12 year-end suggestions for 2023

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello, and welcome to another exciting episode of Definitely Maybe Agile with your hosts, Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock. How are you today, Dave?

It's the end of the year. It's always good looking outside and getting a great crispy feel to the air. I'm looking forward to well, December comes quite quickly, right? But I'm looking forward to that time when you get a few weeks to sort of kind of decompress and think about next year and reflect on last year.

Yep, yep. And uh what do we have on the cards today?

Well, of course, we've got the the 12 days of happy holidays. 12 things to take away with us as uh as we wrap up for the uh for the year.

Yeah, it's a good time to look through this time and let's uh let's have our list of 12 things. So uh I think uh as we were writing these down, we came up with like four general categories. And the first of those was around marketplace and change and the the world we find ourselves in today. Uh so uh where would you like to start there?

Well, what I find interesting here is we're just coming to the end of uh, you know, if you look over the last few years, so many different things have been hitting organizations one thing after the next. And as we come to the close, a lot of organizations are looking forward to next year with trepidation, with concern about another thing, which is kind of the state of the economy and inflation and and various things like that, which are beginning to bite in a number of different sectors. And I think uh one of the first sort of takeaways is to recognize that, in a sense, this is the new normal. The note we made is change is the new black, right? It's it's the new normal, it's the way it is. It's it's always going to be discussed of effectively a place where change was inconsistent and rare to an environment we find ourselves in today where change is continuous and we have to adapt to it all the time rather than occasionally.

Yeah, it feels like we're always adapting to the next crisis, the next thing that's coming at us, the next uh external event uh which is coming in, or the internal events which are like driving change. So we've got to be able to build systems that respond to that. So stop looking at the world around you as if it's static, and that start thinking about the fact that it is going to be changing, and uh and based on that, how are you gonna respond differently that now that you are looking at it from the perspective that it is gonna be changing?

I I think it's a it's a concept of static versus dynamic. You want to be nimble and ready for continually having to adjust rather than static and being fragile to that or considering it to be a you know, why is it still happening? It's something that's going to happen. Let's be nimble on our feet, let's think about how to help our teams do the same thing through systems, through the way we work. But what else would you add around marketplace and change?

So the next item we had on our on our list here, and we've got 12 in total. I don't know if I mentioned that, but there's 12 of these. So the second one, the second one, and this one also under marketplace and change, is around uh think holistically. So uh, and here it's it's about think about the entire system. Uh very often we get uh stuck with just looking at a single part of the system and not realizing that there's there's so much more going on. What are the inputs and the outputs? Where is everything? Systems exist within systems. Start to think about the system as a whole rather than looking just at your piece of it. And uh if you find yourself running into barriers or impediments, start to think, well, could I look at this in a different way? Could I start to think about the system as a whole rather than just my piece of it? And maybe that's what's causing it. We need to get a little stuck, right?

Well, and I I think it's also that you know we deal with what's in front of us and we can end up having the blinkers on. And taking that moment to step back and look more holistically allows us to see the context within the broader systems that are are being uh leading us to the conversations or the situations we're in front of. This actually brings us to the third point as well, which is where you get information from. So this again is one of those uh maybe this is one of those things to look for in the new year is how do you get information about what's happening from a broader range of sources? Because when you're looking holistically, you need to get those that information coming at you more frequently and more varied, sort of diverse sources. So, how do you get the insights about what's working, what's not in the systems that you are operating in?

Yeah, we we come uh very often we get stuck into a set of um information sources that we're used to operating within, and we always go back to the same places to find them. Um, but there's so much more information out there than we can possibly consume. And so going out and finding new ones and like uh a new podcast or a new uh uh book to read or a new person to talk to, or whatever it may be, like uh finding new sources of information that you can use to help uh refine and build your your model of the of the world that you're operating and interacting with. Uh so so moving on from Marketplace and Change, our first category, we're gonna move on to our second category, which is pragmatic stuff to remember. And so, where would you like to start here?

