Broke my streak…missed a week last week. But that’s how it is, from memory I was proper exhausted. I think a mix of trying to sort stuff to put house on the market (spending evenings re-painting the same walls every time the kids draw on them again) and trying to get fit on the bike (spending evenings on the turbo in the shed). Anyway, this week just gone, in no particular order…

• At some point either this week, or end of last week, someone asked ‘how are people feeling’ in our design leadership slack channel and the best way I could describe it was ‘Leadership-y’. By which I meant, I feel very much out of the detail, much more concerned with trying to create the right environment for teams to do their work, without needing to know exactly what design challenges they’re solving. I think this is why I struggle to try and explain what I do these days to people outside of the industry. I knew the new year would bring quite a bit of change for my role and as with all change I encounter, my aim is to embrace it and see how I can mould it to work best for me.
• Related to that feeling is getting more involved in hiring and interviewing at Co-op. This has meant my first time acting as hiring manager since joining – lots of previous experience is transferable, but every recruitment process has its quirks and confusing bits. The thing that’s stood out for me is the difference in interest in the role, moving from a small consultancy in Cardiff to a big in-house team. We got approx 10x the number of applications I might have got in my previous job – of course that doesn’t always translate to a high number of qualified applicants, but its an indication of the difference hiring for a well known & respected design team can make.
• Pause here to shout out the invaluable work that the content design community has done at Co-op over the years to make it such a desirable place to work – the reputation the content team collectively has is super impressive and is undoubtedly part of the reason we got so many applications!
• I also sat in on another Engineering Manager interview, and one of my main reflections is how refreshing the way the role is considered at Co-op is. Admittedly I have very little comparison from other organisations, but the focus on coaching, the expected prioritisation of behavioural and emotional intelligence over technical ability when working with engineers is really encouraging. As someone who is frequently supporting designers to work alongside these engineers, having engineering and design leadership collectively pulling in the same direction on those things is vital.
• A more general reflection I have on hiring is that its the thing that makes me feel most like an ‘imposter’. I generally think I’m capable (cue laughs from the audience) at my role, but its a big jump to then say that this qualifies me to judge whether others will be capable in a role based on relatively limited information about them. Being able to decide whether they can access a new career/the next step etc really dials up the feeling of ‘Who am I to be making this call…why should I get a say in whether this person does or doesn’t get a job’. I don’t know if that will ever go away, I’ve been involved in hiring for maybe 5 years, so maybe in another 10 it might fade away!? Or maybe its a good thing that will always keep me honest when recruiting, I don’t know.
• I also spent some time this week thinking about personal and team objectives. Personally I struggle with this, I think people look to leadership for direction and that can often include something badged ‘objectives’. I’m realising that I have a pretty loose approach to setting objectives, I might write a bit more about it, because its not just informed by work, but also from playing team and individual sports for many years. It can probably be most succinctly summarised by Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,”. Throughout my career in consultancy and on sports pitches, the most valuable ability people can have is to successfuly adapt and respond to change or set-backs. I’m still trying to figure out how to meaningfully set longer team team and personal objectives in light of this.
  
  This weeks long read is probably quite relevant to the closing thoughts on objectives – and more of a ‘sense and respond’ approach to deciding what to do next. Tom Kerwin is someone I’ve followed for his thinking on using prototypes which overlaps with my research interests. He recently wrote about running a new workshop format with Dave Snowden who’s mostly know for his Cynefin complexity framework:
  
  A Trip into the estuary
  
  Snowden’s work tends to be rich in ecological metaphors, which can make it hard reading at first (at least it is for me as someone who isn’t very familair with plant or animal life), but the principles and some of the facilitation practices really resonated with me.