From the Archives: 2 Years of Ways of Working!
Hello! Ways of Working turns 2 today so I wanted to thank you all for joining me along the way. I started this newsletter to explore ideas on how to make working life a bit better, by helping teams work more effectively together, and by helping individuals figure out what makes work work for them. Hopefully it’s helped you in some way.
Similar to year 1, I’ve recapped snippets from last year’s posts below. ICYI the top 3 most popular posts from that time were:
I hope you enjoy the recap. I’m always open to suggestions and feedback so get in touch! Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy the newsletter please share. :)
Until next month,
Jo
Goals & Planning
On Goal Setting: When drafting goals we have an opportunity not only to set the direction of the organisation but to create a virtuous circle of positive momentum.
On Company Maturity: Examining performance through a maturity lens helps identify opportunities and issues given the state of that particular team/product/market etc, without it being tainted by the expectations of the overall company stage.
On Productivity Tools: Productivity is treated as an engineering query to be solved, with a binary and technical solution. This is rarely the case. When people are involved in an output, human-nature always plays a role in the delivery.
On Estimation and Execution: When it comes to estimation and execution, both in my personal and work life, I’ve found a few factors to be generally true: a task can usually be completed in much less time, an outcome will usually take longer than anticipated to achieve, expectations and environment have an outsized impact on the above points.
On Avoidance: Ignoring the elephant in the room creates work. More time, money and energy can be expended trying to work around the issue being avoided, rather than tackling the issue head on.
Company Culture
On Building a User-Centric Culture: Ensuring there is a user-centric philosophy across the org is the responsibility of the most senior leaders. User-centricity can easily be trickled down in team culture. It is near impossible to push it upwards if it doesn't already exist there.
Learning from Product Led Growth: The embedded culture of experimentation and the high frequency of iterations helps avoid analysis paralysis or perfectionism which plagues many organisations, preventing them from taking timely action. If a test fails, you try again. Failure is part of the course. Learning is extracted from it and improved upon for the next attempt.
On Company Culture: Once the…[culture]…has infected us, we become strengthened or weakened by it. If you’re working full time, it’s likely you spend over a third of your weekly waking hours working. That figure is a lot higher if you account for the hours spent thinking about work also. That is enough time to shape who you are and impact what you’re capable of.
On Fairness: Organisations tend to have policies and processes in place which aim to ensure employees are treated fairly…Well-intentioned procedures, while important and necessary, cannot completely mitigate the fact that no workplace is a meritocracy.
On Women in Tech: Tech as an industry has its faults but overall I’m bullish on its ability to positively impact the world. For everyone to benefit from that impact we need to ensure all sections of society are represented at the decision making table.
On Talent Being Wasted: It never fails to amaze me how frequently companies make it difficult for the people they’ve hired to just get their work done. It also never fails to amaze me how frequently companies lose their most ambitious, highest performing team members due to factors that are mostly within their control. These factors tend to surface at the intersection of company culture and process.
Strategy & Operations
On Strategy: Not enough input from the business leads to strategies being fantasies which fall apart when they come into contact with reality. Too much input, and strategies become a multitude of compromises lacking a decisive approach.
On Operations: It can be difficult to quantify the value of operations (including people and culture related activities) running smoothly, without having a baseline of “bad times” to compare it against. This makes Ops a prime target for metric driven layoffs. It costs to have Operations and it costs not to have Operations. Consider the tradeoffs you’re making.
On Process: Our personal relationship with process can impact how we conduct our work, and how we interact with others. Both factors contribute to, and are illustrative of, the culture we operate in.
On Over-Hiring: Sometimes companies build org structures around problematic individuals rather than dealing with them directly…This leads to over-hiring as additional roles are filled to compensate for the person’s weaknesses. This can lead to multiple people carrying out the same role.
Careers & Development
On Career Decisions: Values are inescapably intertwined with our careers. Even if you are someone who has chosen not to actively cultivate a career, that choice itself is a demonstration of your values.
On Paradoxes: Some of the smartest people I’ve ever met were terrible at their jobs…Being competent at work isn’t just about knowing. It’s about being able to get the thing done and being able to work with or lead others to the outcome.
On Labels: Knowing that we as people constantly change and have the capacity to adapt and learn, it seems foolish, and a disservice to ourselves to accept labels given by personality tests, job titles (especially those we have failed to achieve), feedback etc as permanent definitions. They are at best a snapshot of a part of you at a specific moment in time.
On Bad Managers: Bad managers tend to either have limited organisational influence or else use their organisational influence for ill gains…It may not be your manager’s fault that they have limited influence, however, it does limit how effective a manager they can be.
On Unhappy Jobs: I know many people who linger with the effects of a bad work environment years after having left it. You cannot change the effect of a poison but its continuous presence can change you into something you don’t want to become.
On Bias to Action: You need to decide if you want the situation to change, and if you’re willing to sacrifice energy to try to change it. Selective inaction is fine. Learned helplessness, however, can be a career and confidence killer. Ensure you’re choosing the former.
On Regrets: Regrets can act as guides, pointing to our values, desires and dreams, even if we don’t know or acknowledge these in everyday life.
On Steve Jobs: There’s a certain bravery in abandoning the status quo to live the exact life you want. Those who have found their thing - their purpose - experience a connection to life that is visible to those around them. Unreplicable without discovering your own unique blend of it.