Simon Knight

Category: Career and Growth

  • The Art of Letting Go: A Stoic Approach to Mastering Delegation in Management

    The Art of Letting Go: A Stoic Approach to Mastering Delegation in Management

    Recently I’ve been thinking a little about delegation. I wanted to address some stumbling blocks I’ve faced myself, and give a little thought to how they can be overcome. As usual, mainly with a view towards helping me in my own efforts to be a better manager. Hopefully they’ll be of some service to you too.

    Reasons why you may be bad at delegation

    First up, what are some common reasons as to why someone like me might be bad at delegation in the first place? Well… There’s a bunch of them, and a quick trawl of the interweb will yield a list much like the following one:

    1. Lack of Trust in Team Members
    2. Desire for Control
    3. Fear of Losing Relevance or Job Security
    4. Perfectionism
    5. Guilt About Adding to Others’ Workloads
    6. Lack of Time to Train or Explain
    7. Lack of Clear Processes or Guidelines
    8. Concern About Being Perceived as Lazy or Uninvolved
    9. Failures to delegate effectively, or at all

    I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen afoul of some, if not all of the basic failures above.

    A failure to delegate effectively will likely be underscored by a constantly overflowing inbox full of emails, an endless queue of tickets, and a constant sense of anxiety and/or dread about all the things that haven’t been done yet and may never actually be gotten around to. A large number of open threads, adding to cognitive load and in the worst case, creating anxiety and affecting sleep.

    No doubt another quick search of the interweb would generate several how-to guides, teaching me some pro-tips for delegating more effectively. The real question for me though, is why I’m so reluctant to let go of my work in the first place. After all, it’s not as though I don’t have plenty of other things I can focus on, and my mental health would likely benefit as a result since I’d be less anxious and sleep better at night.

    I came up with a shortlist of my own fears and failings related to delegation below. If you’re a fellow sufferer, yours will no-doubt differ in the specific details, but the outcome (a failure to delegate effectively) will likely be the same.

    Since there’s a fair bit of overlap between my personal reasons for failing to delegate effectively, and the generic list I mentioned earlier, I put the list into a table to show the overlap more clearly:

    my reasons for being bad at delegation

    Strangely, this gives me some degree of comfort, since it indicates my specific fears and challenges are somewhat common, and there’s likely a bunch of actions I can take or some systems/processes I can implement that will improve my abilities in these areas.

    How to get better at delegation

    Before I got into strategies to tackle specific failings, I wanted to understand whether there were some general principles or heuristics I could apply that would help provide some direction in this area. Since delegation is something of a life skill (I delegate responsibilities around the home to my children, for example), I cast my net towards philosophy in general, and stoicism in particular since it majors on the areas of wisdom and judgement.

    • Wisdom and Judgment: Stoicism teaches that wisdom and good judgment are crucial virtues. A Stoic leader would use wisdom to delegate tasks appropriately, taking into account their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of their team members.
    • Control and Acceptance: Stoic philosophy emphasises an understanding of what is within our control and accepting what is not. In terms of delegation, this could translate to a recognition of when it is necessary to delegate tasks to others and an acceptance that I can’t do everything myself.
    • Duty and Responsibility: Stoic philosophers believe in fulfilment of duty and taking responsibility for one’s role in life. A leader following Stoic principles would feel a sense of duty to delegate tasks as necessary to ensure the success of their team or organisation, while also taking responsibility for the overall outcome.
    • Emotional Resilience: Stoicism teaches the importance of being resilient and unswayed by external circumstances. This could be taken to mean not allowing pride or the desire for control preventing me from delegating tasks when doing so is in the best interests of the team or project.

    Armed with a little stoic background then, I can devise a few solutions to my own specific challenges, which seem to be largely grounded in a lack of confidence in my own abilities, and a resulting fear of failure. Here’s a few ideas I came up with, where the ideas to the left (on lighter yellow sticky’s) feed into an overall summary or strategy for dealing with the issue on the right (darker yellow).

    fears preventing effective delegation

    All of which lead to a couple of overriding perspectives on how to mitigate my worst failings in the area of delegation:

    Focus on what can be controlled: Focusing on my actions and attitudes towards delegation, rather than the outcomes will help me to control how I delegate, how I communicate, and how I respond to the results. I can control my own actions, but not those of others.

    Embrace my challenges as opportunities for growth: Viewing the challenges of delegation as opportunities to develop my leadership skills will likely help my team members grow and develop their own skills.

    Ta-da! Delegation problems solved, right? If only it were that simple! It’s a start though. I’ll let you know how I’m getting on in a future post, since it’s looking like mastering this art is going to be critical to my future product management success.

    As long as you live, continue to learn how to live.
    – Seneca

  • On Signals & Noise

    On Signals & Noise

    Black and white comic book-style illustration, inspired by classic graphic novels. A symbolic representation of 'signal vs. noise'

    Most days, while I’m fresh, and with a jug of freshly brewed black coffee to hand, I try to fit in three hours or so of deep work.

    Before I can do that though, I need to check my emails and messages. Not necessarily with a view to responding to all of them, but trying to figure out whether there’s something urgent that requires my immediate attention and/or some kind of action.

    I scan email titles to see whether anything jumps out. I look to see who sent the email, or who they sent it to. If the email is from, or to, someone important (including me of course!), I might open it up and take a peek, to figure out whether it’s going to require some amount of effort to respond to, or whether I can write a quick reply and draw a line under it there and then.

    I take a similar kind of approach to messages in Slack or Teams, applying the following heuristics:

    • What’s the message about?
    • Who is it from?
    • Does it require immediate attention, or can it wait until later?

    The does it require immediate attention point is important. It speaks to prioritisation, which is a critical facet of any knowledge worker type role. And has particular significance in the product space, since the product manager role revolves around being a master of prioritisation. I have to think about how the request fits into my plan for how I’m going to go about my work that day. As a PM, I may also need to think about how it fits into a bigger picture of business priorities, stakeholder requirements, company politics, customer needs, and other dimensions of priority.

    Having duly pondered some or all of the above – I ultimately have to make some kind of decision as to whether the email or message actually requires my attention, how quickly, and what to actually do about it.

    What this amounts to, in case you hadn’t already realised, is signal detection. I’m seeking to optimise my attention for signals, and trying to filter out noise. In the general case, that boils down to 3 steps:

    1. Filtering: In an age of information overload, you, dear reader, are constantly having to decide which pieces of information to attend to and which to ignore. Determining, for example, which email is critical to read now versus which can wait (or be discarded) can be framed in terms of Signal Detection Theory: Hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections.
    2. Prioritisation: When selecting which actions or tasks to pursue, your decision will often revolve around incomplete or uncertain information. Your ability to discriminate between what’s genuinely impactful versus what only seems so, can determine the success of an activity or project. At the macro level, it could affect the success of your team, organisation or business.
    3. Decision Making: When you’re faced with ambiguous data, you have to decide on a course of action (including taking no action). For instance, you may have to decide if a change in a data trend is a genuine signal of an underlying issue, or if it’s just random noise.

