Week notes s1e4–6 22.04 -03.05
I’ve been having lots of fun immersing myself in my new product team over at the Co-Op.
So much so to the point where I’ve been good at keeping on top of our teams week notes but not so good at reflecting and updating my own.
You know your having a good time at work when you’ve been so immersed in something and you look up at the time and realise you have 20 mins to grab your lunch before a 1:1 with your line manager.
This is a whistle-stop tour of some of my highlights from the last 3 weeks
Visualising your work
I knew I was going to love working at co-op digital and being here nearly a month already ( time flies!) has really given me an extra appreciation for the power of visualising your work.
Some of the things we’ve got up on walls and boards has included:
- Ideation session — loved how proactive our lead designer was in facilitating a brilliant how might we ideation session
- The walls used a box of post its I swear 😄
- New delivery board — its already so much easier to see what our focus is on
- Team retro — loved how it helped us to quickly hone in on where the team needed to discuss things
New starter imposter syndrome and adapting to a truly agile team
Being a newbie to the team I’ve had that awkward personal angst feeling for a few days as I wrangled with trying to avoid being seen as too bossy ( and opinionated) and building confidence with my approach to help support the team with what they need.
At the same time I realised how I’d developed some not so useful habits and behaviours from being in agency land and not ever working in a truly agile team. I realised I was seeing the product owner as the ‘client’ and was concerned that our change in direction would mean he would be disappointed in what we’d done.
After a really helpful chat with Nate (the principal interaction designer) helped me to realise that its the team who decide whats best based on what we’re trying to achieve. I knew this was what it meant to be in an empowered, self organising team but having the product lead come back from holiday and say how impressed he was with our teams collective decision making was a huge relief and a moment of personal celebration that I’m in a great team that gets agile ways of working.
Mentoring training and meetings
Last week was all about mentoring! I finally got around to attending the One Million Mentors (OMM) training session which was a really lovely way to meet other mentors, refresh your understanding of the process and feel ready to take on the role of supporting a young person aged 14–25 to give them valuable support in achieving their potential.
At the same time as embarking on my journey of becoming a mentor with OMM, I’d got matched with my mentor as part of the Pankhurst Trust — Some Women Coach initiate to get guidance and support from female leaders within the Manchester community. It as funny that both schemes referred to the G.R.O.W framework so I’m looking forward to working with that to help support my personal development.
MBA beginnings
I’m also getting all prepped for embarking on a pretty big learning adventure, which is doing a 2 year online Masters in Business Administration with MMU.
I attended the welcome webinar this week and have been reminding myself of the Harvard referencing system ( the organiser in me does like this system) as well as planning out the academic schedule into my diary. Again so I can maximise the most of the study gaps in between modules. Its also going to be a great opportunity to do a dissertation on an active business topic and I’m mulling over thoughts around digital change and innovation as a fantastic topic to apply to my MBA research.
As I make my way along what is going to be a challenging 2 years this is where keeping track via week notes will be really interesting to reflect on the highs and lows.
Hope my next instalment won’t be quite so late next time!
