The Golden Teacher

What a week.

One of those weeks at work where you feel like you’re not making progress. I did actually get all my high priority tasks done, which was good, but I felt like meetings were getting in the way of being able to do some work – and some of the meetings weren’t that necessary.

This is a reflection I’ll be adjusting the next few weeks around, getting tough on which meetings I do and don’t need to attend. The first lot I need to cull are any programme-wide meetings that aren’t about reporting: I simply don’t need to have so much information broadcast to me, every week, and it rarely provides information that causes us to change direction.

Many of my mornings are taken up by meetings too, which is when I’m most productive. There’s also a block of meetings on a Wednesday afternoon that mean I push a lot of work into Thursday and Friday. So I need to create some blocks of focused work time, which will allow me to get things done early in the week and feel some success.

Backfilling a product manager while also doing product leadership is stretching me thin, which means I need to spend more time on the actual work – and some times the work is not done is workshops and meetings.

The main tasks of the week were:

  • drafting and sharing a product operating model with the lead designer and delivery manager for the team I’ve joined
  • waiting for feedback on the draft design sprint I put together last week
  • finalising the design sprint plan anyway because a colleague was ill and couldn’t feed back
  • trying to progress an assurance review of some screen recording software we want to use
  • meet a couple of the team members I haven’t had a chance to meet yet
  • prep for and lead our check-in with the senior leadership team
  • input on statements of work
  • get a query log sorted for the community, and make sure folks know about our triage process for queries, and
  • interview candidates to join the team and replace me in backfilling another product manager.

Had quite a few grumbles about the department this week. I get that it’s a policy department, doesn’t have a long history of doing digital and is learning about operations too, but that’s a reason not an excuse. If expensive people like me can’t do their job because software integral to our project work isn’t available, or if we’re delayed on mission critical decisions because a request is stuck in some ServiceNow rabbit warren, don’t be surprised that things are expensive or slower than expected.

Anyway, next week will be better. I’m running the aforementioned design sprint with the team, all week! We’ll be co-located for 3 days, giving us a chance to collaborate properly and build some trust, and then we’ve got prototype testing with users on the fourth and fifth days. I’m loving the startup energy around our team, the need to move fast and try things out.

psd raised a good point earlier in the week though, about how the temperature was up and some people were off sick or feeling mildly stressed. We need to find ways to take the temperature down, so I’m going to temper the startup energy a little bit. We need to be quick and effective, but we need to remain healthy and leave time for reflection and recuperation. One to bear in mind for the product operating model.

After a weekend away with friends in Somerset – and a very social week last week – I decided to work from home every day this week. It helped me get my head down on work but also allowed me to recharge some social batteries. After the sun came out, I spent Thursday and Friday working in the garden, which was delightful!

On Friday we went in to Crystal Palace for dinner to celebrate the end of a piece of tough work my partner’s been working on. We had Italian food at Lorenzo’s which was really tasty! The bottle of 2019 Primitivo was great too, had some lovely age to it which brought the sweetness down.

Yesterday was all about carrying on those good vibes. We spent all day in the garden, listening to music, chatting, playing cards…and enjoying a bottle of champagne plus a 2022 Folle Blanche from Domaine Luneau-Papin. Lovely saline finish on it, which went well with a crab, new potato and radish salad I whipped up for dinner.

Pretty upset that I probably won’t be able to do the marathon next week though. I jogged down the train platform and my hip is still hurting me, which means it won’t be able to handle over 26 miles and 1,000 metres of elevation. Got a bit down about that for a 30 minutes – feels like I’ve thrown away 5 months of training – but, oh well. Shrugged it off later in the day. As long as I get to do some fastpacking this summer, I don’t care if I miss a race or two!

Home-made pizza with seasonal asparagus for dinner tonight. Might try it Florentine style and crack an egg on top.

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