    A quick primer on Signal Detection Theory (SDT)

    Signal Detection Theory (SDT) is a framework for understanding how decisions are made in the presence of uncertainty, particularly when detecting faint or ambiguous stimuli. The concept emerged from the field of electrical engineering and was then applied to radar signal processing during World War II. Later on, the principles were adopted and extended in psychology to explain how humans and other animals make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The theory differentiates between the actual state of the world (whether a signal is present or absent) and your decision about that state.

    The key concepts you need to know for the purposes of this article are that a signal detection activity has four possible outcomes: Hits, Misses, False Alarms, and Correct Rejections.

    • Hit: Signal is present, and you correctly detect it.
    • Miss: Signal is present, but you fail to detect it.
    • False alarm: Signal is absent, but you believe it’s present.
    • Correct rejection: Signal is absent, and you correctly identify it as absent.

    The concepts of signal detection are applied in lots of areas, including psychology, medicine and economics, to name a few. They’re generally applicable in day-to-day life (trying not to get run over when crossing the road for example, or literally paying attention to signals if you’re driving a car), in knowledge work and for the purposes of this article, product management.

    How signal detection fits into product management

    Signal Detection Theory (SDT) isn’t considered a product management framework in itself; nor is it explicitly integrated into any widely recognised product management frameworks. However, I wouldn’t be writing this article if I didn’t think that the principles of signal detection couldn’t be incorporated into some of your existing product management practices, and help you to make better decisions in the midst of uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Areas where I think it could be used include:

    • Prioritisation: Tools like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) or WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) require decisions based on uncertain or incomplete information. Applying signal detection principles can enhance these tools by helping you to differentiate between genuine insights and random fluctuations or biases.
    • Roadmapping: When you’re planning a product roadmap, distinguishing genuine needs (signals) from transient or less impactful items (noise) is essential. Isolating signals from noise helps to make the distinction more clearly.
    • Research and User Feedback: When generating or analysing user feedback, product managers are aiming to separate genuine patterns and needs (signals) from the variability and noise of less useful feedback.
    • Data Analysis: Metrics sometimes show fluctuations due to a myriad of reasons. For example, our NPS score went up 10 points last week. Why? Is there some important insight (signal) to be drawn from the sudden spike, or is it just noise?
    • Stakeholder Communication: Feedback from stakeholders can be conflicting or reflect organisational politics and biases. Applying heuristics to evaluate which pieces of feedback are strategically important signals and which might be noise, will help ensure that product decisions align with strategic goals.

    Failure modes

    There’s lots of ways to fail at product management. Many of them are related to misclassifying signals as noise and vice-versa. Most of them, I’ve made myself at some point:

    During feature development:

    • I’ve been swayed by loud or influential customers without verifying the broader applicability of their request.
    • I’ve implemented features just because competitors have (or didn’t have them) them without properly assessing their relevance.
    • I’ve massively underestimated technical complexity, leading to maintenance issues and technical debt.

    While gathering user feedback:

    • I’ve prioritised feedback based on volume, rather than quality or relevance.
    • I’ve disregarded feedback from less vocal user groups.
    • I’ve acted on feedback without validating its broader applicability.

    During analysis and research:

    • I’ve wasted time chasing new trends without assessing its longevity or relevance.
    • I’ve neglected to reevaluate past decisions in light of new information.
    • I’ve been too rigid and slow in adapting to significant market shifts.

    When interpreting data:

    • I’ve misinterpreted data without considering external influences.
    • I’ve focused too much on short-term metrics without considering long-term impacts.
    • I’ve implemented changes based on inconclusive results.

    When managing projects:

    • I’ve spread resources too thinly across too many projects.
    • I’ve neglected to revisit and adjust resource allocation as situations have changed.
    • I’ve been influenced by politics or internal pressures rather than objective product needs.

    We’ve had a new PM join us recently, and perhaps because she’s just new to the team, or maybe because of some personality traits or perhaps because she’s just more skilled in some areas than I am, she treats a lot of things that as signals, that I would otherwise disregard as noise. Sometimes she hits, sometimes she misses; but it’s interesting to observe the process because it forces me to reassess my own responses and skills in this area.

    I’m a boots on the ground kinda guy. I love speaking to customers, and I work hard at being responsive to what I hear from them. Equally I listen to what my team and colleagues are saying, and am very responsive to signals that they may be blocked or need support in some way. I have good intuition about problems that are likely to explode and therefore require immediate or escalated attention before they do so.

    I’m not always very good at identifying political signals from the wider business and stakeholders, or at spotting patterns in data that may indicate a trend which requires attention. I sometimes miss important signals or confuse them with noise.

    Given that I’ve identified some weaknesses in my signal to noise detection capabilities, what are some ways I can make some improvements?

    Getting better at signal detection

    Here’s my ideas for helping to develop those skills, if you feel you may be falling short of the mark (as I often do!)

    1. Implement feedback loops: Seek to regularly collect feedback from stakeholders, users, and teams. Reflect on your capabilities and hone in on areas of improvement based on this feedback.
    2. Diversify your Information Sources: Don’t rely on a single source of data. Triangulate your insights from different channels to paint a more accurate picture.
    3. Seek external perspectives: Try to gather viewpoints from outside of your immediate circle. Utilise friends, mentors and peers to gain fresh insights.
    4. Stay user or customer centred: Making sure you’re interacting with users and customers regularly will ground decision-making in the realities of their needs and desires.
    5. Cultivate critical thinking: Question your assumptions regularly. Develop a habit of playing devil’s advocate to challenge prevailing ideas (something I find alarmingly easy!)
    6. Utilise appropriate frameworks & models: Employing decision-making frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) or cost-benefit analyses can help to structure thinking.
    7. Practice reflective listening: Make sure you truly understand the feedback or data before making decisions based on it. I literally repeat to people what I think I heard them say and ask for confirmation we’re on the same page.
    8. Accommodate Uncertainty: The reality is that not every decision will have a clear signal associated with it. Sometimes you just have to make the best decision with information available at the time, and be open to iterating based on the outcome. Jeff Bezos coined the one-way versus two-way door analogy, which I think is useful in this regard.
    9. Manage your time: Set aside time for deep work without distractions. Give yourself room for more focused analysis and applied discernment.
    10. Learn continuously: Regularly engage in professional development, courses, and workshops and the like to refine your professional skills.

    There shouldn’t actually be many surprises here, since our brains have basically evolved to help us pay attention to useful information and disregard the detritus. What’s important, particularly in the product realm, and really anywhere your decisions are likely to have a lasting impact, is knowing when you can trust your instincts and think fast, and when you need to slow down and take more measured approach.

