Weeknote 14 - What's next?

What should I remember this week for?

First ever Reinventing Work: Scotland meetup! :D

Word of the week:

Next

Message of the week:

Smash the echo chamber

Who taught me something or really made me think this week?

Robb. He often challenges my thinking. He’s a fellow agile coach and he’s been working with the ‘Heart of Agile’ folks of late. He decided to create a ‘X’ shaped board for his team and he talked me through it. Basically there are three sections in each side of the ‘X’, each of which represents something to do with the 4 ‘Heart of Agile’ words: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve. So his Deliver section, for example is where the To Do, Doing and Done parts of the board live.

The Improve section has areas which have been earmarked for improvement, with a ‘keep or kill’ flow once they have been tried. The middle of the ‘X’ has an area from each section and this is the team’s daily focus. So it has experiments they are trying, what they need to collaborate on, what is actually being worked on and anything they want to call out or talk about immediately. It’s an interesting concept and time will tell whether it works for this team or not.

Where did I find inspiration?

I helped organise Scotland’s first Reinventing Work meetup and there were people from many different industries and backgrounds in attendance. We spoke about what we wanted from the group and there was a lot of people looking to break out from their specific discipline or industry groups and reach out to others. We used the phrase ‘echo chamber’ and talked about breaking them down and opening ourselves up to more and more areas that we can learn from.

At the meetup I was surrounded by people who want to make the same difference to our workplaces as I do, but I was almost the only one saying the word agile’. It made me really happy and showed me that we are all out there to achieve the same thing. It really made me think about how much I can share from the agile industry to help others and makes me excited about how much I can learn from them.

What am I still trying to work out?

Having a baby in my life has meant a lot of change over the past months, but now we’ve settled into a routine, things are a bit more predictable. I’ve realised that I’ve found a new time of day when I am productive. This week I collaborated with my pal Martin twice between the hours of 8pm and 10pm. The ‘post bedtime productivity’ as I’m coining it is the time after mini McLean has gone to bed where I can sit down and think about stuff and do some stuff. Realising that this space of the day is actually one where I feel productive has opened up a new world for me, where I can plan to get things done in that space. I just need to balance that with relaxation, which is equally as important.

How can I be better next week?

Now that I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, I need to balance it. I’m the sort of person who likes to be busy, have things planned. With some time to spare it’s tempting to fill it up, but I shouldn’t.

What am I looking forward to next week?

Non work related - my mum is coming to visit. :) This makes me happy. Also looking forward to a retrospective where I’m hoping to help a team understand what their test column means for them and also run a circuits session with a group of multi-disciplined people to help them understand each other’s roles and expertise.

#nowplaying

Beyonce - was visiting my cousin and she just always makes me want to listen to Beyonce.

#nowreading

I’ve been reading a study about subgroups in sport by the University of Portsmouth.

#nowwatching

‘Bonding’ (Netflix) Silly but funny.