Stardate S02E15

Mood: 👨‍🍳. Keeping the orders line moving.

Jogging past Gabriel’s Wharf on a clear Sunday

🌹 What am I grateful for this week?

Quite a lot of content deliverables came due this week — supporting workshops, the team, partnership and sales conversations. I had my bouts of productive procrastination throughout the week, yes, but I’m happy to have stayed on top of it all and not left anyone hanging.

We’ve revitalized the Mission Beyond blog with three new posts in the meantime, kicking off what I hope will become a regular look behind the scenes of Talent Compass. And I noticed that writing more regularly through these weeknotes helped me when it came time to penning a post — the words just seemed to come faster! I’d hoped this would be the case some time ago; let’s see what happens when I dig into longer-form content next.

Hello! 👋 We’re the Talent Compass team

🍀 What surprised me this week?

I had a clash for our retrospective on Wednesday, but had a chance to catch up on the outputs later that day and was struck by how the team was craving alignment on the end state for our ‘rehearse’ phase. It’s a good reminder that our ears can be finely attuned to everyone’s expectations of us, and if any mixed messages come across the stakeholder group, I shouldn’t expect them to resolve on their own — that’s part of the clarity I’m here to provide. And really, I’m just glad everyone’s so invested in doing a great job.

🌵 What do I wish could have gone differently?

I suppose I should’ve known better about trying to rush to an outcome with the first of our workshops. We weren’t ready as a team, but I didn’t take the call to postpone, thinking that it would invite an opportunity for reflection depending on how it went. I’m realizing that this may have instead set a thorny precedent — if we’re asked to a similar high-impact workshop in a pinch, will we be doing so with our backs against the wall again?

The other trick here is to weigh what’s worse: a displeased stakeholder having spent their time, versus a displeased stakeholder not having spent their time. Postponing is definitely the latter camp. Just because we got a bit lucky this time around doesn’t mean I should leave so much to chance again next time.

🔮 What do I still need to take care of?

Still have at least two more of those high-impact workshops on the docket next week 🙃. We did the necessary prep for one of them ahead of time, though, so that’s a good start. I’m feeling the tickle of a breeze before the winds of change sweep through once more.

💡 What do I need to remember?

I’m not sure who I picked it up from, but I often catch myself saying “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” when counseling others. The Cult of Done taught me similarly back in the day:

Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.

And yet, lately I’ve done the opposite, and let the perfect become the enemy of the good in a strange way at home. I noticed there’s not enough music in my life these days. And why? My own collection is too disorganized to easily pick what I want to match my mood; because of that sunk cost I’ve been reticent to embrace Spotify; YouTube’s mixes often veer in strange directions; old school radio has ads to contend with. Plenty of bad reasons I’ve worked up in my head to require a perfect listening experience, and the result? Quiet nights when I could otherwise be enjoying some tunes, that would be better than nothing.

Right, for posterity then:

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

📚 What did I discover?

“People don’t have short attention spans, they have short consideration spans.” Lots of great landing page theory here (although it really is driving us towards a monoculture for company websites… I suppose it’s one of those cases where it’s hard to argue with the results).

Growth Handbook: How to write landing pages

Sam had a fun idea for our latest team gathering: play “Where’s Waldo?” together on screenshare. Turns out there’s a wickedly smart version of this that also illustrates the imbalance of gender representation in STEM. You could have a go and learn something at the same time…!

These clever Where's Wally-style illustrations highlight the lack of women in science and tech

If you’ve ever wanted to peel back that classic “9 in 10 startups fail” soundbite, this is the post for you. The further along the venture is in its lifecycle (as measured through funding rounds), the more likely it is to succeed. Another case of averages failing to tell the whole story.

Dissecting startup failure rates by stage

A few of us dipped into /r/startups this week for inspiration for Talent Compass, and a good nugget came up around customer problem stack ranking. Simple trick for product people who are already familiar with something like JTBD: don’t rank the jobs yourself, get your customer to!

Lastly, think ghost races. The only person you need to lap is your previous self:

Simple is forever cool and taking a few slow but deliberate steps each day will help you win the only race that matters — your own.

Lasting Success Comes to Those Who Own Their Pace

🏠 AOB

A confession: I’ve not been to a dentist since I left the US, nearly seven years ago. Lisa loves to remind me of this, but to her credit, she helped me book a visit with a local dentist here and I’m happy to report that having finally seen one, I miraculously have a clean oral bill of health. Guess flossing works? 😄

If we go back a few more years, a great memory popped up in my camera roll this week of the Office 2010 ship party. See if you can spot younger me in the back row, with a load of other SharePoint colleagues in front of building 16.