    Keeping in mind the hit, miss, false alarm and correct rejection Signal Detection Theory concepts from above, it seems to me that you can probably train yourself to hit more frequently than you miss, avoid false alarms and, critically for the slightly overwhelmed PM’s, know when to make a defensively correct rejection. Hopefully some of the ideas above help you (and me!) to do that.

    If you enjoyed this article, or got some useful ideas from it, I’d appreciate it if you could hit the share button or leave a comment, just to let me know. If you have some ideas for improvements or want me to write about something specific, I’d be happy to hear about that too.

    Thanks, and see you for the next one!

    Sources:

    “An Introduction to Signal Detection and Estimation” by H. Vincent Poor

    “Signal Detection Theory and ROC Analysis in Psychology and Diagnostics: Collected Papers” by John A. Swets

    “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, Episode 39: The Religion of No Religion” by John Vervaeke YouTube

  • On Unplanned Work

    On Unplanned Work

    Black and white comic book-style illustration, inspired by classic graphic novels. A person sits surrounded by work

    Picture this: You have a plan for a thing your team needs to accomplish. It’s quite complicated. And you’ve planned extensively for it. It’s a cross-functional, multi-phased programme of works, with numerous milestones and dependencies. The plan is somewhat tricky to follow (to the uninitiated), but well documented, and as well understood by the team as it can be, given the various moving parts.

    You’re working the plan. And the plan is working.

    And then, just when you least expect it, along comes a senior leader with a new or revised agenda, based on <some other thing> that’s important to them or the business at that point in time. And just like that… Everything changes.

    Unplanned Work

    As I’m striving to accomplish a writing cadence again, I was struggling a bit with what to write about this week. All of a sudden though, it just dropped into my lap! Figuratively speaking. And not in a nice way. You’ll perhaps recall in my previous post that I used the common analogy of goalposts being moved. Well, this is more like someone having the entire playing field rotated by 180 degrees! I’m talking about a big change here; a huge amount of work and re-planning.

    How does one deal with that, without going slightly mad? Here’s a few thoughts, collated from my years of experiencing, and dealing with the fallout of such changes.

    Prioritise and assess

    Prioritisation, one might convincingly argue, is the bread and butter of any self-respecting product manager. Having also been a freelancer and contractor for much of my career, I think I could make the case that it’s the lifeblood of a successful individual contributor / knowledge worker / creative, also.

    First up then, you’ll need to assess the urgency & impact of the changes. You’ll need to do this to help guide the work and ensure resources are aligned with the new priorities and are mobilised accordingly.

    You may also wish to carry out a gap analysis, to gain some sense of where there may be issues in terms of resourcing, timelines, and scope. You’ll of course want to share your understanding of what this looks like with the leadership team to make sure they are aware of the full picture, and perhaps in some diplomatic fashion with the stakeholder(s) responsible for the changes, so they understand the magnitude and impact of their dictate.

    Risk Management

    Figuring out where the new risks are in relation to the changed plans, in addition to the old ones, which may or may not still exist, or have been mitigated, or in the worst case, compounded by the new plans should be very high on your list of priorities. Obvious risks will likely jump right out at you. More subtle risks will require some digging and analysis.

    One way in which you can approach this is by carry out an Impact Mapping exercise. I’m a big fan of this approach because it’s basically a mind map, and I love mind mapping stuff out because it makes nice and clear and easy to collaborate on. Documenting how these changes affect current in-flight projects and future projects will help you to form contingency plans where they’re needed.

    For bonus points you can carry out a dependency analysis, either as part of your impact mapping exercise, or supplemental to it, identifying new or pre-existing dependencies, along with any other risks and issues.

    Communication and Stakeholder Management

    Blergh! One of my least favourite phrases; stakeholder management. But, a necessary evil.

    Fun fact: I got turned down for a senior role by a decision maker some while back because they didn’t think my stakeholder management skillz were quite up to the level they were looking for. Rejection makes me sad… So, I’ve worked hard to improve my capabilities in this area. For me, it comes down to three key points (at least in the context of changing plans, as I’m discussing here):

    1. Immediate Communication: As soon as new changes are confirmed, they should be communicated to the relevant parties. The sooner the people who care about the plans know about the changes, the faster they can carry out any necessary adjustments to their plans.
    2. Clear Messaging: Effective communication of the changes will depend upon complete clarity as to why the changes are being made. Probably just blaming the person who dictated the changes be made in the first place isn’t the why you’re looking for. A better solution would be to identify the benefits of the revised plan instead.
    3. Open Dialogue: I talked about clear lines of communication in my previous article. It’s worth investing time and energy into cultivating an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing concerns or ideas for making any necessary changes, smoother.

    Leadership and Team Morale

    My team discovered that these kinds of changes were going to be taking place approximately the middle of last week. I wasn’t especially impressed by them; particularly since they were imposed from above, without any consultation on why the changes were being made, what the impact would be and how the impact of the changes would be managed. It’s fair to say, not everyone else on the team was, or will be happy when they find out, either.

    As the lead PM for my team, at least to some degree they look to me for cues on how to react to things. I like to think I try to maintain a positive outlook, taking the view that challenges are also opportunities for growth. I don’t claim to always get it right, but it’s what I aim for and I think the team appreciates it. Being sure to offer empathy and support to the team is a big part of this too.

    Part of staying positive can involve celebrating small wins. The path to the new release schedule will likely have milestones. Celebrating them will help to keep morale high.

    “God Laughs at Your Plans”

    Adjusting to a new plan is never easy; especially when you’ve devoted a lot of time and effort to the old one. Feelings of frustration and disappointment are a natural consequence. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to come out on top.

    Prioritising your activities, identifying and addressing risk, communicating the new plans clearly and effectively, and demonstrating leadership throughout the process will help you do that.

    Don’t forget to look after yourself too!

  • How to Handle Change in Your Team

    How to Handle Change in Your Team

    Black and white comic book-style illustration, inspired by classic graphic novels. A small team of diverse people is shown in the middle of a dramatic change

    Something I’ve been thinking about recently is how best to adapt to newcomers on your team; particularly when they have authority over you (i.e. a new “boss” or manager), or when they’re moving the goalposts of your current working practices. If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, it can be a struggle.

    From previous interactions with more senior managers or the exec team, you may have a good understanding of the politics, their likes and dislikes, and a whole set of other contextual experiences that your new teammate(s) simply haven’t gotten access to yet. Because they haven’t had those experiences, and as a result don’t have the same context you do, they may be doing and asking you to do things in a way that seems incongruent with your current understanding of how things work.