Yeah, this is this is my my little soapbox that I jump on over and over again, which is shorter time horizons. Increments deliver short increments quickly. I mean small increments quickly. In the in the world of product development, it's released more frequently, in the world of organizational change, it's small micro changes repeatedly that you can learn from and move around and and and uh um uh kind of you know move in a direction and then pause and move in a different direction and then pause and so on. This whole concept of shorter time horizons of getting things out of the door more quickly so you can steer, so you can learn and get feedback is is the way we handle you know dynamic change.

And and since you had one of uh your your favorite uh quotes, I thought I'd have one of mine for our second point too, which is rise to your goal. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. The the importance of building our systems up so that uh and this this ties back into what we were saying about change and into the shorter time horizons. It's like, what are we focused on? What are we actually building? Are we just trying to work towards if we just try and work towards our goals and we never achieve them, the system will support us? So are we also building up our system, our support network, the information that we gather with what we understand about the system holistically and how change is impacting us because that will allow us to be able to build that and become more responsive and more nimble.

Yeah, I always think of that as the visionary leader without the pragmatic leader backfilling process and systems is not going to get where you need to get to, and they're really the same people, and they're really rarely the same leaders.

Yes, yeah, that's a good point.

Um, third thing that we might look at here, pragmatic stuff to remember. And I, you know, we're talking to we're seeing a lot of people re-jigging, rethinking what they're going to do in the new year. And one of the key things as you come into the new year is prioritize what you're doing and stop doing stuff. I mean, that shift from the old year to the new year is a really great time to sit down and re-evaluate what's essential and double down on that, but at the same time stop something.

I I ran uh a retro at the end of a strategy workshop for a team of executives last week. And the uh uh the comment I made at the end on in the retro, the sticky I put on was uh we didn't say no to winner. Because that was exactly that. It's like you you put it was great, it was wonderful. We put all this work up, we made all of this work visible, but there was nothing that we said no to.

All of it was in it's exciting saying yes to new opportunity, and it's really heartrending to pulling the plug on things that we say, you know, that the time has come, we've done as much as we can, we need to focus our energies somewhere else, and that's really what we look to our leaders to make those tough decisions and you know, clearing I wouldn't say it's dead wood, but clearing some of those closely held, you know, pieces and saying now's the time to move away from them.

So our third category is don't forget. So what what shouldn't we not forget?

Well, I mean, this is a great there's a there's a couple of key areas. Here's here's one that I you know as the as the sort of you know, we're looking at the economy and we're looking at where things are going into the new year. One of them is don't forget your people. And and really it's it's just spending that time to to communicate, to help people understand the uncertainty and not necessarily wait and wait and wait until something there's there's something to communicate, help people understand how decisions are being made. But also just don't like there there are people who who want to know what's going on next year and they want to know how things will fare, and that's I think a really critical piece to bring to the table.

Uh the other piece we had here was around uh security. So I mean security is a critical piece um that uh is becoming more and more important as we look at our environments, is getting integrated into every aspect of the the systems of building the processes that we have into place, into the way that we organize our work. Uh it's uh such a key part of everything that we do, working out how you're going to integrate that into uh all of the things that you're doing is becoming uh more and more essential. I mean, it's uh like every day it seems we get yet another message about yet another hundred million accounts have been uh taken out of somebody's uh property. So uh ensuring that there is a continued focus uh on that and that you're working out how you build this into your systems is a part of how you work. And this again ties back to that thinking holistically, think about the whole system, make sure that everybody's at the table so they understand the importance of this. So it isn't a something coming out of left field where you say, Well, we're okay to release something insecure. So make sure that uh the the importance is understood.

