Weeknotes S1E7
Tuesday — discretionary effort increases in a culture of kindness, say it with me, discretionary effort *increases* in a culture of kindness. Say it loud, say it proud. Why am I sounding like a Fridge Magnet Philosopher, a Meme’tastic Miyagi? Because the underlying strength of Agile, and “digital” is 100% on user needs, and the needs of the teams, and therefore, fails if you don’t treat people well.
However, there is only so much you can control yourself when you are responsible for a team, be it your own or a matrix set up. To truly fly it requires top down belief in the benefits of digital to create the ideal working environment, *backed up with* policies and resources. You can’t just tell people to use 0365, or tell everyone “we’re Lean” and expect it to work, you have to invest in the right technology, take a flexible approach and experiment with hiring and retention processes, speak (with actual words) to your people about their wants and needs, and also speak with the kinds of people you want to hire. The benefits are manifold, and so even if you can’t afford the kinds of salaries that are paid in the private sector you become an employer who has their pick of the best candidates.
I say all this because every item of research I have come across around embedding digital ways of working leads back to “just treat people right, by looking at their lives, how they live their lives now, and stop trying to shoehorn them into an old skool ways of working and thinking”. Amen.
Wednesday — our Training Products team have been revisiting their thinking around what classrooms of the future should look like. It’s really quite excited looking at the possibilities, not least because it’s based on an explosion in the kind of data we can look at about people’s preferences and learning styles. It’s not just driven by the fact that digitising delivery creates efficiencies and cost savings, but because you can actually deliver a much better learning experience. The team has been running a number of tech taster days, so the rest of the week will mostly be spent reviewing that info and feeding back in — they need all the support we can provide if they’re to resource this work appropriately.
Friday — the longest short week I’ve had in a while, it has to be said, but a fair amount of it was thankfully spent on really interesting things, with great potential: the learning products tech taster has been fascinating to dive back into, and a charity digital meet up was hilariously good for the soul in these current challenging times, we swapped some amazing stories, learnt a bit and gossiped a lot. And remotely not work related, a half day treat to make up for a birthday disaster was a lunch at SushiSamba that ended up ridiculously expensive but pure joy at 570-something feet :)