays a big unconscious role. You compare yourself, you want to come out on top even if that means working until you boil.
• We don’t have enough examples when we start that show us there is another way. That if you work just smarter and focus on your priorities – without jeopardising your health and your valued relationships that you can still be successful. That feels unachievable, so you follow all the examples you see. 

The scary part is, all of what’s driving you to boil – or most of it – is unconscious. It’s routine, it’s in your working DNA.

It will require a lot of strength to break the cycle and implement incremental changes that will lower the temperature of your pan.

Before I dive into what can be done. I will quote something my husband keeps on repeating to me as a mantra:

“My boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, this is why I poop on company time.”

Maybe it’s a bit extreme, but there’s something to think about for sure.

At the end of the day, work is just work. It’s in your hands to make it more enjoyable and bearable. 

So what can you do?

• Learn to say no. Not just to others, but to yourself too. Every yes you say, it’s a lot of no’s you are also saying. If I accept this, it means I can’t have dinner with my family. It means I won’t have time to exercise. You get the picture. Saying no is hard. It is (unless your kids are asking you for the 1000th snack in the last 5 minutes). It requires practice. You can start with small steps. Say no to peers who ask your help and when you believe that will jeopardise your goals for the day. Then start by accessing your “yeses” and thinking about what you will lose in that time slot. Can you really fit it in your day? 
• Start your day by writing down your priorities. That’s to write, your top 3 things you really need to achieve that day which can be both work or personal. You need to have something measurable at the end of the day.
• Protect your calendar – I wrote at length here (show your calendar who’s the boss) but now you know what are your priorities you need to find slots for them. Ideally they would be done in the morning when your brain is fueled by coffee (unless you’re a tea drinker). Are there meetings in the middle that would get in the way of having a good 2h slot of uninterrupted work? Can you move them or even better do you really really need to go? Cancel them. Have a go, cancel them. See if anyone dies.
• At the end of the day assess what you’ve accomplished. I find myself always doing a stretch of work at the end of the day because I feel I achieved nothing during the day (just meetings). It’s a trap I keep on falling into. Probably if I had the time to retrospect about my day I would find I had already achieved more than I can think of by the end of the day. Really take a few minutes to think of what you’ve achieved and what you can do next day to achieve your top priorities. What failed? What was in the way? Did you need more uninterrupted time to get them done? With this in mind prepare your next day. 
• Think about your boundaries. What can you compromise and what can you not? As an example, except if I have to go to the office – I need to either drop my daughter at school or pick her up. It’s really important for her that I’m present and it’s important for me too. I get to chit chat with the other parents and establish relationships which help her as well make friends. I need to show my face. So if any meetings fall on those slots I say no to them. No matter who the requester is, senior or not. Same is valid with the bedtime routine. The answer is no. I’m not willing to compromise that. Maybe for you it’s a slot for daily exercise. Whatever it is and it can be multiple things. Think about them as they will act as your compass as to when you are taking too much.
• Once in a while (monthly, quarterly, even daily) assess how it’s going. How do you feel? How many days of utter stress and feeling out of control did you have? What are the things you can do to help you out? Do you need a day off away from work and family to think about what you can do to feel more grounded and healthier? Then take it! It might feel like 1 day’s loss and you’ll be even more behind where you wanted to be, but you’ll gain so much more. Maybe you’ve reverted back to saying too many “yeses”. Maybe you are not delegating enough. 
• Setting time aside for the things you really enjoy. We all have hobbies and things we really enjoy doing. Whatever those are, save time to do them. Ideally you would have time for them even during the week too. Even if it’s 15m, it can be totally refreshing for your mind. Sometimes I get 15m aside to read during my quick lunch break and those 15m give me a lot of energy to face the rest of the afternoon, not to mention they lift my mood (I obviously don’t read the news).
• Work out what works for you. There’s no one rule that fits all. You need to find what are the things you can do to help you live a more balanced life. Can well be asking for help – either for home commitments or work. We are not machines and it’s ok to slow down. If you are not boiling down you will be more productive at work and home. One single fresh idea is worth many tired ones. Try one of your ideas and see how it works. If it doesn’t work, go back to the drawing board and think of what could work. Finding what doesn’t work in itself is quite powerful too.

Agile continues

The previous post was agile on it’s own. It was too big so had to split into smaller pieces.

Today we continue around the overal “cerimonies”.

Like all good stories, it always starts with planning. If you have a big list of wishlist items – which you’ve already agreed with your PO that they form part of the MVP. The first step is to have a backlog meeting.