Well, and and and I think this touches on the the final one, and all of these sort of rotate partially around, you know, um not forgetting your people and having that sort of mindset that we look after our people because they're gonna look after our systems, our customers, our future of the business, if you like. But that security is an arm of a much broader conversation that you and I have touched on a handful of times through the year, which is the attention given to quality overall, whether it's development quality or system quality, it's and it and it's we've sort of touched on it in the fact that years ago engineering practices were a big part of the discussion when it came to lean and agile or DevOps or however we looked at that. Whereas in more recent years, that's taken a back seat, it's it's kind of filtered down a bit or it's been pushed to one side. And yet we've talked a number of times this year about the importance of bringing that back up, and it just feels like now is the right time as you look into that new year of making sure quality is uh the way we wrote it down here, or I wrote it here was quality is probably more important than you think. It's that you know, it's it's it's been ignored for a bit, or a select, it's not had a seat at the table in the way it has had in the past.

Yeah, and this this ties into uh quality as an aspect of value, and there's a whole other podcast we can dig into that one on so and the uh different elements of it.

Uh well and how it how uh essential it is to security and how essential it is to sort of all of those things, and it's a mindset, not a tool set. So how to get that in place is is interesting.

Yes. Uh moving on to our last category here, uh, category number four is uh it's all about the end of year. And I think here we might like what what should we be doing to the end of the year?

Well, I mean, it here is is you know, we've got a few weeks, ten days. We're gonna be with family, we're gonna be with friends, taking that you know, a step back. One of the things anytime that you do that, one of the things that um we always encourage our leaders to do, if you like, if we're working with them, is re-evaluate the objectives. Look at your North Star. Is it still the right North Star given everything that we've talked about? It's a natural time to re-evaluate that, to look at it, even to make sure that how you're addressing that is still relevant as you step into 2023.

Yeah, for sure. And and there's also an opportunity uh to think about well, what am I going to do from a uh self-improvement perspective now moving forward? Like what can I go and learn? How am I how am I integrating learning into my day-to-day work and how I operate and my my routine? Am I giving myself an opportunity to uh to step back and think about things and think about uh learning and think about what can I go and uh improve on? And so where can I build expertise or more capability or more learning in all of the things that I do?

Well, and I I just want to pick up on what you were saying there, Peter, because you're saying it from the the I perspective, me. What what can I do about me, which I think is a very natural piece, but I also think that this is the time where leaders in the organization can can set expectations, can create space for exactly that, right? So as leaders, we can we can encourage, we can support, we can create that space, we can, you know, there is there's a lot of um sometimes when we're we're busy delivering something, if somebody wants to learn about something which is slightly off the wall or not essential to the delivery that we're working on right now, we might not necessarily encourage or give the time or opportunity for that. Maybe now's the time to let people kind of look at the adjacent rather than focus on what's right in front of them.

One of my uh my favorite examples of that is um something called Yeti. Uh do you know this one? Uh year-end technology innovation, I think it stands for. It's like or something along those lines. And so the the entire program is just the aisle, the concept is just built around that. It's like what what Yeti are you going to produce while you have time? And not all organizations go through uh like a year-end slowdown or year-end fee. Some organizations get busier at this time of year. There's uh depending on the type of industry you're in. But uh for quite a lot of industries this tends to be a time to where things slow down a bit, and this is an opportunity to think about uh well, what could I use this time for? And uh as well spending it with family and other pieces, but what else could I do? What else could I go and learn and experiment?

Well, what are the you know, what are the things that we promised to spend time on and just never got a chance? I think there's is sometimes we try and utilize every single working day to the end of the year, and I think there's a huge value in just in just allowing that the organization to breathe in and out a bit as we do that. Again, depending on your your industry, it might be that the time is a different time of year, but there's still that breathing in and out. And I think this this neatly brings us to the sort of reflection piece, uh um as our as our 12th thought for the day, if you like. And that one is that um I was just reading actually another um list of 12 things to do before the end of the year, and one of those things was about journaling, about just taking that time to to be thoughtful. Uh, and I think there's a lot to be said for that. Sometimes we can be work, work, work, or work, family, work, family, or whatever the conjunction of those things that that keep us busy are, but there's time and a space for something different to Yeah, for sure.

