Missed writing weeknotes last week due to being busy across business and personal. I’m trying to cut myself some slack about it. I got the stuff done that I needed to get done and weeknotes didn’t make the cut. That’s what prioritisation looks like (which I’m saying out loud to convince myself).
Expanding on previous thoughts regarding “the map is not the territory”, focusing and organising people around tangible things may be one way to avoid getting overly attached to “the map”. This seems consistent with the idea of using cheap prototypes or tests to advance understanding.
What does it mean when a company who’s pivotal reason for existing is connecting people regardless of location insists that their own workers need to be back in the office to collaborate more effectively? Whilst I do agree that collaborative or creative work tends to come more easily in-person, you can make it work in a distributed setting as long as you have put the effort into creating the right space and using the right set of facilitation tools. Given the increased compeition in this space, it doesn’t bode well for Zoom as a product if they themselves can’t figure this out without recalling everyone to an office setting. Maybe the uptick in growth was just a blip associated with Covid and this erosion of their market share is a return to the norm?
Some very sensible stuff said in this Housing Technology peice from Riverside housing on devloping an agile digital business approach. Pleasingly lots of similarities between things we working or have worked on. Although I did chuickle a little at the assumption that smaller organisations can move faster. I’ve worked in an org of 100 people where the IT team consists of 4. Whilst the volume of ‘data ‘stuff’ scales down, you still end up with broadly the same collection of things to look after, but only a small group of people to do it. And it’s unlikely you’ll have the luxury of deep expertise in any one area or much budget to call upon them. Not saying it’s harder or easier, just a different set of challenges in a different context. As ever with these things, I think you have to choose where you want to place your focus and where you, as an internal team, can provide the most value.
