Gatecrashing: Or rather, exploring other domains outside your own
A chance twitter conversation on jurisprudence reminded me to unashamedly re-purpose a Pulse
As good a chuckle as it was yesterday, Neil Hughes found himself in a surprise lecture about jurisprudence. I’d love to know how he came to be there, so if you’re about Neil, let us know whether it was encouragement or you were on a metaphorical express train going in the wrong direction. As a techie in a non-legal context, sore thumb may spring to mind. However, that isn’t the way I always see it any more and often gatecrash other events to learn something about them.
Seeing Mistakes as a Point to Learn
In the past, I’ve done a lot of standing up and admitting to what some consider faults. Having been someone who at one point used to consider them faults myself, I pretty much changed tack completely about 14 years ago since in reality, there wasn’t really any correlation between those ‘faults’ and performance in the office. Indeed, in some cases, those ‘faults’ were actually highly productive.
Indeed, some of those happen to have become mainstream ways of working, especially in tech. Breaking down silos and barriers to collaboration in the workplace is being continually encouraged by organisations across the world. It improves a host of things, not least the efficacy by which an organisation can deliver change, work items and crucially, value. If the team need something doing, I’d go and find the person to do it, not his manager or my manager, unless I needed to force an escalation, which more often than not wasn’t necessary. I gatecrashed and banked favours that way.
Given my ex-throwing athlete build and sometimes brusque manner, some folk instantly get worried, especially when combined with another thing some might consider a fault, not always wearing a suit (Have you ever tried to find a suit that fits my shape? Finding hens teeth is an easier, less time consuming and cheaper task), but there are reasons I gatecrash and most of the time that’s the education of myself or others.
There is a Whole Other World Out there!
The IT world can often be guilty of thinking the world revolves around it and it’s ability to solve problems. The truth is that a host of other industries have come across our conceptual challenges before. Indeed, some more analytical subjects laugh at us for our inability to solve problems they take for granted day in, day out. After all, agile development didn’t just appear, it has roots in the Toyota Production System. Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks weren’t created from thin air, they are part of a school of computing called BIMPA (Biologically Inspired Massively Parallel Architectures) and of course, computing itself is rooted in a branch of mathematics.
It’s also useful to step out of your comfort zone and do things you otherwise wouldn’t do. Sometimes that requires some bravery and eventually stepping outside your comfort zone becomes second nature but the rewards in experience and indeed sometimes validation can be huge. Other times they are a disaster, but I’ve generally found the former outweighs the latter by a very significant margin! I’ve never walked out of an event outside my industry not having learned something about the topic, the people, the networking, myself, my industry, the venue or anything else.
Constructing Excellence: Preparing for the Tender Interview
So I took my build and smart-casual appearance outside my comfort zone to a place I thought I might fit in better and learn something about another industry that I wouldn’t normally find myself in. A construction industry event about tender interviews.
The presentation was given by Katy Harris, Associate Director of Project_5 Consulting at The Escalator on Deansgate in Manchester City Centre. There wasn’t really much that was new to me on the ITT response side, since I’ve done a good few of those in my time and indeed I’ve prepped for tender interviews, but the bit I learned from this is how to stop dragging my knuckles on the floor and how to engage the tender panel.
Community & Conference Talks Aren’t Enough
I’ve done a few talks in my career though I am not normally comfortable speaking in public, so stopped doing them well over a decade ago. I accidentally fell into one at Lean-Agile Manchester last year, another at Manchester TechNights and was drafted on to the expert panel as the token thug earlier this year ;) There are a few more in the pipeline this year too, which I’m proud to be presenting at to be honest, since I really enjoy the community topics. If you’ve been to one of my talks, I hope it was engaging, entertaining and informative. Feel free to tip the doorman on the way in.
I have a very informal manner when speaking. Like to engage the audience in the discussion, make a tonne of jokes (even if I am the only person laughing at them) and particularly like to involve the audience. This isn’t the sort of thing that flies in tender interviews. Talking to the panel requires a very conscious effort on the part of the speaker to be aware of their won body language, the body language of the panel and their facial expressions as forms of feedback. It also requires tender participants to be mindful of their speed and tone which in my case means:
Stop trying to cram a 60 minute talk into a lightening talk space of 10 (even though that’s my normal rate of speech),
Stop using jargon (err… who me?)
Stop waltzing up and down the stage (even for this part of the performance? Wait, I’m not on a stage!)
Open your stance and use your hands effectively (do you realise how much effort it takes to lift these knuckles off the floor?)
Body language is very important for the folk who who don’t know you. They get a first impression from a host of channels (including this post) and it’s no secret that it can be hard to shift the mindset in a lot of case, however wrong that impression may be (though oddly, even though I’ve not consciously made any effort to change this when it’s happened, I’ve never had a problem with this, since I may come across one way on CV and interview, but apparently then get into the office and it’s a deeper and broader level of capability that the client gets from what they recruited for).
Add to this the biasing that exists in the form of informal ‘character profiles’ people have of people with either my skills or my build (but not both) and I am naturally a walking dichotomy. Hey, I’ve broken moulds all my life, I’m used to it.
Striking Similarities
The other interesting thing was how similar the construction and software industries are. The parallels drawn between the two are long standing. However, a report in recent years concluded that 40% of construction projects are waste. From management research 40% of what goes on in an office environment is waste. That doesn’t surprise me though. Indeed, this formed part of my lightening talk towards the end of last year. Chances are it will be in almost all organisations with a classical organogram structure and where work follows operational lines as opposed to value chains.
Conclusion
Gatecrashing is not always a bad thing (as long as walking into the house is welcome — e.g. via an invite. Otherwise it’s trespassing or worse, breaking and entering and I’m not posting bail for either of those!).
Do it to learn something or get feedback on your approach to networking, get to know venues; subject matter you otherwise wouldn’t experience; different applications of common patterns and principles; get inspiration from how other industries have solved problems (including those the IT industry is currently fighting against) and perhaps, see new venues you might want to use. Alternatively, just go to find out how big markets are or whether there is an opportunity to disrupt them.
It’s not always easy to be clear on what you hope to gain from the experience. But do some prep on who you hope to meet, what you hope to gain (after all, if you’ve never been there before, you’ll definitely get a new venue out of the experience) and put your name out there. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
…Aside from landing you in jail if you do it wrong!
This article first appeared on LinkedIn in 2015, before, well, it became sh*t and I and others were subjected to racist abuse on the platform after the Brexit vote. Despite reporting several incidents, LinkedIn as usual, did nothing to handle nor counter that, nor the misogynistic treatment women experienced on the platform either. As a point of ethics, I won’t use that platform until I’m satisfied it’s mended its ways under Microsoft’s control. I haven’t seen that yet. If you consider there is a world bigger than your own and you share the same ethical mindset, feel free get in touch as I’d love to hear from you. If not, that’s OK, I don’t have to deal with you.
