Learnings from the first 100 days

1. Prioritize early on, 2. Allocate focused time, 3. Experiment with new ways of working, 4. Appreciate the wisdom of the network, and 5. Enhance trust and joy 

The world has changed during the first 100 days of my new work. We are quite used to changes with the pandemia but the war in Ukraine has turned our thoughts upside down. The work community is multicultural and I’ve learned that there’s a deep respect for people in the values at Elisa. The importance of taking into account the different situations of our co-workers and their families, both Ukrainians and Russians, was emphasised right from the first information session. Diverse backgrounds are fostered in everyday life with language choices, remote possibilities and ways of working in the teams. What else have I learned in the first 100 days?

1. Prioritize early on

I have the pleasure of working with three teams with different challenges and joys. Learning has been that we don’t need to develop all the areas at the same time. There are often burning platforms that you need to start from but after that ask permission from your colleagues and stakeholders to prioritize some things for a later phase. Explain why that’s needed and most likely people will understand. Visualizing the prioritization helps the conversation and is easy to get back to. It’s also important to say clearly when the development starts in different areas.

With software development, a prioritizing framework that visualizes epics can be very helpful. For example, WSJF prioritization model can be simplified and modified to serve your purpose. The framework doesn’t have to be perfect in the beginning, you can improve it with stakeholders and people around you. Customer benefit, business benefit and development speed can be good axes to start with. Aim for one graph visualization or a simple Miro board so that it’s quick and easy to start the conversation.

2. Allocate focused time

We all need focused time to develop our thinking and for creating concrete outcomes. If your life is looking like one big Teams/Meet/Zoom -meeting after another you easily end up fiddling only with small matters. At the beginning of my work, a wise friend said to me that within four months my calendar will be packed with meetings and I have no time to think. First I felt he referred to a perfect storm, but later realised he was quite right. 

A great life hack has been to book Thursdays in my calendar as focused time. Thursdays are for complex topics and cooperation, and for focusing on concrete outcomes instead of spending time in meetings. Mini-workshops with teams can also be organized more easily. Booking one day a week pushes you to enhance asynchronous work in general. Thursday bookings started because of the Design sprint method we were using for creating better focus and prioritization, as explained in my previous blog. By keeping the same state of mind with Thursdays, for example, using time-boxing and doing short stakeholder interviews or user tests, I’ve learned they bring efficiency to my work as a whole.

3. Experiment with new ways of working 

I value dailies a lot. They are a possibility to see everyone daily and get a sense of how are things going. Our dailies are for 15 minutes and there are three dailies back to back, so they have to stay within the 15 minutes also, at least for me. Otherwise, there are different ways of working in the teams, two of the teams use Kanban and one team migrated from Kanban to Scrum and two-week Sprints two months ago. Special thanks for co-creating the new Sprint model, with structured planning sessions and retros to Jaakko Santala, Jani Eriksson, and Sudhansh Jain. 

With a Sprint board, it’s easier to limit the backlog and concentrate on fewer prioritized tasks. This seems to be working very well in developing new capabilities and data gathering. Aiming for end-to-end use cases keeps the customer close instead of producing features. 

Kanban fits better with the other teams developing for example authentications methods and Elisa’s Design system. The importance is to experiment and value the freedom of changing the way we work if needed. The differences between Kanban vs. Scrum are quite nicely listed in this blog by Miro.

4. Appreciate the wisdom of the network

Always when you meet a brilliant person ask them who should you talk to next. This applies especially when you enter a new company. Regardless of the organisational structure, you end up learning from the best people. In the first weeks and months, interact with inspirational people as much as possible. My happiness at work depends quite a lot on that I’m able to work with nice and smart people. It’s not the only factor, but it’s the first on the list.

Good learning about networks what one wise friend told me years ago is: Wisdom isn’t in one’s own head, it’s not in the team that you’re working in, and not even in the company you are in. Wisdom is out there in the communities, networks and cooperation with others in the world. In the last months, I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with bright minds within the company and outside. I’ve held presentations and had insightful conversations for example with people at Tampere university and Alko. Cooperation and sparring with numerous old and new companions have guided me.

Networks also help when you’re searching for new people to join the company. Someone in your network is likely to know perfect matches. Ask help from people you know to be good judges of character, and help others when they ask. The time spent on this will be saved multiple times in the future. Four people have joined our group, and I’m thankful for the network and happy to be able to work with such clever people.

5. Enhance trust and joy

Building capabilities and better data for a company to succeed is serious business. That said, I still believe that often the data gets better only when people are having fun when developing and using it. You need the constant feedback loop from the people who are using the capabilities or data, and the more real-time and in their everyday life people are using the better.

We must be building some great things since I’ve been launching with tears in my eyes many times this spring because of people telling funny stories or doing pranks. Laughter goes quite often hand in hand with trust. A trusting environment allows creativity and joy to grow. I feel I’m trusted by the people around me which is great with everyday life struggles.

Learnings are simple, trust the wisdom of your colleagues, and ask for help. Try to act so that people can trust you. Promise things you can keep and do the best you can. Trust that it will be enough. Remember retros and encourage joy. Don’t forget to say out loud how much you appreciate the people around you. 

Thank you for reading. Please send me a message here, on LinkedIn or Twitter, if you want to ponder some of these topics.