Deloitte Digital Connect Programme — my experience

I was tasked with writing an end-of-programme reflection for the Deloitte Digital Connect programme — and I didn’t even know where to start!

As I also told my mentor, this has been such an intense but amazing learning experience, especially on something completely new to me. It definitely wasn’t a linear journey, with lots of starts, stops and jumps in between as I tried to navigate being Project Lead while simultaneously powering through my full-time responsibilities. But I’ve learnt a lot, and in the grand scheme of things that is what a journey like this is all about!

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Here are the top 3 things that I learnt during my DDC journey:

• Everything is not always as it seems — be open-minded. This was something that became evident to me after our user research. Some of our project hypotheses were indeed confirmed, and some completely new insights came up — but while we thought that the people-facing processes of our challenge were the issue, it turns out that the biggest area for improvement is the back-end processes. Needless to say, this shifted the focus of our entire project — but you have to be open to what the data is telling you in the first place.
• Cultivating your designer mindset. This is something that my mentor and I discussed in our most recent session. Having a designer mindset (which is essentially what we all have been doing — working with complex and multifaceted problems and reframing them into solutions through research) is such a useful part of any journey. I am already using so many of these skills and techniques in my full-time job.
• Slow and steady wins the race. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE ticking things off my to-do list quickly, but sometimes you need to trust the process and take your time, knowing that the deep work you are putting into something will pay off in the end. I used a lot of time-blocking to help me organise my time, but it’s important that you pick up techniques that work for you. Here is a fun & quick quiz for you to take — it comes up with a productivity method that matches your working style in the end!

Here are my top 3 tips if you are a new Project Lead embarking on the journey yourself:

• DDC Mentoring sessions. I love mentoring; I work for a mentoring charity and have been a mentor and mentee too. Your mentoring sessions are so valuable, so make sure you work with your mentor to make them useful for you. For me, sessions consisted of me sharing my work and progress with my mentor, and then we both came up with an action plan and next steps together. That way, I always left mentoring feeling calm and determined.
• Getting others involved. If you are part of a small team (or a small organisation) it can be really difficult to make sure that you are not the only one taking everything upon yourself. Engaging and involving your sponsors or other team members is not exactly a walk in the park (we’re all busy!), so I tried something different to try to get buy-in from colleagues. I put upcoming next steps on a timeline and asked everyone in the ideation session to pick up a heart and stick it next to the topic that they are the most interested in. That way, when the time comes I know who I can call on if I need support on that task, and they are more likely to be up for it since they have already logged their interest.

• Separating creativity from logic during brainstorming. I learnt this doing a free Linkedin course on problem-solving & decision-making (here it is if you want to check it out). Some of the frameworks in the training were too technical for the work that I do, however, the over-arching idea that we need to separate our creative, idea-generating brain from our logical, judging brain during a brainstorming session makes a lot of sense. By focusing solely on gathering ideas first, we empower people to give all of their unfiltered ideas and to not discourage anyone, we keep up the momentum & we allow people to let go of ownership of their ideas. Once all ideas are on the board, we can then switch our logical brain on, and begin judging, prioritising, grouping & organising those ideas. This principle really helped me when planning & delivering my ideation session!

Thank you to the CAST team, to Deloitte & to my mentor Lide for your invaluable guidance & support.

Onwards and upwards!