Week Notes S1 E4: It’s all about culture St*pid (Except when it’s not)
Originally published on Medium on August 13, 2018.
Holy crap, almost Sabbatical time edition
A couple of weeks of note writing missed unfortunately; primarily down to the sudden realisation that I’m leaving for South America in a little over a months time and hadn’t started any research or planning as yet!
So with a few weeks left, what is there left to do? Not much on my primary engagement luckily, with wind down and handover well in affect. I actually find under-work more stressful than over-work, so have struggled a little with braking from 100mph delivery to 30mph toddling.
Talk more, smile less?
Yet it’s allowed me time for some interesting conversations and side-engagements. For one; planning the first of a series of hackathons on improving the relationships, processes and handovers (hangovers?) between engineering and operations.
Whilst part of the business has made the jump to DevOps; most of the ‘corporate’ functions are wedded to the old school ‘throw it over the wall’ culture, with all the problems of consistency, quality and communication this entails. We’ll be running some off-site sessions in the next few weeks to bring the teams together and kickstart their journey towards a more cohesive relationship (I hope).
The interesting thing for me is the difference in culture between the culture of the ‘corporate’ teams and that of the ‘mission focussed’ teams. My hypothesis is that the closeer working relationships with the ‘mission’ teams focuses delivery on the value provided to these teams and hence the public. This contrasts to the corporate teams which sit multiple levels down (both figuratively and physically) from the mission teams, without regular contact to the ‘sharp end’ of the business.
This disconnect I think leads to a lack of a common idea of who the ‘customer’ they’re providing value too is and hence an understanding of what that means to the users. Which in-turn drives some poor behaviours around ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ tribes and promotes political wrangling over priorities, budgets and resources which add overhead and sub-optimal decision making.
Leaning Away
My other side project of recent weeks has been considering how we can be more consistent in procuring the wide range of hardware used throughout the business. Whether the breadth of hardware is still required is a question in itself, although approaching that question is tricky given their prevalence.
It’s given me the opportunity to go back to the core philosophy of agile of old coming out of Japanese manufacturing over 50 years ago in the form of ‘Lean Manufacturing’, involving lots of fun conversations with process engineer friends outside of the business and education pieces with Tech focused teams whose default response has been ‘How can you apply agile to building real stuff??’.
Early days, but I think we’re going to be green-lightening some end to end value mapping soon and hence I hope upping the transparency between end users – design – manufacturing – QA – support – end users will have some positive effect
#LondonCulture
Not a great couple of weeks for culture; but I did manage to get away to an awesome Jimmy Hendrix revival at the amazing Blues bar in Brixton (The ribs are to die for) and a sweat fest of a Hilltop Hoods Gig in Camden which has been on my to-do list for a long time.
Oh, and I tried Ultimate Frisbee for the first time; I’ve not played such a form of team sports for a very long time and I was totally unprepared for how exhausting short sprints and dynamic blocking would be!
Currently Reading
My time with Sapians finally came to a close; I enjoyed the book as a whole, but the latter more whimsical chapters were especially thought provoking. The links between wealth and happiness, and humanity as is and humanity to be, were especially fascinating.
Both concepts very much focus on how a sense of community is critical as we become increasingly detached from traditional societal norms of static, localised living. Even more so as our expected lifespan moves into the 100’s and we become more able/independent in old age with biomedical advancements.
Current reading has moved onto Sabbatical prep; with various old and new tomes of Argentina’s history and culture arrayed in front of me.
Currently Listening
The ‘Hackney Colliery Band’. Look them up on Spotify; I’m especially keen on their version of ‘All of the Lights’.
Weekend Plans
My third (and unfortunately last) racing weekend of the year; traipsing north to the Tweed Valley near Edinburgh for what is billed as one of the biggest Enduro Races in the UK.
Should be pretty awesome, but I’m a little wary given that I’m a Hardtail Hero at present and not on the best form 🧐
With a couple of days following enjoying the highlands, I really don’t have many working days left scarily!