    Sometimes, that’s going to hurt. In the past, I’ve been asked to deliver things, or do things in a certain way, that I knew wasn’t going to work, because of my additional context. Despite arguing from this perspective, I’ve been informed they need to be done anyway. Sometimes, the outcome has surprised me, and there’s been a net improvement. Sometimes, the outcome has been exactly as I predicted, leading to a sense of wasted effort and the resulting feelings of negativity and “I told you so!” which accompany that.

    Clearly going into these kinds of situations with a closed mind or fixed perspective that says something like “this is how it’s always worked in the past and this is how it’s always going to work in the future” is not going to lead to good outcomes over the course of time, or an ideal relationship with those new team members. You’ve got to keep an open mind. You’ve got to constantly be looking for the good, for the positive outcomes the team is seeking, whilst bringing your experience to bear in the most appropriate fashion.

    I’ve found myself in a similar situation recently, hence I’ve been giving it some deep thought. I found the following ideas helpful while navigating through it.

    Ensure clear lines of communication

    Apparently I bias towards “brutal honesty” – or so a coach told me in the recent past. As you might imagine, that’s not always a good thing. But, as Popeye always used to say, “I yam what I yam!” If nothing else, honesty, even the somewhat brutal kind, helps to ensure that communication is, well…, honest. If sometimes a little uncomfortable! What those clear lines of communication actually look like for you, and your team, in the context of your organisation, and your ways of working, and depending on the specifics of your actual work style or relationship, are clearly going to vary somewhat. The important thing here is, that they’re there in the first place. That may require some work on your part to establish, but it’s important work, and you should prioritise it if you’re not already doing so.

    Getting a handle on your new boss’s expectations is going to be critical. The sooner you can get this done the better. Seeking to understand their vision and objectives and how you fit into the new picture is going to set you up for success going forward. Of course, this assumes they want you to stay in the picture! Make it easier for them to put the pieces together by sharing your aspirations with them, and asking for guidance on how you can best align your efforts with the team’s objectives.

    Get feedback

    Once the communication lines are clear, you should think about asking for some feedback. Not everyone is very good at or likes doing this, and it may take some persistence, but it’s worth the ask. The last time I asked for feedback, I got some useful nuggets like:

    • “Be clear, direct and firm in your decisions, but be nice about it. There’s never a reason to be a jerk” – remember that brutal honesty thing?
    • “Learn how to genuinely soften your tone without being passive aggressive or condescending” – again, brutal – I’m working on it!
    • “Become more gracious at accepting processes/decisions that are not your preference” – oops!

    And so on, and so forth. What’s the takeaway? Regularly asking for feedback from both your new manager and peers will definitely provide valuable insights into areas of improvement and may also highlight your strengths.

    Roll with the punches

    One of my favourite quotes of all time, ever, is Mike Tyson’s “Everyone thinks they have a plan until they get punched in the mouth!” (Stolen and paraphrased somewhat from Helmuth von Moltke’s “no plan survives contact with the enemy”).

    Another favourite saying from one of my erstwhile colleagues with a somewhat unique sense of humour is “God laughs at your plans!” Indeed, he probably does.

    What’s the point here? It’s that having a plan is probably a good thing, but sometimes your plans need to change and adapt. If you can’t or won’t adapt in the face of change, something’s liable to break, and it probably won’t be whatever the change is. It’ll be you.

    Change, as they say, is inevitable; especially in the business world. Instead of resisting it, embrace it. This positive attitude will not only benefit you personally but will also be noticed by others, including your new manager. Be willing to adapt to new methods, technologies, or processes introduced by the new manager or team members. Being adaptable shows that you’re a team player and open to innovation.

    Learn continuously

    Learning is my favourite thing, so this one comes easy to me. Again though, your mileage may vary depending on how you feel about continuous learning in the first place (is it a chore, or is it a source of joy?), and how you actually go about it.

    I’ve expanded at length regarding how I go about continuous learning elsewhere (e.g. here), so I won’t go into a massive amount of detail here; suffice to say that I tend to prefer a JIT (Just In Time) approach to learning, where I’m digging out learning resources and utilising them as needed, with a view towards accomplishing specific activities.

    Let’s say for example I need to do some deep data analysis. I’m not a “data analyst”, so this isn’t something I’m used to doing every day, and my skills are therefore lacking. What I need is some pointers to get me started, and a sense of what a good data analysis methodology (or recipe) might look like. In this kind of scenario, I’m going to spend a little time figuring out what the best source of these kinds of instructions are, and then I’m going to go and read-up a bit, or watch some videos, or do a few steps in a course. Just enough to get me started, so I can accomplish the specific task at hand, and so that I have something to refer back to if I start feeling lost.

    There’s plenty of great resources out there for this kind of thing; my go-to tends to be Coursera, for good and reliable (i.e. authoritative) content.

    An additional consideration for this point specifically, is if you’ve got a bunch of new people on your team, or a new manager; don’t be threatened by their knowledge or skills. Use them. The arrival of new and skilled team members is an opportunity to learn from them. Seek out their expertise, ask questions, and consider participating in workshops or courses to enhance your skills. Being proactive about your learning can set you apart.

    Look after yourself

    Above all, be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up about your limitations, real or perceived. Show up each day, do your job, be nice to your co-workers, be as generous as you can be with your time, resources and knowledge. But acknowledge your limitations and your working hours. Use your vacation time. Keep up to speed with developments in your areas of specialist interest, but don’t forget to live your life, spend time with your family and pursue your own interests.

    Amidst all the changes and the drive to advance, don’t forget to take care of yourself. A healthy work-life balance is essential for sustained career growth.

    Reflect

    You could probably argue that the tips above are generally applicable to successful working, and I wouldn’t disagree. But I’ve sought to provide a specific slant and demonstrate how they might be applied to a specific situation: that of being a part of a growing team, and one in which the goalposts are being moved in directions you’re finding uncomfortable. I’ve found that when this happens, as it invariably does at points during a career, reflecting on the ideas above is helpful for me.

    By way of a post-script, I found myself in exactly the situation I described at the beginning, just yesterday. I did a bunch of work on a deliverable, despite having flagged well in advance that it needed to be reviewed by a senior leader ahead of time. What I predicted would happen, happened (spoiler: major revisions), and as a result the deliverable will now be parked for the immediate future, and will in all likelihood need to be completely re-worked once it’s picked back up again.

    Clearly this is a sub-optimal situation, and one that it would be easy to get negative about. But if I turn it around and look for the positive; I learned some things along the way, and I collaborated with the new team on those things successfully. I sought feedback and built clear communication channels. So on reflection, maybe it’s not so bad. I’m gonna go enjoy my weekend, and go into my next working week with a refreshed and positive attitude.

    I hope you do too. See you in the next one!