Backlog meeting

Consider this as the house cleaning. You need to clean on a regular basis to ensure there’s no weird dust that went below the carpet. The backlog meeting aims to check what’s on the list, check what needs to be done in 1 or 2 sprints ahead and be sure all the depencies are understood. It aims to ensure you know what the team will be doing next and ensure by the time the new sprint starts you have enough stories “ready” to keep the team going and not loose momentum. Ideally the backlog meeting should happen mid sprint so there’s enough time to clear any dependencies and even for the team members to try to quantity how big the next stories will be and break them down further.

Sprint planning

This is where you look into what you’ve agreed to do and then ensure all the tasks are added so each team member knows what their priorities are. This is an opportunity to look into the work for that given sprint and measure criticality of stories between one and the other. Are there any high value quick wins (big points and low effort)? Then do those first. They will bost the moralle of the troops. It’s about every day improving 1%.

Daily scrum

I wrote about it in the previous post and this is where the magic happens. The daily scrum should happen with or without the scrum master there (at least in my view), it’s about team members to align and discuss any dependencies or blockers among them which can then be raised to the scrum master. If there are multiple scrums / workstreams, then you might need a Scrum of Scrums, so any resource dependencies between workstreams can be discussed and overall priorities assessed.

I really love love love this episode. It explains it a lot better than I did 😀

Retrospective

I know in a lot of places this is about getting the metrics. And yes indeed they are quite important, but even more so it’s to get the team together and look into what went well, discuss if the sprint goal was achieved, what didn’t went so well and what’s the one improvement everyone commits to implement. It doesn’t matter how small it is. Could be as simple as no mettings without an agenda, or that an additional SME is needed for the next few scrums. Whatever the team agrees.

What agile is not

No, it’s not a means of cutting documentation or cutting corners. The shift changes from the PM telling people what to work on or spending a lifetime writing the perfect documentation – be it a requirements document or a design document – to start by doing. Applying marginal gains and moving one step forward and documenting. It’s about a continuous assessment of what’s working well and what’s not and allow the experts in the team to propose where things can improve. As the functionality / product is build so is the documentation (incrementally).

Agile is not about cutting planning, in fact it’s about a new way of planning. One that relies on working closely with the product owner and the team members.

It’s not unstructured. It’s structured diferently around smaller workstreams with a brand new framework.

For further reading check here

Sourced from: https://wiki.cantara.no/display/dev/About+failing+agile+projects

What’s in it for me?

But aren’t you a convert already?

It doesn’t even matter if your team does any software development or not. It’s the whole mindset of breaking something bigger into smaller achievable pieces. It’s about having the priorities clear and cutting the crap. It’s about empowering the team to make decisions around the how to deliver something based on their expertise as well as to measure how big a piece of work is. It’s about understanding any dependencies upfront before commiting to something.

It changes the shift from spending months or years doing something that went presented back to the “requestors” – be it another team in the organisation or your clients – is miles away from what’s needed or you’ve spent so long in development the product / service is no longer relevant.

It’s about spending the minimum time possible from prototype to output and figure out (fast) if something could work or not. Put it up there, in front of a small user base to smash it to pieces and confirm it you are going in the right direction or you need to go back to the drawing board.

Don’t believe this can work for you and your team? Then try it and let me know!

For the agile manifesto check here

Sourced from here: https://sander-dur.medium.com/10-agile-memes-to-lighten-up-your-day-7f577ffbfe89

Let’s talk agile

Agile has been quite a buzzword for the last few years. Initially something you would link to a fancy fast moving startup, but now it’s all around you. Well if it isn’t it should!

Typically agile is linked as a new way of project management especially in the area of software development but I would say it’s way more agile than that (yap I wrote that).

It’s not just about delivering a piece of software but it’s a whole new mindset in which any team, and I mean any team can operate.

Let’s start with some definitions – and again this is just my own simplified view.

The team

Size matters

In this case, a smaller size is the best. An agile team should be composed ideally by 3 to 9 team members, if it’s bigger than that then it should be subdivided in smaller groups with a “scrum of scrums” to check for any conflicts and dependencies between them.

Product owner

Ideally there should be a product owner per scrum to avoid clashes of opinion across them, or even worse, no product owner. If there’s no product owner I would advise to stop there and don’t even bother to start. It can only lead to doom. Yap. The role of the product owner is to define their wish list and articulate it in a way the team understands. Then they also need to drive criticality: What’s more important for them? What’s nice to have and could be done later?

