User manual for me — 2020 refresh

2021 refresh of Manual for me at https://ianroddis.medium.com/user-manual-for-me-2021-refresh-9d3422ff1f74, this version retained for the memories!

2020 is a time of big change for me, so here’s a refresh of my ‘manual for me’, inspired by https://medium.com/@cassierobinson/a-user-manual-for-me-d3a851fbc694

me doing a Youtube show and tell

Conditions I like to work in

• I like to be flexible and work in the best way to meet a need. Sometimes that’s sitting in a coffee shop with headphones on, sometimes that’s standing in front of a whiteboard, sometimes it’s joining a videoconference with the video on so I feel (and am felt to be) present.
• I’m a fan of (remote) distributed working and have done it since 2005.
• I think it’s incredibly important to be ‘present’ and that people know where you are and in what state. That’s why I try to keep my status updated in Slack/Skype/Teams as to where I am.
• My work calendar is open so you can see what I’m doing at any time (and if you see a slot in my calendar please feel free to send an invite — not an email asking for my availability…).
• I spent many years sat at ‘my desk’ with my curios around me, my discarded food wrappers and photos of my nearest and dearest. It was ‘my space’ and I treated it as such. I don’t want to do that again.
• Increasingly wherever I have my bag, my laptop, phone, sharpies, post-its and highlighters that’s my office.

The times/hours I like to work

• I’ve had to train myself to switch off. Too often in the past I have been ‘on’ from 7am to midnight. My working pattern now is to check in from my commute to London (normally catch the 7.50 train that lands at Euston at 8.39) and I’ll be in email contact and working.
• I’m happy to take calls on my cycle to the office when I normally get there at about 9.15. I’m then available until normally 6pm when I try and switch off (but as many will know, I often can’t stop myself…).
• I work from home on Fridays
• I often catch up on work over the weekend, and if I do send anything out at evenings and weekends I don’t expect a response until the next working day.

The best ways to communicate with me

• I don’t think I have a preference. Increasingly I’m using mobile technologies and ‘push’ alerts via tools like Slack/Teams
• I don’t disrespect email but see it more at the formal end of the scale, and useful when you want an ‘audit trail’ — whether that’s for staffing matters, or resource/budget issues etc.
• I’m comfortable in Slack, Teams, Trello and Google docs but also Office 365/Sharepoint, Jira, Confluence. And if I’m not comfortable, I soon learn.
• In this digital age I am still a big fan of face to face (or failing that telephone) and often like walking meetings.
• I use Twitter mostly for work reasons and it’s a great way to keep up to date in the broader Digital and Health market, (and my DMs are open).

The ways I like to receive feedback

• Face-to-face please.
• And please do it, so many people don’t give feedback.
• I’d rather broach any disagreements, than let them fester. I have learnt how to have difficult discussions in the workplace and am not afraid of them.

Things I need

• I try and treat people with respect and take any staff management or mentoring duties very seriously. I guess I need (or would like…) the people around me to do the same with me.
• I also need people to be efficient, to focus on the task at hand and to be conscious of how much time you could be wasting by doing <that>.

Things I struggle with

• Arbitrary commitments; I much prefer to work towards genuine outcomes, with dates and tasks and people identified
• I understand the corporate machine and have a high degree of tolerance of it. But….
• Disrespect, of people’s time, and being (it’s easy to be civil).
• Siloes, and internal only thinking.

Things I love

• Solving problems at a whiteboard is my norm.
• I enjoy working across different roles and teams and have a <big perspective>.
• Delivering stuff, making stuff happen and enabling change.
• Being wildly ambitious and naively optimistic, when I’m neither of those things (I’m a planner, and a deliverer by nature).
• Learning new things — last year I learnt to not use ‘guys’ — see articles like this as to why — I also did a couple of Roman Pichler training sessions, and he’s my go to person for Product thinking… I’ve also learnt not to ‘trash talk’ (thanks Mohammed).
• And I love working in the open — see some YouTube show & tells I’ve done at https://youtu.be/Bzs_qJtuxE4 and https://youtu.be/C8dfgJQ8JEo and of course I blog when I feel I have something to say.

Other things to know about me

• I recently messaged a colleague “Product until I die”, which (whilst being melodramatic, and borrowing from soccer parlance) means by nature and training I self identify as a Product Manager, whereby being agile, having a roadmap and a vision, a backlog, a focus on outcomes and metrics, managing a delivery product life cycle and above all else focusing on user needs are my core. There’s also a bunch of stuff around intentful listening, right speech, achieving consensus and referent power that I’m a big fan of (but more of that soon in another blog post). If you want to know about Product Management visit the Gov DDAT framework or consume everything by Roman Pichler.
• I’ve learnt to bring more of me into work, but I’m still quite private. On the Myers Briggs Scale I consistently come out as INTP — and INTPs ‘pride themselves on their inventiveness and creativity, their unique perspective and vigorous intellect. Usually known as the philosopher, the architect, or the dreamy professor’.
• But I sometimes struggle with the INTP definition (and I know Myers Brigg is viewed sceptically now) as I am highly delivery focused, and increasingly care about the common good of the people around me.
• It’s largely for fun, but I’ve characterised current colleagues such as Dean, and Matt (and Sarah) as a bit Gryffindor. And myself as a bit Slytherin. There’s a grain of truth in it, but hey, Snape was motivated by the highest power of all — love.
• Back to that “wildly ambitious and naively optimistic” thing — I believe anything is possible, and let’s start every conversation in that way.