  • How to get Product Management Stuff Done in the Face of an Endless Barrage of Other Demands and Firefighting Activities

    How to get Product Management Stuff Done in the Face of an Endless Barrage of Other Demands and Firefighting Activities

    Black and white comic book-style illustration, inspired by classic graphic novels. A product manager battles against a whirlwind of incoming tasks

    One of the questions that frequently comes up within the large team of product managers within which I work is, given all of the other problems, issues, questions and tasks I have to deal with day-to-day as a product manager, how can I find the time to do the high[er] value activities that product managers should be spending time on? Things like:

    • Talking to customers
    • Analysing competitors
    • Researching the market
    • Ideating new products and features

    While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, one of the things I think I’ve been pretty good at over the course of my career is focusing on and prioritizing value-adding activities, so I think I do have some things to say here…

    Prioritise it – in the face of all the other stuff that is asked of you, unless you make something a priority it will always go to the back of the queue and in the worst case, never actually get done. I’m in the habit of planning my work in advance, usually on a week to week basis. But as my role is evolving and I take on more senior/lead responsibilities, I’m recognizing the need to plan even further out – months, even years in advance.

    Timebox it – research is one of those things that can never really be considered complete. There’s always another avenue for investigation; always another question to answer. The easiest way to set some boundaries around the potentially infinite space of whatever research needs to be carried out, is to specify the amount of time you’re going to spend on the activity. A spike, in agile verbiage. Start off with by setting aside a couple of days, and see where you get to. If further time and effort is required, you can plan it in from there.

    Constrain it – to a specific question or hypothesis. If you go into the activity with a clear question or hypothesis in mind, you’re less likely to fall into rabbit holes along the way.

    Distribute (or delegate) it – as the PM, you’re responsible for being the subject matter expert for your product(s), but it doesn’t mean you have to know (or are even capable of knowing) everything. Think about ways you can involve other members of your team in the research activities that need to be performed. I like to think of myself as the spider at the center of a web of information (and business relationships); I spin out the threads, and then need to be sensitive and responsive to tremors along them.

    Automate it – some research activities are relatively mechanical, and as such, are good candidates for being automated. Setting up keyword searches and subscribing to useful sources of information are low hanging fruit. It may be possible for you to automate some other activities too (e.g. I use an R script to pull and collate production metrics into a report, eliminating a few steps of manual effort).

    Document it – find a tool or means of capturing the information you gather so that it’s available to you when you need it. Ideally, you want something that allows you to organise the information in whatever way makes sense for your purposes; I mainly use Evernote for this, but there’s plenty of alternatives.

    Be flexible about it – unlike some of the day-to-day tasks and activities I find myself embroiled in…

    • Acting as a scrummaster and release manager
    • Answering questions about new features during the course of development
    • Handling stakeholders and business needs
    • Supplying information to management, sales, marketing and others as needed
    • Writing documentation and producing other collateral such as webinars and blog posts
    • Generally overseeing the product roadmap and making sure everything is on track and everyone has what they need to do their job

    … Research is an activity that can, to some extent, be carried out anytime and anywhere. I always have my phone with me (I’m writing this blog post on it) and therefore have the capability to read, listen to or watch media related to the objects of my research more or less anywhere I am.

    Of course, not everyone will agree with this point. Some people like to have a much clearer line between work and home life, and I certainly understand that perspective. All I’m saying here is what works (and has worked) for me. Being flexible about when and where I am when I’m doing this kind of work affords me many more opportunities to read, and think, and ultimately to add the kind of value that’s crucial for a PM to really succeed in the areas of their job which can easily fall to the wayside, but which are hugely valuable.

    Even if you’re not willing or able to be flexible in this way, hopefully some of the other suggestions above work for you. And if you have some other thoughts (or just completely disagree with me), I’d love to hear from you!

  • Cunning Strategies for Becoming a First Class Noticer

    Cunning Strategies for Becoming a First Class Noticer

    Albert Einstein famously asked the question; “How would it feel to ride on a beam of light?” Why don’t you take a moment and just think about that yourself; how would it feel?

    Nobody knows the answer. We can speculate. Scientists can synthesize information and hypothesize possible answers based on available data. Still, we don’t know. Maybe we never will. You might reasonably argue that the answer doesn’t matter anyway. I mean, who cares – right?

    But isn’t it fun to think about anyway?

    Imagination is more important than knowledge. – Albert Einstein

    The point of the exercise isn’t necessarily to find the answer. Using your imagination to explore unknown realms brings rewards of a different kind. That’s not to say you should give up on the idea of trying to find the answer. After all, your own thought experiment may be an order of magnitude more solvable than knowing what it feels like to ride on a beam of light. Einstein was just a child when he pondered what would turn out to be one of his most fascinating lines of inquiry. It certainly didn’t hurt him or his career.

    Amazing things happen in the brain when you let it roam free. When you allow it to explore the boundaries of the known, and take excursions into things yet to be known.

    This is one of the joys of my work, in the field of professional testing. The exploration of things. Software, systems, artifacts. Always questioning. Always seeking answers. Always trying to dig a little bit deeper.

    I have always loved things. Just things in the world. I love trying to find the shape of things.” – Leonard Cohen

    One of the challenges of software testing is that the focus of your efforts are often somewhat abstract. However, the specific thing you’re currently exploring (or testing) may have elements of physicality. It may have an interface purposely designed for users to interact with, including buttons and displays. It may even be a physical device like a phone, a watch, a robot or a headset.

    If you want to sharpen your noticing powers, it’s worth paying the physical realm some attention. The things you explore with your mind don’t have to be abstract. They can be things right in front of you. Everyday things. Things you sit on. Things you work or play with. Things you put on or into your body. When you explore, you should use as many senses as possible to determine the shape, weight, texture and substance of a thing.

    You need to take an interest in every part to test what you’re working on effectively, and to its fullest extent. You need to show a deep concern for each component and interface. A passion for every detail.

    “Look with all your eyes. Look.” – Jules Verne

    First Class Noticer

    If you’re a tester, you’re basically being paid to observe and to gather information of importance for people who care about a facet of a product. Different aspects of what you do will be for different levels of interest to the people you report to. Ultimately, the whole product is important to somebody, somewhere. For example, the wearer of a smart watch isn’t going to care about the clear, clean user interface if the clasps of their watch are so fragile they can’t leave their home without the device falling into pieces. Nor will they care that it wasn’t your job to test that part. The whole experience is what ultimately counts. In order to give people the experience they’re searching for, you need to become a Noticer of the highest order. An explorer of every aspect of your software, your device, your project.

    First-Class Noticer – noun (coined by Saul Bellow in his novel, The Actual)

    Someone with the ability to spot important details among noise.

    As a tester, it’s your job to become a First Class Noticer. Your ability to identify key issues of concern, separating them out from the surrounding noise, bringing them to the attention of others clearly and persuasively, are skills that separate First Class Noticers from ordinary, or Second Rate Noticers. Testers often joke about having OCD. The ability to notice or observe important details that others miss may come naturally, or it may not. Even if it doesn’t come naturally to you, there is still room for you to build your existing noticing skills from a standing start.