Scrum Master

See this role as a kind of a PM whose main focus is to resolve dependencies, either internal or external to the scrum. Also it should drive the sprint ceremonies (I’ll get to them shortly). I also see the role of the scrum master as an internal coach who raised the right question to both the PO (aka product owner) and team members. Where a lot of people struggle with agile is that it’s no longer the role of the “PM” to tell people what to do and how long it takes.

Team members

It’s the role of the team members to define their tasks – how to deliver what the product owner. This is very important as it’s with the feedback of the team members that a “story” can be defined or even broken down into smaller pieces if it’s too big to achieve in the space of say 2 weeks. It’s also the role of the team members to raise any dependencies that a particular delivery requires before it can be completed. If it’s blocked there’s no point in starting until the dependency has been cleared. It puts team members on the spot (but I would say in a good way) as they own their tasks.

What are we doing?

The PO has a big wishlist, it’s the role of PO, Team members and scrum master to get together and define what are the really critical functionality and which features are nice to have. The concept of what’s critical forms the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Everyone needs to understand the “what is” in the team.

How do we get there?

Now that we know this big thing that needs to be achieved, how do we get there? Well, chop it into pieces. Agile is about breaking down smaller and smaller so it seems you have something that you individually can achieve and contribute on any given day. That is encouraging!

First we divide into “features”, big functionality pieces that are to be delivered. From features then we move into stories. A story needs to be achieved in a sprint (whatever that sprint is, 2 or 3 weeks). A lot of people struggle with the concept of “story” because they get stuck into the features. I have described this before as building a house. The house is your MVP. Things like the garden or the shed can be seen as nice to haves (for most people at least). Once you have the first MVP completed you can tackle those. Then you can think of each division of the house a “feature”. It’s the builder that can then articulate how you build the foundation of the house and then each division. A story in this context could be: prepare the land – to start building. This is a dependency that needs to be cleared before anything else can start. Then you can get the baseline building, then you can get multiple stories in parallel for the building of each room. Then another story to add the plumbing and electricals and so on.

Each user story needs to have a tangible output at the end of it. Let’s take building the kitchen as an example. Even to add all the internal walls and baseline foundations for the kitchen will take a few days, so this is where the tasks come into play. Every day the team must know what they are doing. The team members, using their expertise must break that output which is the foundation for the kitchen and define the tasks for each day. Ideally a task should be between 1h to 8h, if it’s more than that then it needs to be broken down further. It needs to take into consideration the sequence of events from the start to the final outcome. Ultimately the story is considered “done” when the PO has seen a demo – in this case goes and checks if the sizing is as expected, if there’s space for the windows as per spec and so on. If all is good, the PO will say great job and the team can move into the next story, which could be all about furniture and electricals.

Is the story ready to start?

This is where things fail miserably. Before a piece of work can start, it should be clear to all team members what it is that is to be achieved. If there’s any vagueness in the what, then I would suggest PO and team members to sit down and refine further. Let’s go back to the kitchen, so say the PO only said that he wanted a kitchen. It will be subject to the interpretation of the team members. The kitchen could end up being tiny or not have enough light. It might be that there’s even a user story to define what are the requirements for the kitchen with a series of drawings on paper until everyone understands what’s the ask.

Managing progress – meet the daily scrum

This is where I see agile being applied to anything and any team really. As opposed to having team meetings without a clear purpose, the scrum has one goal, measure the progress of the day in relation to the sprint goal. In each daily scrum, each team member will provide a brief of what was achieved the day before, what they are working on that specific day (e.g. referring to the tasks) and if there are any blockers / impediments they found which the scrum master will need to resolve. It cuts the crap in essence and retains the focus on what’s really important. I have seen “business as usual” teams applying this to their day to day work and it works! If you have access to some agile tools then even better. (I can probably write a post on tools another day).

The beauty of agile

I seriously feel like tattooing this mantra

Fail fast, learn faster

This is what agile is ultimately about. As you try to have an output as part of each sprint and get the product owner to work with the team directly to measure how close we are (or not) to the ultimate goal (the MVP), the team will have the chance to learn what went wrong and change tactics. I will write another post about the scrum ceremonies as a lot can be said in this space.

The root of all evil

If there’s anything the past few events – from covid to war – have shown us is we can’t be dependent on a specific country for strategic goods / services. Why did it take a war for the rest of the world to realise they can’t rely on countries like Russia for their gas & oil I seriously don’t know. Where do they think a lot of the wars are financed from? Cut the money flow, cut the war. Yes, it’s that simple.

Disclaimer: This blog is by no means a political blog, it’s just a very opinionated space. However, I do believe that all the bad decisions from the past are biting us big time. Every single one of us.

