The Bendigeidfrân

‘Hit the ground running.’ It’s a funny phrase.

Over 10 years ago, someone said I’d need to hit the ground running in a role. But that was more like jogging. This week I definitely had to be running.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s been an exciting week. Usually it takes 2–4 weeks before you feel like you can do anything worthwhile. But on my fourth day on the team, I had to pull together a framework for how we’d make progress on our mission.

Hell of a start to the week! But like I said, a cracking week. I’m loving it.

This week I

  • pulled together a framework for aligning our mission, user outcomes, strategic objectives and performance measurement
  • started doing proper onboarding, like getting added to drives and meetings
  • had one-to-ones with folks to pick up on constraints and trade-offs we’ve already decided
  • co-hosted a strategy day with the team leads and the rest of the senior management team
  • socialised and bonded in the pub afterwards (naturally)
  • searched around the drives for previous strategy documents
  • read through an anthropology report about one of our key user groups and their environment
  • prepared a cross-programme presentation for next week, and
  • met with our senior delivery managers and performance analyst

I didn’t mention it last week but I’m the strategic product lead on the planning data platform. That means I’m the product-y glue person in the senior management team making sure we all know where we’re going, how we’ll get there, and that our ways of working suit the journey. Dark matter stuff.

Life stuff

I feel bad when I write weeknotes because I never include many personal bits that make it interesting. So I’m starting with those.

We’ve not been watching much telly, apart from Married at First Sight: Australia. I’ve always like the Aussie version but the latest instalment is great.

I love how perceptive Lauren is. Surprised she’s not on loveofhuns. Despite how he got revenge on his ex, Jayden seems a nice guy. Jack is vile.

What else? Buying proper veg from the market has made every meal time a delight. Cooking is so much more fun when the results taste better, and ingredients make a huge difference. I’m grateful I’m able.

A small, triangular flat roof over a part of the kitchen has been leaking and the plaster on that wall has bubbles in it. That’s bad but not terrible. A roofer is going to come and fix it. He might be the best-reviewed roofer in London and he lives a couple of streets down, it’s great. Props to him.

I haven’t been getting receipts for lunch but I’ve been putting it on the company card. His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (or my accountant) will probably gut me for this. I need to tattoo ‘Get the receipt’ on my thumb so I see it whenever I pay for something.

Please remind me to buy tickets to good things, namely this Saul Leiter exhibition in Milton Keynes, Ian McKellen and the lad from Ted Lasso in Henry IV: Part One, and Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music at the British Library. (There’s a King Britt article in the bookmarks too.)

The framework

The task was quite simple: explain our current mission, the outcomes we’re driving for, and how we’ll make progress towards the vision.

It was a good, challenging, empathy-building start to the week, trying to bake particular ways of working into our team without using certain nouns (Lean, agile, etc.)

I leant on the how and why to avoid talking about the what. We don’t all have the same mental models.

It was all about establishing the Golden Thread without saying Golden Thread.

And it’s a pretty simple framework right now: recursive objectives and key results (OKR). At the top is a platform-level OKR. The objective describes our current strategic objective, a big lofty goal we want to achieve. The key results are platform-wide key performance indicators or North Star metrics that show we’re making progress. More lagging than leading, but a mix of the two.

Below that are team-level objectives. Signals of intent for biting chunks out of the collective mission. Team leads define the objective and refine it with me (they’re senior practitioners, after all). Team leads collaborate with their teams to define the key results (they’re on the frontlines and embedded in their domains, after all).

The work – we’re calling them initiatives – is framed using hypothesis statements, so that we call out what we’re doing, what we hope to achieve and how we’ll measure success upfront. If we don’t hit those key results or impact the indicators as expected, it’s fine. It’s all about learning, making it possible to pivot when needed, so that we don’t waste effort on pointless endeavours.

It bakes outcomes and positive impact for users into our model. And it feeds into a collective understanding of how progress is made, showing how we all contribute to (and are accountable for) achieving these outcomes for users.

It feels like the right sort of framework for our current challenge: growing and scaling the platform. But we’ll see. There is still some discovery-type activity to do – because the platform is yet to hit product-market fit, in my opinion – which doesn’t fit the framework except at the initiative level. As I’ve said previously, the only key result to come from discoveries is knowing what to do next.

Be the bridge

Even though it’s been a very hands-on week, I’m trying to be careful about being too directional.

There’s a Welsh saying, ‘A fo ben, bid bont.’ If you want to lead, be the bridge. Take the load, make connections, point the way. But let the people walk forward themselves.

That’s my challenge for next week. Having pointed the way, my job now is to take the load and make connections. They’re a great bunch and totally capable, and I’m super glad to be able to join their journey.

Running

Despite missing a run on Wednesday, it’s been a good week for training. The sun’s been out, it’s been warm, and the mornings are noticeably brighter earlier. Not that I’ve got out of bed for a morning run, mind you, I’ve stuck to lunchtime runs.

Hill repeats – a workout where you run up a steep hill for one minute, jog back down and repeat – were OK today, but not my best. That’s down to missing several training runs over the last month, so I’ll need to stick to the plan.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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