    Here’s Nine ways you can Develop First Class Noticing Skills:

    1. Make sure you are always looking – keep your eyes open and attentive always. Be completely open to the possibility that something of interest is happening either right this very moment, or very soon will be. If you don’t pay attention – you might miss it!Think about ways you can capture more information from the software or systems you’re testing, so you can look in more places at once. Can you monitor the logs while you’re testing? Can you observe network traffic? What about resource utilization on your servers? What other information might you have missed? Did you read all the documentation? Is it up to date? Does it cover everything it needs to?
    2. Deem everything interesting – stay curious! Try to cultivate a sense of wonder, go far beyond the surface. Be deeply interested in the object of your attention. Look at all aspects, elements, components and sub-systems. Keep building upon your understanding. Make detailed notes. Drop and return to them later if you get bored. Slow your work pace down if necessary (and justifiable) so that you can follow a line of inquiry to a conclusion. You never quite know what you may discover and learn along the way.In my experience, it can be useful to occasionally put time into something that isn’t directly related to what you are working on. For example, investigating a new tool may not help you make progress on a deliverable in the moment. However, if it proves to be useful, is likely to realize many benefits in the future, outweighing the cost of time originally spent. That’s what makes the time invested justifiable.
    3. Change course often – don’t allow your brain to get stuck in a rut. Allow your mind to wander and explore many different paths. Focus for a period, then refocus and change your approach. Use heuristics to guide your thinking. Randomize them if this is helpful or necessary to move forward. Your brain is lazy and will happily settle into a groove. It can be difficult to break out of a rut if you allow yourself to stay there for too long. The best thing to do is not to allow your mind to settle in the first place. Using heuristics to guide your thinking down avenues that your brain might otherwise resist, is a great way to disrupt its natural tendency towards idleness.
    4. Observe for long durations – what might you notice if you just maintained your attention a little bit longer? Does the state change over time? Are there details you may have missed previously?Buddhists and other traditions have methods of meditation that lead to a condition they call Jhana – a “state of profound stillness and concentration in which the mind becomes fully immersed and absorbed in the chosen object of attention.” It’s surprisingly easy to enter this state of profound concentration:

    Stare really hard at a thing for 5-10 minutes… Repeat until everything in your peripheral vision gets dark, and only the center of your vision is bright.Whether you use this method or not is up to you. Personally, I’ve found mindfulness meditation to be a useful and reasonably effective tool for practicing increasingly longer periods of focused attention. It’s like the steps above, but without the staring. Or the tunnel vision.

    Sometimes though, it’s just difficult to separate out the distractions, and for those occasions a Pomodoro timer is a useful accessory.

    1. Pay attention to the stories around you – consider the narrative of the situation you’re in, or the application you’re testing. What might be going on in the end-users’ world? How might their story affect the use of the software?Everything around you has a story, a context of some sort. Your job, as a tester, as a First Class Noticer, is to act as an exegetic for the story of your software under test, and for your project. To interpret events, issues, bugs, threats and risks and explain to the people who care about them what they mean, in the context of their occurrence.
    2. Look for patterns and connections – where are the dots and how are they joined? The very act of attempting to identify the patterns and connections between different items is likely to expose gaps in your own understanding, and potentially omissions in the product that has been delivered.This is an area where you can add significant value as a tester. With many teams and projects focusing hard on trying to automate everything, it’s easy to forget that machines, at least for the moment, only do what we’ve programmed them to. They only look where they’ve been told to look, and only see what they’ve been programmed (or trained) to see. The application of your human intelligence, though imperfect, is nonetheless a powerful tool for separating signals from noise.
    3. Document your findings – be a compulsive note taker! Take the mechanics of note-taking seriously. Invest in a quality notebook (I tend to have numerous Moleskin note books lying around for various kinds of notes) and take one everywhere with you. Use it judiciously.Don’t forget to review them occasionally either. Look for insights. See what jumps out at you. What inspired you? What confused or irritated you? When you re-encounter an anomalous behavior, did you make a note of it? Was it timestamped? If you use a tool like Evernote, you can add screenshots, videos, snippets etc and have access to them from whatever device you’re working on!
    4. Don’t judge, be indeterminate – when you judge, what you’re really saying is “I already know as much as I need to about ”. You’re closing your mind to possibilities that lie outside the realm of your current worldview.And that’s fine, I won’t judge you for that. ;-)But, it means some insights may elude you, had you remained open to alternative possibilities or world views. Seek to hear what the object of your focus shows you, instead of imposing answers, trying to shoehorn a situation or problem into a predefined conception, or trying to control the order of things.
    5. Use all your senses – being a First Class Noticer isn’t just about using your eyes. You should always be listening too, and using any of your other senses that are appropriate for the situation. For the purposes of this exercise, you might also consider your emotions as sources of useful information. Do you feel confused? Angry? Offended? What does that tell you about the object of your attention?

    Beyond Software Testing

    In each point above, I’ve applied the principles primarily to software testing activities. Hopefully you realized as you read through them, that these principles can be expanded far beyond software systems and applied elsewhere. For example, you could apply your noticing skills to the people and activities involved with the project your working on. Watching how the product is developed, and how the people who are developing it behave and communicate with each other. Paying deep attention to how people are interacting during meetings, conversations, in emails and tickets, can provide powerful insights into the root causes of bugs and other issues that emerge over the life-cycle of a project.

    Developing your noticing skills can take you much further than software testing. If you aspire to a leadership position, the ability to observe, reflect upon those observations and incorporate them into deeply considered decision making process will serve you incredibly well. While you’re heading in that general direction though, enhancing and applying your noticing skills can, and should, be a key part of your software testing repertoire.

  • Cunning Strategies for Effective Remote Working

    Cunning Strategies for Effective Remote Working

    During my 10 or so years of working as a contractor/freelancer, I think I basically got used to not having much in the way of performance feedback. For me, knowing that I’d performed at least well enough to secure my next gig, was indication enough that I was heading in the right direction.

    Not everyone has the benefit of having had that experience though. So, I think I can add some value by sharing what I’ve learned over the last 4-5 years of working 100% remotely.

    Please find my largely unfiltered advice for successful remote working, below.

    Invest in reliable hardware

    First up, you should be aware that if you’re working remotely, for the vast majority of the time you will be your own IT Support person. If you’re having issues with your technology or workspace, it’s going to be down to you to figure those things out.

    My suggestion = invest in good quality equipment and learn to look after and use it to its maximum potential.

    Have a backup plan

    An issue that will almost inevitably come up is internet connectivity. Whether wired or wireless, if your internet provider (IP) is having issues, you will suffer. And when you’re relying on that connectivity to get your work done, you will suffer even more.