But I will say the problem is way wider than just an energy one – which I hope by now the so called energy companies realise they are in the energy business and not just oil!

The problem started years ago with the so-called promise of globalisation. The world is your oyster. We took it to extremes, let’s send everything where it’s really cheap, including strategic resources like chips….

I would say this issue was even fueled by Western “xenophobic views” – “These third world countries can never deliver good quality products on their own”. Fast forward 20 years and oh yeah they’ve learnt. They can copy any products they want, make them better and release them to the market for a lot cheaper. They have the know-how, they have the economies of scale, they have the raw materials. Was it a clever move? No!

I can’t and will never comprehend any government or company that encourages sending EVERYTHING away. Look at the labels of everything you own in your house. Yap. Even things like agriculture. I was reading that basic goods like flour were increasing by the day (with daily rates) and inflation around 30%. Yes, exactly, 30%. After covid it’s exactly what we needed.

But let’s go back to the basics. This impacts every single company out there across all industries, from automotive to health care. While our technology advances are slowing down other countries are laughing on the face of evil. While the younger generations spend hours on tik tok in the other side of the world they are attending the best universities, cracking CFA and feeding themselves with science.

I do not understand why there are not factories across each continent. Aside from niche specific products which would benefit from full blown globalisation, anything strategic should be controlled in that region. You want to release a product to the market, you are stuck by components you can’t access. Even basic product assembly? All done away.

I wonder what’s the true cost of globalisation. It’s not cheap, not quite sure who’s benefiting from it. Access to cheaper products? Yes, for a short term, only to find that was contributing to global warming caused by excessive consumption.

I’m a firm believer that ALL companies should work with their local universities and ensure that any research is in line with what’s needed in the market (or what the market will need in the future) as well as having factories for any strategic components close enough. I don’t understand why everything I need, needs to travel the world more than I ever will in a lifetime.

Every country should be able to produce basic products and agriculture. But if we let governments alone make the decisions we will move nowhere. So it’s up to each individual company to make the right R&D decisions and find the right partnerships to move things forward. Together then they can influence the right governments (e.g. tax benefits) and move in the right direction.

As an employee, I would be more inclined to work for a company that ‘s trying to support the local economies. I would feel proud to work in a country that tries as much as possible to produce things in the region. I almost hugged my coffee machine when I saw that it was made in Italy. What a blessing! Not only does it provide me every morning with my most precious liquid but it was assembled in Europe. I even remember trying to buy a robot vacuum and reading all about brands to then find a germany company that had something.

Globalisation should be used as a means of attracting the best talent and learning from each other, or where niche products are required. It should not be exaggerated to the point that if one country decides to go la la land the whole economy goes down. If you think that’s silly, well it’s what’s happening right now.

So it’s time to wake up and try to make every small difference we can, as individuals, as companies, as leaders. If we don’t, we’ll always be up to our knees not knowing what will hit us next.

Return to the office – An update

I guess I wrote back about the return to the office last year before everything went pear shape again with Omicron. So here’s an updated view after returning on a weekly basis.

Disclaimer: I am fortunate enough that I can return at a more smoother pace (e.g. once a week) and don’t have a rule (yet!) that I need to be there X number of days like other areas of the business.

So here’s how a day looks like

Wake up at 05h30 – not used to that anymore. I struggle to open my eyes and comprehend which planet I’m on. I realize it must be Monday and indeed I have to get up (a good 5 or 10m later).

Leave the house at 06h20 for a 20m walk to the station. Fortunately the sunrise is earlier and I feel less afraid to walk in the dark so early in the morning. I rarely see a soul.

The train commute is pretty nice. I manage to read on the train – a part I quite miss from the old days.

I reach the office at around 07h20 (1h after I left home). It is very quiet and I really enjoy that. I have time to eat my breakfast at my desk, reply to a few emails and prepare my day ahead before I go into meetings and more meetings.

At 08h30 I call home so I can speak to my daughter. I feel sad I can’t take her to school. This was quite a big change for all of us, where I can now be part of the daily routines around my daughter and take her or get her from school. I rarely had the chance to do that before given the commute times to / from home.

From 09h onwards it’s meeting crazy but I can say it felt so nice to have the team meetings in person. We were just so happy to see each other in person or having a quick lunch together. We are social “animals” after all. We develop in a pack, by working together. This is at the source of our evolution, so even the most introverts will miss some sort of face to face interactions.

We’ve all agreed that if we could teleport to the office we would go more often.

