to want, but not to do

happy birthday to me

Today is my birthday. This year, I won’t be celebrating, though, as I am having a rather hectic few months, and the idea of pausing to acknowledge that I continue to live seems like a luxury I can’t accommodate for the time being. However, all the things that I am busy with could be considered celebration enough. I have engaged with a new organisation, I am moving back to the place I consider home, and my boys are starting primary school. All very happy achievements of having lived another year.

As I get older (and have been a parent for longer), my bar for satisfaction continues to lower. My younger, more idealistic self would have been disappointed with these achievements (and in my quieter moments, I hear her whispering so in my ear).

This week, my thoughts have largely been about inspiration and motivation. I have a few side projects that I am desperate to work on, but due to being so ridiculously busy, I feel unable to move them forward in any meaningful way. However, I don’t want to lose the excitement I feel about them because if I do, there is a fair chance that I will never return to them. I, therefore, find myself in a situation where I am trying to stay inspired with little to no motivation.

As a millennial, whenever I want to learn about something, I head over to YouTube. So, what I am doing a lot of at the moment is watching videos—however good or bad—about my project topics so that I stay excited. I listen to or watch these videos in the moments when I’m doing something else: driving, having a shower, packing a lunch box, etc. My inspiration and passion for my projects stay high, but as there’s no time to do any of the work, any motivation I may have generated is quickly quelled by the mundanity of life as a working parent.

I’m currently working with teams that the business requires to have high utilisation rates. They’re squeezing in a half hour here or an hour there to learn about some new ways of working, and I wonder how they’ll actually implement anything new. They certainly don’t have the time to sit and think about their mindset towards their work or reflect upon the changes we’re proposing. We may be inspiring these groups, but the organisational system isn’t giving them the space they need to slow down and learn something new.

Everyone I’m working with seems excited about the change, from top to bottom. Even the normally hard-to-work-with middle management seems to be on board. Yet I’m concerned that this enthusiasm isn’t going to have the time it needs to flourish into motivation. People need time to reflect upon the ideas we agile coaches waltz into meetings with, to think deeply about what these ideas mean in their context and what interventions they’re going to require to support their move towards greater agility. Without that time, the ideas generated are shallow and were probably thought about long before the agile coach walked into the room.

As with all organisational change, it’s less about how on-board management is with the need for change and more about how much they are willing to give for the change to happen.

Everyone I’m working with recognises the need to give space for the change to happen and also the need to keep utilisation high. No one is being asked to put in extra time to allow for the change to happen. Nor is anyone being given any slack in their utilisation.

I'm seeing a strange conflict in the behaviours and attitudes of these teams, a dichotomy I’ve never seen before. To keep performing at the level they are but change how they perform. To find the time to change but not from their personal time.

I’m seeing a positive attitude. I’m seeing a negative attitude. Neither are in the areas where I have come to see positive and negative attitudes.

I am interested to see how this particular group of people make this work. They are a group unlike any other I’ve worked with. They are not software development teams. Most of them are in different countries to me. I have yet to grasp their personalities on an individual level or as a group. I cannot yet draw conclusions or make assumptions about their attitudes or abilities.

One thing I do know for sure though, I have a lot to learn.