3 lenses for successfully landing in your new digital role

Andy Britcliffe | Chief Digital Officer at Purplebricks

One of the biggest challenges of starting a new role is understanding the “as is” of the business, getting the lay of the land. This is priority number one for onboarding as building the right context as quickly as possible allows you to make a bigger impact, faster, which is a win-win in anyone’s book.

#1. Product

What I am trying to understand here is the foundations I will be working with. First off, is there a documented Product & Technology strategy? This will give you a good sense into the maturity of the organisation and also the current direction of travel. Within product, the things I am trying to understand are what the product development process is like, how product is structured, and how they think about product discovery, as well as how they use data. All these give you a strong sense of how Product orientated the business is. For example, are you seeing Feature Teams or Product Teams?

#2. Technology

Within technology, you should be evaluating the software lifecycle, how easy (or hard) is it for the teams to ship software? How often do releases happen? Is there adequate documentation? How is testing looked at? What are the current architectural challenges being faced? How much is cloud based technology? Is there good tooling in place? The aim is to understand the quality of both the product & technology approach. And if you can get answers to these questions, you can better adapt yourself to improve what is not where it should be, and effectively make use of what is in a good place.

#3. Process

The third piece of the puzzle is to look at the overall process. Here, you’re understanding how the mission and strategy of the business gets converted into outcomes to be achieved. The questions here are around how the business strategy gets communicated. How do teams align around objectives? What mechanism is there to define and measure outcomes? Does the business use a framework or methodology to drive strategic alignment like OKRs, management by objectives, or something else? Is the business agile (notice the small a) and does the business do Agile? (And what’s the difference?) If so, what Agile methodology does the business use? Clear alignment coupled with a focused product delivery engine is a must within a digital business. However, it’s not easy to achieve — and the above questions help you uncover where the business is on that journey.

In practice

Having used the above 3 lenses, I can say they have been extremely useful for me in understanding the current “as is” at Purplebricks. They have subsequently allowed me to gain the context I needed quickly, in order to start to work with the teams on how we aim to double down on what we’re doing well, and get better at things we know we can do better. We’re working hard to re-align ourselves around a clear and transparent product roadmap, giving autonomy and accountability to our teams to achieve desired strategic outcomes, and focusing on shipping software early and often and making sure we’ve all got the right tools for the job. It is hugely exciting to join the business and see how motivated the Digital team are on making a positive difference for our customers and our Local Property Experts in the home moving process. If you’re interested in putting the 3 lenses to practice and you’re looking for your next challenge, why not take a look at our current vacancies? We’re hiring for a number of great roles within our Digital team, one of which might be perfect for your next move.