    My suggestion = get a mobile phone plan with unlimited data and tethering. That way, if your internet connection ever does go down (and it will!), you have a backup plan. You can just work off your mobile data, which is sufficiently fast these days to be almost indistinguishable from your internet connection for working on Slack, shared Google docs etc.

    For bonus points, consider extending this line of thinking to having a backup plan for other areas of your work too. What happens if your PC stops working, or your workspace is unavailable for some reason?

    Enjoy your freedom

    Having confidence that you can use your mobile data for work also means you can work from wherever you are. Something I take advantage of quite a lot. As a homeschooling parent, my services are often required to take the kids various places during the daytime. So long as I have my laptop and my phone, I can take them where they need to be, then sit and carry on working.

    My suggestion = take advantage of your remoteness and get comfortable with working from wherever you are.

    Create a dedicated workspace

    Of course, it helps if you do have a dedicated workspace. I love my home office! It’s where I spend the vast majority of my time. Even when I’m not working-working, I’m often working in my space, e.g. on this blogpost, or on a side-gig/hustle, or trying out some new video games, watching a film, reading etc. It’s my Bat-Cave, and I’m very comfortable in it.

    My suggestion = if you’re working 100% remote, try to carve out a dedicated workspace. It’s good to be comfortable.

    Be the host

    Meetings can be problematic as a remote worker. I’ve been quite fortunate over the past few years, that most of the folk I have worked with have also been remote.

    My entire team works remotely at present, over many different timezones. I find that I tend to face more challenges when working with teams who are only partly remote. Since when they’re working together in an office, they forget or are less considerate about the people who are not in the office with them. I suspect this is where some of Lisa’s remote working issues stem from.

    My suggestion = host all your meetings, to the extent possible. I find that if I’m the one hosting the meetings (i.e. calling the shots), it’s a lot easier to make sure people are paying attention to me, if I need them to.

    Use the best software tools for the job

    On that note, you should make sure you have a strong conferencing package for your calls and meetings. Zoom is very good. But there are plenty of other options and many of them are also likely good. Don’t stick with something subpar just because a bean counter somewhere thinks it’s the right choice though. You and your team are the ones who have to use it daily, and dealing with laggy calls and dropped connections is no fun.

    My suggestion = Experiment to find the right choice. Then dig your heels in if necessary.

    Share your work

    A key remote working issue that I see often is not knowing what another person or people are working on. You don’t want to have to ask about this all the time. If I need to know what e.g. my junior product manager has been doing for the last few days, I should be able to see progress without having to go and specifically ask for it.

    Having to ask what’s being worked on right now and how much progress has been made (or not made!) is painful for everyone. It’s much better to just share your work as you’re doing it, so everyone (that wants to) can go look and take whatever actions they need to based on what they see (or not see).

    My suggestion = use Confluence. Use Google Docs. Use Slack with plugins. Use Git and check-in regularly. Use whatever tools you need to. But SHARE. YOUR. WORK. Somewhere everyone can see it. Regularly.

    Share more than just your work

    You can even take it one step further than that. Again, particularly as a remote worker, it can be important to give the rest of the team insights into your personal or family life. I like to do this by sharing occasional pictures of my family and talking about stuff done over the weekend etc. We have a #Random channel also for books/tv/films/video game discussions. Whether everyone or just you is remote, it’s good to contribute to a culture of getting to know each other outside of work.

    My suggestion = share too much information!

    Make like a spider

    Everyone needs feedback, but I’ve found particularly in my more product oriented role, that it’s been helpful to identify a number of different sources of feedback for how we’re doing as an organisation, as a team, and at a product level. I look for feedback on those things in our forums and in our social feeds. I also look for them in our support ticket queues and customer service/success emails. I look at industry news, newsletters and blogs as well. Basically, I’ve always got my eyes open for new and useful sources of information that can provide me with actionable insights as to how we’re doing, at a product kind of level.

    My suggestion = create a web of information sources and monitor them for interesting vibrations.

    Treat everything as feedback

    You can do the same thing internally of course. And I do! I monitor our IM channels for interesting & useful snippets of information. As well as emails and meeting notes or confluence updates. As the facilitator of many meetings, I use them as an opportunity to monitor the pulse of the team also. And let’s not forget one-to-ones and water cooler style conversations also.

    My suggestion = treat everything as a potential source of feedback. Get creative!

    Use systems to support your goals

    Something else that may be worth considering is how you can create your own feedback loops. What systems can you put in place that provide you with the desired feedback? For example, if I want to improve my overall health, I can identify a useful metric(s) – e.g. frequency/distance/speed of runs or cycle rides – and have an expectation that those metrics are going to trend in the desired direction over the course of time. With regards to how I’m doing in a new role, I’d apply the same thinking. What’s a useful KPI? What system is or can I put in place to support it? Is the KPI trending in the right direction? If not, what do I need to tweak?

    My suggestion = use systems to support your feedback goals.

    Remote isn’t for everyone

    I think one of the toughest things about working in a nebulous role like software testing or product management is the sense of imposter syndrome you can have, even after many years of experience, basically because the role is somewhat different and needs to be tweaked for each organisation and team you work with. That sense of being lost or adrift, without a good sense of whether you’re basically heading in the right direction based on useful feedback, can be quite overpowering.

    If you’re working completely remote from your team, it would be very easy for those feelings to become exaggerated. If you let them. And maybe, if you find that happening, remote working isn’t the right thing for you.

    But, I think if you put some of the ideas above in place, working remotely can be a lot easier than it otherwise might be. And if it still isn’t working out, perhaps it’s time to head back to the office!

  • Systems not Goals

    Systems not Goals

    One of the things folk tend to do around this time of year is think about their goals and targets for the upcoming year, and how well they did with those from the last year. I just did it myself in fact. Fortunately, they’re all in Evernote so it’s very easy to pull them up.

    I had some great objectives for the last year. They were all mind-mapped out (I use XMind for this) and categorised into different areas – health, career, learning, reading etc.

    Some of them I achieved. My health levels have way improved over the last couple of years, although I’ve typically not been very big on exercise.

    Some of them I’ve failed at. I’d planned on submitting abstracts to lots of conferences this year, but that never happened in the end. I’d also set a target for 52 blog posts this year (presumably 1 per week, though the goal doesn’t really state this explicitly.)

    If I go back to my 2014 goals, my track record for non-achievement gets even worse. Or better, depending on which way you look at it!

    Pilates and push ups didn’t fare so well. Neither did journaling, moving house and ramping-up our investment in property.

    So I can’t help but ask myself what the point is? Why bother to set goals when there’s a strong likelihood that a few days later I will have either forgotten or disregarded them?

    Probably – not much. Fortunately though, over the last few months of 2015, I found a much better way of achieving the things I set out to do.

    Systems, not Goals

    Instead of having a specific target or objective, I try to implement a system for actually getting things done instead. I’ll give you a few examples of what I mean.

