I’m writing these on the train back from Manchester to Cardiff. So far its going much more smoothly than the journey up! Travelling up to the office is both really enjoyable and quite exhausting. So what happened this week!?

• Monday was hectic, a full day where you have to squeeze lunch in. Amongst other things, more project kick off calls, supporting with an engineering interview, 1:1s etc too. It was good to hear product teams asking the ‘big questions’ about why work is being done and what is in/out of scope. Over time I’m learning more about the complexity of different processes that our products support and how variable their usage can be across the different size and layouts of stores we have. I’m fortunate to work within a team that wants to tackle that complexity head on.
• I then shifted focus to finalising plans for our team ‘away day’ (which admittedly was mostly in the office!). I generally feel like we try to cram too much into days like this, so tried to keep the agenda relatively light. The main goal of the day was to build working relate ships within the team and spot ways we could support each other over the coming year. This was especially important because we welcomed two new team members, moving over from another team in Co-op which is exciting!
• Wednesday was my first full non-working day of the year. It snowed a bit in Cardiff and I managed to get out on the mountain bike in the morning which was nice!

• Thursday was a very early train to Manchester which wasn’t without incident, but we eventually arrived a bit late. Fortunately it was still in enough time for me to make it across town, with a stop off to pick up some drawing materials! I facilitated the away day, but to be honest the team don’t need a lot of facilitating…so combined with a light agenda the day went pretty smoothly I think! If its of interest the very high level agenda was:
  • Icebreaker – Charcoal drawing activities
  • Timeline retro of 2022
  • Sharing personal objectives for 2023
  • Lunch
  • Book club
  • Team Canvas activity
  • Wrap up
  • Flight club
• I especially enjoyed the charcoal drawings…

• It was great to all get together in a room, especially to share personal and team goals for the year. What’s really clear is that there is a big aspiration to adopt more service design approaches and become more involved in strategic thinking. If you’ve got any insight on what behaviours represent ‘strategic thinking’ then let me know.
• Friday was very quiet in the office (apparently Tuesday – Thursday is the new office week) and after a 1:1 and some annual review admin I headed back to get on the train home.

I didn’t have an obvious long read for this week but I can share the two books I recommended (but forgot to take with me) to colleagues at the away day:

How to make sense of any mess – Abby Covert

Orbiting the giant hairball – Gordon MacKenzie