One item I find myself doing quite badly in the office, is barely drinking any water as the ladies room is too far from my desk and not something you can go quickly and come back while in a meeting. So it’s not uncommon to leave with headache.

At 16h00 I shut down everything to catch the train home so at around 17h10 I’m back home for any final meetings and close any outstanding work. In the past I would leave at 17h30 and that was it, no more working after, but I struggle with that. Also I guess I’m not mentally ready to commute into rush hour. Not yet.

By 21h00 I don’t know again which planet I’m on and I struggle to stay awake.

Future of working

I wrote about it a few times and I will say I have not changed my point of view at all. The future needs to be flexible. I don’t believe there is one size that fits all. We all have our own needs and we all achieve efficiency and productivity in different ways. Some people say they are more efficient in the office because they get less distractions (e.g. chores to do or kids), I am less efficient in the office because I find myself wanting to interact to people and loose more time move round and about plus the commuting back.

The technology is out there, the whole covid situation has shown to the most sceptical of the leaders that teams can work remotely. Yes there is a lot you develop while working physically together. Going to the office needs to be an experience on its own that helps to drive a very specific purpose than the nature of the work done at home.

I do believe that companies that do not embrace flexible working – and come on, flexible working is not the odd day working from home – will fail to attract the best talent or retain those that they have.

Companies that offer flexibility will get flexibility in return and an increase in productivity. Also if people work from different environments, that will encourage diverse ways of tackling new situations and challenges.

So cheers to flexibility, we all need it. If you don’t trust your employees, look yourself in the mirror.

1 step backwards 2 steps forward

It is no surprise that careers today are no longer linear, nor the climbing ladder that they used to be. In the past you would expect that after a certain number of years you would go up and level and so on until you would eventually retire. It was an expected pattern.

Nowadays if we know anything it is not to expect anything at all.

Careers go all over the place, sometimes up, other times you move horizontally and even backwards to then continue ahead again.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/life-never-linear-my-career-visualized-neil-patwardhan/

Why is that?

• The nature of the job has changed in itself. Even from the moment you accept a new role and it’s job description, by the time you leave the role itself would have changed. You have the freedom – to a certain extent – to change and control what you do, to explore the boundaries and interact with different stakeholders, assume more functions, etc. In fact this is totally expected out of you. You need to be adaptable and flex to the business needs. If you don’t adapt you are simply obsolete and soon enough you will be left in a corner. This is valid for people and organisations alike. The next new thing might be outdated by the time it gets out to the market. Adaptability is key.
• The new generations need meaning and fulfilling roles. It’s not enough to have a title, it’s not enough to have a job description, they expect continuous learning and to feel part of “something” that links with their values. They need to feel energised and they welcome change. We could even say change is their middle name. Don’t forget they (we!) grew up without any certainties. We never know when the new crisis will strike us or war. We know we can’t feel secure anywhere so there is a huge focus on building our skill set so it’s as fungible as possible. We take Darwin to a whole new level. You can never feel comfortable in your seat. Most of us will be itching to find what’s next.

What’s the impact for the organisation?

In a short and sweet version, I would say it’s amazing.

• If the very fabric of the organisation is embedded in the fact it will continue to change, it will be a lot easier to adapt to the next big thing, either business disruption, covid, whatever it is. You need all employees to be ready to change what they do and be ready to drop a few activities in prol of learn new things or do more of something the next day. I find a job description almost irrelevant these days. The moment you start it’s no longer relevant. I would say as opposed to a job description I would include an expected skill set and level of expertise within that skillset.

• If your employees are more demanding, you need to ensure every single voice can be heard within their own groups. It’s up to each leader in the organisation to ensure the whole team / department is learning and feel they can contribute to the company’s growth. Let’s face it, we’ll have to work until we die. It’s a lot more for us than just a 9 to 5 job to pay the bills. It’s part of our identity. If we don’t feel connected to the company mission, if we don’t understand it we might leave to a company where we feel more connected. Don’t be single minded in thinking that all that moves us is money. Yes, money is a big motivational factor, but it’s not the only thing.

• If we are to work 10, 12h a day we need to feel connected, we need to feel our work is valued and we are contributing. We need to “click” with our colleagues and especially with our line manager. If we feel we need to keep silent and just follow orders like dogmas that you must accept and just do without understanding the why, people will just leave. Especially now that the workforce is going more global and it’s a lot easier to work from anywhere in the world. There will be a point where even the whole taxing system will align to this new reality and not only will it become more common to have people all over the world but it will be the new norm. Oh brave new world. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

And what’s in it for the employee?

