ADVENTURES OF A DELIVERY MANAGER — Week 3!
Hello World!
It’s the end of my third week here in HackIT and my third week as a real life Delivery Manager.
One of my favourite things in this world is to ‘Make Things Happen’… to unblock things, to transcend the seemingly insurmountable and to just get things moving.
This week, as my ‘newbie’ status begins to wane and my confidence has begun to expand, I’ve really enjoyed some moments of just going for it and pushing things forward at the same time as figuring them out.
When I was researching about the role of Delivery Manager and Scrum Master, one of the things I came across over and over again, in speaking to those in the know, was that great Delivery Managers were great at doing three things:
1) Working as a community and collectively overcoming obstacles.
2) Setting aside ego and asking for help (see point 1).
3) Just ‘being’ agile and having/following ‘instinct’ in their projects.
I remember being really encouraged by this when I was chatting to some of the industry leaders, as they described that the frameworks and techniques are learn-able… it’s the adaptable behaviours and sharp thinking that are the golden threads of great delivery.
I’ve been excited this week to start to stretch and get in to some flow around these behavioural pillars.
My fellow Delivery Managers and wider colleagues have been nothing short of AWESOME in taking time out to talk things through with me, run things past me and help me bridge cheeky little knowledge gaps that have helped me to grow a lot this week.
I’ve also found that the emotional honesty that I discussed last week has continued to serve me. But as I have found my footing more and felt increasingly comfortable to share in this way, I have observed with some delight, that in truth, emotional honesty is in abundance here.
This week I revealed at our weekly Delivery get together that sometimes there was an element of “winging it” and that I felt mildly guilty about it. The group burst in to fits of giggles and alluded to that being an unwritten part of the job description.
As I confessed this thought more and more, to wider and wider groups of people I thought the most common response would be ‘don’t worry’ or ‘you’ll find your feet’. However, it turned out the most common response was… ME TOO!
Now I need to add a caveat here — HackIT is not a reckless bunch of novices just having a crack at ICT… far from it. Actually, it’s a hugely competent group of people who are highly skilled people, in the right positions doing the right jobs. But it IS a team where there is a deep and highly embedded culture of personal expansion and doing over thinking… it’s in the HackIT manifesto after all.
People are very self aware and willing to do what needs to be done.
As I have felt more emboldened, I have said yes more and also followed my instincts in ever growing degree, whilst listening carefully to my mentors and seeking feedback from every angle and person that’s prepared to give it.
My favourite two activities this week were helping to film some segments for a video to be used to promote the HackIT manifesto and creating a gladiator pit style discussion to thrash out some ambiguous use of terminology.
The video task…
This was ‘winging it’ to the max.
Someone needed help… I had time… The worst that could happen was that they didn’t like the video and had to re-shoot it. So I volunteered and was very clear in telling the Henry, our Head of platform that had the capacity to could help, but I’d be making it up as I went along.
To my amusement, the first thing Henry said to everyone at the start of the session was ‘we’re winging this’…
I had a right chuckle inside and felt safe to give it my best shot. Turns out the amateur stuff I’ve had a go at myself in the past and sought feedback on was actually quite useful and I think we’ve produced something quite usable.
The second was the gladiator pit…
I’ve been to many a long meeting that has been entirely lost to trying to achieve a meeting of minds on terms, actually days… weeks in fact. That wasn’t a possibility that could even be entertained, so I set up a gladiator pit.
It’s rather like in the films, when there are two people left in the pit to fight. Then all of a sudden some random monster is introduced and the two fighters instead of fighting each other, find that it’s far more in their interest to set aside whatever differences they’ve got going on and defeat the greater threat.
Two minds (the fighters), several terms (the monster)… 20 minutes or the gates are locked forever!
We put a large timer counting down in the middle of the table, the terms that needed to be settled on and we agreed that we could ‘release perfection’ when coming to an agreement on the ‘MVP’ of said term. A definition we can basically agree on, that will just get us going for now/defeat the monster.
(I mean, when you’re in a gladiator pit fighting a fire breathing, three headed thingamy-bob, who care’s what style of swordsmanship you’re using).
With the countdown timer going and no option to leave or get to the end having not done it (do or die), everyone in the space was absolutely committed to powerfully reaching an agreement or at least the ‘MVP’ around the terms.
We pushed through it and as we ticked off the first term, a rhythm began to form and each success accelerated the next.
We finished the meeting with 01:52 left on the clock.
We’ve now moved on to ‘doing’.
In summary, I’ve LOVED my third week here in HackIT.
It’s an autonomous self managing culture and I have licence to work from home should I choose to do so… but the thing is, I love coming in to office!
I love the feel of the office, the people that are here and the things I get to do.
There’s a phrase I saw in ICT once… it was, “Digital Solutions that are so good that people prefer to use them”…
I feel an inclination to translate that in to how I feel about the office culture here at Hackit… “An office culture that is so good, that I prefer to be here”.
Next week, I’m running some workshops… I’m a bit nervous, but a bit excited at the same time and I’m looking forward to reporting back on how they go.
That’s it for this week folks…
Over and out!
Ian