    Diet

    It’s important to me that my family and I have a relatively healthy diet. So instead of setting a goal for healthy eating and changing our diet completely – I just implement a few rules for the food we purchase, what we cook and how we approach mealtimes, and what we try not to have too much of hanging around in the kitchen. Those rules look something like the below:

    • Don’t eat anything that’s white or that can be made white – bread, potato, pasta, sugar, milk
    • Replace carbs with beans or legumes
    • Eat a high protein breakfast
    • Keep nuts in the house for snacking (if I have nuts, I’m less likely to eat unhealthy alternatives)

    Exercise

    I hate going to the gym, so I just don’t do it. I don’t mind playing racket sports but it’s difficult to find other people to play them with at the times I want to play. So that doesn’t happen too often either.

    I have a fitness tracker, which helps a bit because it means my activities are at least being tracked, and in theory what I pay attention to should improve. The problem is, it’s too easy not to pay any attention. So the system that works for me in terms of exercise is this:

    • Put on trainers, sweat pants etc so I’m ready to exercise
    • Use a running coach (an app on my phone is fine for this)

    Exercise tends to be a bit of a hit and miss affair for me, but the system above is working currently. I’ve been out running more in the past few weeks than I did the entire rest of the year, so I’m doing something right.

    Learning

    I love to learn, so this is a pretty easy one for me. Still, I need to have some way of making sure that I’m learning the right things and that I’m doing it regularly. As such, I have a couple of systems to help me out:

    • Use Wunderlist (or a notepad, or whatever works for you) to track stuff I need to learn about
    • Set aside one day each week to learn new stuff
    • Turn off the TV and read instead

    Wunderlist works great for tracking stuff that I need to do, and stuff I need to learn becomes just another list. Since I have my list and one day a week specifically set aside for learning related activities – it’s just a matter of choosing or continuing with something from the list. Whatever I have energy for at the time.

    Turning off the TV is a more recent addition to my collection of systems. I’m not a big fan of the media generally and try not to listen to, read or watch the News for example (too depressing). Further curtailing my TV watching so it’s even less of a distraction seems like a natural next step.

    Systems work better

    I could go on and on. I have a ton of systems for achieving all of the things I want to do.

    Personally, I think they work way better than goals for several reasons:

    • They’re actionable – systems like the ones I mentioned above are made up of specific activities and things that need to be done. They’re not vague, pie-in-the-sky ideas about things I’d like to do or achieve. They can be done right now!
    • They don’t specify a result – where diet is concerned for example, none of the actions I talked about were tied to weight loss, though that has been a natural consequence of eating more healthily. Along with more energy and an easier life in the kitchen.
    • I don’t have to think about them – having systems made up of specific activities and actions mean I conserve willpower. I don’t need to think about how I’m going to achieve my goals, I just implement the system and trust that it’s moving me in the right direction.

    So here’s the thing. If you’re thinking about some things you’d like to achieve in the New Year… Rather than writing a list of goals, hopes or dreams – try to think about what activities you’re going to need to perform that are going to keep YOU moving in the direction of your goal.

  • The Big Leap

    In his book The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks recommends making the jump from your Zone of Excellence to your Zone of Genius. I think this is great advice, so I thought I’d share it, along with some tips for doing so.

    Hendricks basically identifies four modes of living that we move between at various stages or our life and careers.

    1. The Zone of Incompetence – made up of all the activities you’re not good at.
    2. The Zone of Competence – made up of all the activities you’re competent at, but that others can do equally as well a you can.
    3. The Zone of Excellence – activities you can do extremely well and probably make a good living at.
    4. The Zone of Genius – activities which you are uniquely suited to do, as a result of your personality, temperament, DNA etc.

    Most of us who are reasonably successful in our respective careers will have progressed beyond our Zone of Competence into a Zone of Excellence, where we’re utilising skills either developed over the course of time or to some extent, leveraging natural talents and abilities. There’s a good chance that we’re also being paid fairly well for doing so, which is where the danger of staying within our Zone of Excellence creeps in.

    Life just gets a bit too comfortable in the Zone of Excellence. And not just for us [who are operating within it] either. It’s quite possible that family and friends will have a interest in maintaining the status-quo, because while you remain in this space you can provide them with the lifestyle and relationships they’ve become accustomed to.

    Hendricks asserts that making The Big Leap into our Zone of Genius is the “ultimate path to success and satisfaction, and provides the following questions as tools for thinking about what this actually means:

    • What do I love most to do? (I love it so much I can do it for long stretches of time without getting tired or bored.)
    • What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? (I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.)
    • In my work, what produces the highest ratio of value and satisfaction to the amount spent? (Even if I do only ten seconds or a few minutes of it, an idea or a deeper connection may spring forth that leads to huge value.)
    • What is my unique ability? (There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realised and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organisation I serve.)

    I’ve found it massively helpful to work through the questions above and they’ve prompted some surprising answers. I’m quite fortunate in many ways, since the work I love to do is mostly the work I’m already doing. But there are certainly some adjustments that could and should be made. Making those adjustments requires some determination though, since Hendricks suggests that many of us will encounter what he calls The Upper Limit Problem just as we’re rising to success.

    The Upper Limit Problem is typically caused by false beliefs that can often be traced back to early-life experiences:

    • Feeling fundamentally flawed – I can’t expand to my full creative potential because something is fundamentally wrong with me.
    • Disloyalty and abandonment – I can’t expand to my full potential because it would leave me feeling all alone, or would mean being disloyal to my roots or people from my past.
    • Believing that success results in bigger burdens – I can’t expand to my potential because I’d be a bigger burden [to people I care about] than I am now.
    • The crime of outshining – I mustn’t expand to my full potential because if I did I would outshine /<insert name[s] here/> and make them look/feel bad.

    The Upper Limit Problem manifests itself in behaviours that cripple us when we should be riding high:

    1. Worry
    2. Criticism & Blame
    3. Deflecting
    4. Squabbling
    5. Getting sick or hurt
    6. Breaches of integrity

    These are problems that I’m sure many, if not all of us have experienced at times during our lives, both in and out of work. Of course, Hendrick provides some suggestions and tools for dealing with these issues, but above all he recommends an attitude of lighthearted wonder towards our personal shortcomings that resonates deeply with me – perhaps because I recognise so many of them!

    Being a fairly skeptical kind of person (hey, I’m a tester!) I’m naturally suspicious of this kind of material, but it has always made a lot of sense to me personally to keep learning and striving to be better than I am, both at work and in life generally. As a result of reading this book I have a renewed zeal for dealing with the false beliefs and behaviours that cause The Upper Limit problem, and a deep commitment to rising out of my Zone of Excellence (and all the creature comforts that come with it), and into my Zone of Genius.

    I’m ready to make my Big Leap. Are you?

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