Well you need to be comfortable so that you will be uncomfortable. And that feeling (a little bit) uncomfortable about doing something means you are facing something challenging, something that will lead you to growth. The more you are willing to drop the hierarchy and focus on what you can learn and in return contribute to where you’re working, the more in demand your skillset will be. Accept that everything is changing all the time and we all have something to learn every day, including from people who are fresh out of uni. You can also be sure there’s no 2 days the same and hence you will never find yourself bored. If you are, well, then it’s time for a change.

Perfection is the enemy of progress

For some reason we are obsessed with perfection at all levels in life really. The perfect score (at schools), the perfect body, the perfect looks, the perfect food, the perfect plan…

So yes, Winston is still very right. You don’t want perfection, you want it done.

Raise your hand if you struggle to start something because you believe you are no good at it? Being a public speech, the perfect powerpoint deck, a new role….

Yap, me too.

So why is perfection the enemy of progress?

As opposed to call it the pursuit of perfection, I like to think of the pursuit of improvement – e.g. like Kaizen. If you keep on trying to get everything perfect, you might loose the big picture and not get something done where the time is of essence.

I have brainwashed my 5 year old to refuse perfection. I haven’t been called at the school yet, but in essence, even as little kids we say things like: “practice makes perfect.” I told her, no, practice makes better and every day you should try to practice so you get better. Perfection is not the point. It’s the learning journey.

We are all born without being able to do anything other than cry. How do you learn something new? Well, you just go for it, you attempt to do it, you learn from what you did, you make some marginal improvements and you try again. If you get to hang up that you are not good at it you will never try and hence you will never be good at it.

I like to write, but am I really good at it? No. Do I enjoy it? Yes, so I keep on doing it and maybe at some point the words will start to flow a lot better. Do I care if I’m perfect at it? No.

I think my whole being is against perfection and in fact I love to enjoy the imperfect of everything around us. We are not even symetrical as human beings and that’s what makes us amazing!

But even I fall into the perfectionism trap, mainly at work. I remember seeing a powerpoint pack with all the boxes misaligned and different fonts all over the place. My OCD will kick in and say I need to align all those boxes. Does that actually need to be done? No.

The beauty is in the balance. How to identify it’s good enough to be delivered vs continue to try to improve it. This is where Agile is an amazing tool: what is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Get it out there, get feedback and then improve it.

Can you imagine if they’ve spent years and years finding the perfect mobile phone before they released it out there in the market? By the time it was out, it would be outdated and not relevant anymore. You need to keep on doing and trying and fail to get better. To even know where you are good at one must try. If you really want to improve a skill don’t worry if you’re good, just try every day until it comes more naturally to you. Some people might learn something faster than others, but it shouldn’t deter you from try.

Nothing like experimentation to drive progress. So many things were found out of mistakes in the pursuit of something else: Post-its I’m looking at you. Timing is more critical than perfection. Get it done and see what happens. Try something new and see how you feel about it.

And to me the most important is stop talking and start doing. I can’t tell you how many meetings I’ve had about: “we need to do this”, many meetings go on and nobody has even started to do anything! Do, then talk about it. Try, see what happens, see where it leads you, then improve it once you have some feedback over what you found.

Just keep moving forward. It’s the journey that matters and what you find on the way.

Leaders of tomorrow

As the world evolves and younger generations enter the workforce, leaders also need to stay relevant if they aim to inspire and attract the best talent.

It’s amazing to see today’s leaders starting to bring diversity to the table and start to apply different facets of what it means to be a leader.

When we think of the leadership in the past it you can almost stereotype it:

• White male in his 50’s, drinks whiskey, likes to play golf and smoke cigars
• It was all about power and power circles
• Controls the team by fear and authoritarianism
• They know best / arrogant
• Workaholic
• Loves micromanagement

I’m not saying they were not good examples of leadership in the past, there were. But, the world has moved on quite a lot, and if you have any hope to attract talent, authority alone won’t do. New generations care about the vision, what they are contributing for, and they need to feel they are trusted and their voice matters.

So let’s jump in into what I think are the most important skills of today’s / tomorrow’s leaders.

Agile

Yes I know I love agile, and I really do. But more than just a tool for project management I see it as a mindset. As a leader you need to adapt really fast and be ready to repivot again your ideas. Fail fast, learn even faster! And it’s not even just about failure, you might be doing well right now, but you need to think about what will work tomorrow, and sometimes you might need to take 1 step back to be able to move 3 steps forward. Like parents with young children, what worked today might not work tomorrow. You can’t ever be stuck into ways of working. I’m sorry Mandalorian, but there is “no way”. The way is many ways that you don’t even know are there. You have to be willing to try and see what works.

