Stardate S01E06

Mood: 🙊. Listening more than speaking, collaborating more than driving my own work. Can’t tell if I’m ahead or behind. But, cautiously optimistic about the week ahead.

Looking out from Pimlico Gardens in the twilight hour. Love the late sunsets we get during the summer

🌹 What am I grateful for this week?

Our project team’s gotten through a lot this past week, which really showed through on the weekly showcase. Across prototyping processes, technical infrastructure, and our understanding of the overall service boundaries, we’re getting into the thick of alpha now. It won’t be long before our backlog is ready to go and we’re transitioning into beta delivery next!

So all we need to do now is build the thing, right?

I’m also a bit relieved after watching back my talk on putting agile into practice — turns out I wasn’t as crazy on the um’s as I worried last week. But I did feel a little more prepared for that one than the Meetup. Better knowing my presentation is probably another key to helping me slow myself down.

As well, I was pleasantly surprised to see an event I did last year featured as part of our latest Badger newsletter. Brad’s recent post about stoicism also got picked up, which I’m happy to see introduced to that audience; something a bit different to expand the mind is always welcome.

🌵 Where did I get stuck this week?

It must have been the lack of sunshine — I ran out of steam on Wednesday. I couldn’t get into the CogX streams I’d hoped to, which is a shame, although catching a few of the talks from Mariana Mazzucato and Hannah Fry were insightful. At least the recordings will be up, as I’d like to check out Abadesi Osunsade’s panel and Azeem Azhar’s interview of Tom Glocer at some point.

This is also the second week I’ve made negligible progress on a new Mission Beyond post. But I realized after chatting with Harri* on Friday why I wasn’t able to get that writing done during the week. Quite simply, I spent too much time reviewing others’ content instead. I know new content is a small piece of the puzzle and I’m not the only one working towards it, but I’m nervous that we’re underestimating the amount of active investment it will require to maintain the momentum of the community, following our launch event.

💡 What stuck with me this week?

A lot of internal discussions about diversity & inclusion taking place — what we should or have been doing, saying, have done, or need to get to next. Having recently finished Matt Syed’s book, I’ve had diversity science in the back of my mind as the discussion unfolded. Both applying the lenses of demographic diversity and cognitive diversity**, as well as the meta-point of how hierarchical structures can facilitating or stifle discussion of new ideas. And in uncertain and complex situations (like companies find themselves in these days), the learning is that we’re much better served by finding our collective blind spots before we act unilaterally. Seeking diversity — both the kind you can see, and the kind you can’t — is an excellent starting point for addressing those blind spots.

As a team, always consider what viewpoints might be missing from the table. Seek them out.

Speaking of teams and groups, there was an old gem that came to mind following a visioning workshop with a different group. Interestingly, we seemed to be articulating a vision to become a team, rather than a group — often we lack a shared goal despite having a bunch of shared values. As far as visions go, I’m optimistic that we can get there in time, but it helps to know where we’re starting from and not confuse our current state with the desired end state.

If you don’t depend on the people around you to be successful, you’re probably in a group, not a team.

📚 What did I discover this week?

Great read on brand authenticity and looking in the mirror that Mara shared around this week. Before you speak out it’s important to remember what you stand for.

If 'Black Lives Matter' to brands, where are your black board members?

Another compelling read, here from an ex-Facebook employee, appealing to the company to reclaim its moral authority. Debatable whether or not it had it to lose, but I love his conclusion about the price of leadership and needing to pay it when it’s due.

How Facebook Can Fix Itself

I still fondly remember working at the MEST incubator back in 2015, and enjoyed their recent post on mentoring. Mentorship has been on my mind again lately — both the giving and receiving — and how it intersects but occupies a different space than coaching and management. Unlike the other two, I can see really see how much of mentoring hinges on the receiver clearly knowing (and articulating) what they want or need. And the giver being there primarily to impart their experience***. They’ve done a good job at capturing this below.

Building successful mentoring relationships

I always love coming across designs that seem so obvious, you wonder why they aren’t ubiquitous yet. Good reminder that opportunities abound for applying design thinking in our lives.

Small, But Thoughtful: The Power of Naive Optimism

🌱 What am I looking forward to next week?

Mission Beyond launches on Thursday to the wider community! Final rehearsals until then, and I’m hoping Mara and I can manage to run the webinar and Q&A smoothly 🤞.

By this time next week I should also be in Geneva****, and helping Lisa to finish her move back to London. I’m a bit apprehensive about flying in the midst of the pandemic but will take the usual precautions — airports and airplanes otherwise still work how we remember, right? It’s funny how the nerves can set in when you’re out of practice with something, though!

🏠 AOB

Proud of these little monsters we made on Wednesday night — homemade buns really take a burger to the next level.

I’ll have to fend for myself next week though now that Lisa’s back in Geneva. I’m going to miss constantly barging in to her ‘office’ at the worst possible time and being rebuffed with her favorite question “is it urgent?” 😆

I would make a rubbish secretary.

*Harri also taught me a wonderful Brit-ism this week. Tickety-boo (adj.): in good order, fine. I will file this with my precious learnings from Zed around appropriate usage of buff vs. hench vs. dench.

**As a tangent, this also reminded me of how McKinsey is famously obsessed with MBTI profiles. If they had more scientific validity they could be an interesting way to gauge an aspect of group cognitive diversity. I’m not sure how the scientific community assesses it, but how individuals in a group cope with stress seems like a very relevant dimension to consider these days well.

***Imparting, in this case, by suggestion, rather than by telling what to do (teacher). With less of an emphasis on drawing out and reflecting back (coach). But letting them set the outcome rather than you (manager).

****Perhaps this could have gone in the main section, but I’m still grateful for my good timing and privilege to be able to snowboard at Chamonix earlier this year. It was pretty much the last weekend before lockdown ended the ski season — we couldn’t have cut it any closer!