That was uh I my comment on here was uh around my uh my notebook because uh I just finished my uh notebook for the year, and uh so this this go runs from January of the and uh I just managed to finish it just now, so it almost lasted the entire year. And uh and this has all of the notes that uh been sitting on my ideas and thoughts and stuff. So going back and just looking through this and seeing like what did I accomplish, what conversations did I have, what sort of ideas were there out there? Was what other things could we follow up on and pull together and and being able to mine all of that information is uh is invaluable.

Well, I always I like the sometimes it's really easy to get into this race mentality, and one of the things I really appreciate about spending that time of reviewing where things are and kind of looking ahead a bit and looking behind a bit is recognizing how well things have gone. There are there is a long list of stuff that I I personally wish I had got to and I didn't, but there's also a long list of stuff that I got to and and I'm pretty happy with where it went. And sometimes taking that moment just to kind of congratulate oneself on how how the the progress that was made while at the same time kind of looking around a little bit. And I always make it this I made a note here about reading a book. This is one of those things where all of a sudden you've got that time to do something that, you know, maybe not reading a book that's essential to what work is, but reading a book that's just out there and different, right?

Yes, yes, something you wouldn't normally read, that you might might spark some ideas. Uh so so we've we've got through all 12. That's pretty impressive. Uh, should should we uh do a rundown of uh of all the 12 now?

Yes, so the first group of three, marketplace and change. We talked about um well recognizing change is the new black. It's it's here to stay. We've talked about that a lot. We're thinking holistically, being able to look around and look at the bigger picture and getting information from maybe places we've not got information from before.

And then we touched on uh the second category around uh pragmatic stuff to remember, things that uh can help guide us in some of this. And we talked about the shorter time horizons, making sure that we're we're actually finishing work and not just starting work and actually getting things done. Uh talked about uh we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems, about investing and building the systems that will support us if we don't achieve our goals, making sure that we're not just constantly striving for the next thing. Um and then there's the strategic uh piece of it around if I'm gonna say yes to taking on new work, uh what am I gonna say no to? What am I gonna take off my plate so I'm not constantly bringing more and more stuff in and getting busier in business?

Right. So that led us to uh three things not to forget. And I really love the way you hand over there because part of the saying no to things which are on people's plate is don't forget the people, don't forget that they've got work to do and we're gonna overload them if we're not careful. Um, but there was also the don't forget to communicate and keep them in the loop. Part of that was also the the sort of two things that we bump into quite a bit in our own work, which is watch out for security. That feels like something to watch for, not forget about bring it, maybe raise it a little. And the other one was around quality. Quality is perhaps more important than you think is the sort of phrase we came up with.

And then the last category there was around uh things to do for the end of the year. And and there we covered off revisiting your objectives. So like uh are you still on track? Are you do you understand your North Star? Is there anything that needs to change? Uh sharpening your soul, thinking about uh how can I learn not just and not just for yourself, as you pointed out, but also uh how can I help the organization learn? How can I give them an opportunity to uh uh encourage um learning in themselves? And then there's reflection looking back at uh what has happened this year and celebrating what we've achieved, and not just uh dwelling on all the things that we didn't get done, but go but looking back and uh saying, look at everything that we got done this year. Isn't it amazing?

Well, and maybe this is a great way to kind of wrap up for the year, right? So what's amazing is we started this year finishing our 52 weeks and 52 podcasts, and then we introduced the new sort of season format that we've put together. And it's been a real pleasure, Peter, just having these conversations, getting feedback, answering some of the um comments and uh um uh discussions that we've had with people who've heard what we've been talking about. Looking forward to doing more of that next year.

Yes, yeah, that'll be good. And uh yeah, thank you, Dave. It's uh always it's been fantastic. And uh yeah, you'll you'll hear us again in the new year for season three. And uh now we just got to decide on a topic. Maybe that's something we can reflect on over the next few weeks.

Makes sense. Makes sense. Um, as always, comments, feedback, uh best wishes for the happy holidays, whatever it might be, feedback at definitely maybeagile.com.

Awesome. Thank you, Dave, and uh we will see you in a bit. You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.