Communication

Not only you need to have a vision of where you want to be (yourself as a leader and how you see the team / company), but you need to be able to communicate it. I just can’t see how a leader with a good vision can be a great leader if he’s unable to communicate it down the chain. It’s the troops on the ground that will make it or break it unless you’re a company of one. I see so many great ideas dying at the beach because they can’t be articulated in a way that everyone understands what it means for them. It might be obvious to the C-suite, but is it clear what it means to every single employee? As I’ve said, younger generations need to buy into the vision, if they don’t, they will jump out to where they will. (I wrote about it here).

Empathy

I’ve said it again and again and I will say it once more. Empathy is key. For the time being at least, we are dealing with humans, people with lives outside work (yes I know, it’s possible), and unless you have the ability to walk in someone’s shoes and try to understand what your employees might be feeling or how they might perceive your ideas, you won’t go far. The “just do as I say because I say so” era is gone. Yes gone. You need to show to them you are human if you want them to follow you and help you with your vision. (I wrote about it here)

Seeks diversity

In the past the “boss” had to be perceived as the most clever person in the room, and they would unconsciously surround themselves of people who thought like them and said yes to every idea – without any challenge. This was linked to the leading by fear, so there was no incentive of calling out a bad idea. Nether less to say this will jeopardize any ideas of growth. You want to surround yourself of people who are smarter than you and bring a completely different angle to the table, a different idea. You also want do avoid any “yes-sir”. You want to seek different views to then measure them up and understand what could work. Also, you want the surrounding people to challenge you if your idea has any flaws. If there are better ways of doing things, you want to have people around you that will point you in the right direction. If everyone thinks like you, you will just get ideas that you can reach on your own.

Active listeners

For some reason there is the perception that leaders have to be extrovert and talk a lot. But if coms are important, being active listeners is even more so. You need to be aware of what’s going on around you, at all levels of the organization. But unless you’re an Alexa, you can’t be everywhere and know everything, so you need to be able to listen to those you interact with. Not just being able to listen to what they are saying, but on why they are saying and what’s between the lines. The ability to pause and actively listening is one of the most powerful tools a leader can possess, for only then he will be able to have a wider view on anything impacting the company both internally and externally. Don’t forget, it’s the troops on the ground that ultimately interact with clients, that see what’s working and what’s a total failure. Only by listening and observing without judgment you’ll be able to gather insights on any steps that need to be taken next and re-pivot as per my point 1.

From http://quietandstrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/introverted-leader.jpg

Always learning, always thinking

My final point is about keeping an open mind and constantly be willing to learn. This is achieved by listening to others, by seeking formal training in any new technology / processes or by reading books. But in order to consolidate all these insights and knowledge, I would say it’s critical to have some thinking time. Not because you did something wrong like we tell the kids, but because the brain needs time to consolidate all the information. Blocking time to just sit down and absorb all the information you’ve collected on a daily basis is fundamental. It’s very easy to just get stuck on the busy-wheel, but you must carve out time to think and define what you need to learn next.

Accountability

Ok, I lied, there’s one more point. Accountability. It’s very easy to take accountability for success, but it’s crucial to take accountability for any failure. Great leaders will recognize what went wrong – as opposed to blame someone else or some other team – and will learn from it. Everyone should incorporate accountability in their ways of working, as it is a powerful tool to build trust. In fact, it was accountability that made me start this blog all these years ago (the one to be blamed), so couldn’t finish the list without it.

4 days a week, what’s the hype?

If you are like me, you start your Thursday completely heartbroken because despite being Friday it still isn’t. Well, for some lucky ones in the UK, it can be. (Please don’t mess it up for the rest of us)

In the past, it was common that some people would work a reduced schedule (e.g. 4 days a week) but with less pay as well. From my side I never wanted a 4 days week until now precisely because of the point of the pay. I knew I would end up doing 5 days in 4 but getting the pay of 4 days only. Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

So the new deal is now that employees would work 4 days a week but with 100% of the pay. Yap, 100%. The principle being that if employees are given flexibility they will meet their goals without impacting company’s productivity despite having “less days” working.

I’m quite curious as this would work out, as for some people they might prefer to do the same 5 days, but stop earlier / or start later to meet their own personal demands at home (taking care of young children, take care of elderly parents, you name it), whereas for others they might just really want to have a day to deal with everything else which is impossible over the weekend (like dentist, doctor, or just purely decompress).

