How to say goodbye & welcome the firehose.
(or, what’s it like when you join a new team)
Cat’s out of the bag. I’ve joined a new team at IBM. After spending nearly the last two years working on various cognitive developer experiences within Watson Core, I needed a change, which has taken me to the world of Watson Health, where I will be focusing on Empowering Heroes, by Transforming Health through the usage of cognitive technologies in the healthcare field (where necessary).
Naturally, joining a new team has it’s own series of challenges, so I will detail a few of these challenges I’ve come across in the last three weeks, and how I’ve overcome them.
- Handling the loose ends. Figure out how to pass the work off in a way that doesn’t harm, and how to say goodbye.
- Learn “the truth” about your new project. Doing research before you commit, and learn the good & the bad.
- How to survive Weeks 1 and 2. Going with the flow, mutual respect, and explore your possibilities.
Handling the loose ends.
It’s difficult when you make the choice to leave. My personal preference is to provide 2 weeks or more, along with the message that I’m willing to do what I can to ensure a smooth transition. As someone who leads design teams at IBM, I tend to be an information broker, a connector of people, and the gatekeeper to all things design. To help with this transition, I created a “year in review” document of everything Design did to affect the project, so that the new lead would know of the user research completed, the concept cars produced, and the social interactions with our expanded team.
I also worked with my manager to know who was taking over the project with me, and met with her personally several times to ensure she had the right meetings, Github repos, Slack channels, and Aha! access in place, as my role involved more strategy & project management than day to day design.
Having this system in place made that part of saying goodbye relatively easy. The harder part was letting my team know.
I believe that it is vital to leave a lasting mark on the team. They’ve supported you throughout the project, and the only thing that made sense to me was to reciprocate the same level of respect. I wrote a letter detailing the accomplishments we had together for the last two years, and when you look back, the sense of scale is immense. I thanked them all (and received over 50% response rate!). You should too.
Learn “the truth” about your new project.
Time and time again in IBM, I’ve heard criticism about folks who “look for greener pastures”, only to be let down by the system. As a designer with over a decade in the field, I know that “greener pastures” are entirely subjective. In fact, if you leave a position because you’re unhappy, you might just end up unhappy in your new position, because it wasn’t the position that was the issue, rather the way you handle situations.
So, I interviewed everyone I would work with in the local design team, including my new local manager, her director, and my new colleagues. The results were interesting. The designers who are newer to the team are a little starstruck, and have that Honeymoon phase going strong, which is nice to see. The more seasoned designers have a sense of cautious optimism, which is also good, because they represent a dose of reality to the project. They’ve had both good & bad days, and have learned from both.
The management represented hope to me. Good managers are cognizant of what is going well & what isn’t, and are actively working to help mitigate challenges. My direct chain has a plan and a vision, and she is an “empathy first” sort of leader. This instilled the confidence in me to move forward with my choice to join.
Will there be bad days? Of course there will be! I wouldn’t be fair to myself if I thought there wouldn’t be. And besides, there will be more good days than bad. Be realistic about the situation you’re walking into. You’ll be happier.
How to survive Weeks 1 and 2
First of all, learn to love the firehose. I’ve been handed so much information about our people, HIPAA, and the core offerings of Watson Health, along with every new acronym you can think of, and to be honest, it can leave you a little bloated and dizzy.
The best way to handle the firehose is to realize that you cannot absorb all of the possible information. It’s not possible. Just stop. Instead, rely on your colleagues, as they will fill your gaps, and correct you when necessary.
I look around and recognize that I’m lucky enough to have a small team (4!), some of whom I’ve collaborated with in the past, and each of us is on equal footing, and can bring our own skills to the table. By maintaining a horizontal system, we look at each other as peers who can inform and help each other, whether it’s taking time to explain the point of the RFP, provide feedback on UX wireframes, or help tweak visual design. In return, I’ve learned about some of our offerings, the ecosystem around our various design teams, and the history of our particular team, which naturally has it’s ups and downs.
I also have a manager who I’ve admired from afar, for her ability to energize teams, advocate for design, and be firm, yet understanding. She brings a sense of control into my practice that I haven’t felt since being under the tutelage of Debbie Millman.
2 weeks in, I had successfully collaborated with our sellers to fulfill an RFP for an exciting new client, with the promise of more work if we get into Round 2. And now I’m focused on exploring the ecosystem of offerings within Health, because when you scale up an organization, it is vital to pay attention to the rationale behind the offerings, because there will be opportunities to converge efforts, and if someone doesn’t find those moments, you end up making a lot of similar products that solve similar solutions.
The way we perceive Design Thinking in IBM is through the process of observation, reflection, and creation, which has certainly helped me understand the conclusion of my previous position and the possibilities of this new one. I hope that you gained something from my experience, and apply it to your practice too.