PROS

So let’s talk about the pros. Overall, it’s the flexibility. It’s about allowing people to get the work done and work around their own personal needs (yes we are not robots) and making everyone to rethink about the current ways of working. Not everyone’s productivity peak is the same, some prefer to start earlier in the morning (like me), others prefer to work after dinner (my brain is long dead by then). Also to fit multiple geographies teams have to cover already a multitude of timezones, so I can see this helping a lot in such cases.

Honestely it should be about meeting goals, how you get there individually or with your team shouldn’t have to matter as much, as long as you fulfill them. Time-boxing our work might even force employees to cut the fat even further – yeah useless meeting without an agenda I’m looking at you – and just prioritizing anything which indeed drives value.

We’ve all been students, we know the hype, if you know you have a few days you won’t stress about it until it’s Friday afternoon and you have a deadline to meet. With less days you are telling your brain this needs to get done now or else you won’t meet your goals. That can be quite powerful.

The main pro for me really is flexibility works both ways. The employee gets flexibility and the companies will end up with more productivity per hour.

CONS

If the working from home has shown anything is that people will end up overworking and reaching burn out. The 4 days might end up becoming really long and 3 days might not feel enough to recover. Still I would be willing to try, anyway I’m pretty sure by the end of day 4 I have already done way more than 5 days, so at least cutting a full day of any useless meetings and emails would feel like holiday.

If not all employees take it, the ones that are “more visible” might end up getting better opportunities that those that don’t. And here’s the word might, as I know some people didn’t had such issues with a compressed work-week.

Additional idea

No meetings during certain times – We had this over summer period and I wish it could be kept forever. A rule of no meetings during at least 1 day to enable employees to focus on productive work. I would say other than a quick 15m scrum meeting in the morning there should be no meetings until after lunch.

Other good article here

Are you still relevant tomorrow?

When we were growing up, most of us wanted to have known jobs like doctor, lawyer, fireman, vet, you name it. But then as we grew up and started to work (and pay taxes), quite a lot of us found it difficult to explain to our parents what we do. I can’t explain to the kids nor my parents what I do. I think my daughter would define it as “my mum works on her computer.”

Even from when I started working until now there’s a lot of new roles that have popped up, namely in AI, data scientists, etc. I even have a friend who works with drones, not for playing (and those are fun too), but that’s his job and a few others that do “social media content”.

This week my husband called the insurance company and it took them a while to figure out which of the options allowed would describe his job.

The roles are moving faster than we do, we might need things we didn’t even know we needed – mobile phone and Alexa I’m looking at you – but now we can’t live without them.

So how do you stay relevant?

• Always learning – There’s no way around it, you have to keep an open mind and continuous learning. If in the past it was all about continuous improvement (and that remains relevant), continuous learning is even more relevant. You need to think not just on the skills required for your role and how to develop in your role, but any skills you might need tomorrow. How to find what’s relevant for you? Well look around to the new hires, which skills are they bringing? What do you think it’s missing in your company, in your industry? Allow time to dedicate to learning and it can be anything from getting a certification from just reading a book or shadowing a colleague that does a different role than yours
• Skills, Skills, Skills – As I wrote here in this space, it’s all about skills. Forget job titles and see yourself as a walking basket of skills. Some you already have and might be an expert at it, others you need to improve (part of the learning bucket), others you might want to drop because they might not be as relevant anymore or you simply might not like them at all. You need to continuously assess what’s relevant for you and which skills you should develop. With the relevant skills you can flex around what’s next for you role wise. The more skills you have, the more flexible you can be. It will always be a dancing game of being an expert at something – which in some specific areas you really need to be – versus being very flexible.

• Be open minded – I have worked with people in the past that believe just because they have more experience they know it all. If you are not willing to listen to those around you and accept new ideas, no matter how radical they seem – you won’t evolve and stay relevant. A new grad will give you a brand new perspective on the world, same as someone from a completely different industry than yours. Be open to different views.
• Surround yourself with people that inspire you – Most people think that they have to search for really senior people because they will help them grow in their careers. Whereas that might indeed work, I would say it’s even more relevant to surround yourself of people that inspire you for whatever reason, could be the receptionist that is an amazing painter in her free time, to someone who is really good at seeing patterns in data, anything that pushes your boundaries and inspires you to think differently and improve yourself. Diversity is the key to it all. If you only mingle with those that think the same way you do, you will never learn anything new.
• Be authentic – In a world full of automation and where most people end up trying to be the same as someone who is successful, are to be authentic and bring your true self in everything that you do.

Some relevant articles

• Careers of the future
• Cool future jobs
• Jobs on the rise
• Forbes: How automation will impact future job markets