My method for success failed me this week
I forged it while in a startup, perfected it in my product team - but it just doesn't work in a larger context.
My main method of being a valuable team member failed me this week. I even got a work-related headache from all the stress I was giving myself.
Driving the change you want to see
The key to my success has been to do what’s needed to help the team reach its goal. For example, I’ve tried to improve the onboarding of new designers to H&M Group:
When we’ve just signed on someone, I reach out to them on LinkedIn to make them feel welcome and see if they need any help.
When they start working, I offer to have a call with them because it’s difficult to get to know people remotely. (I’ve even talked to a designer in Shanghai.)
And during the first month, I do check-ins to see if they have any questions (there’s usually a lot of information overload).
This is not part of my responsibilities, but it’s in the design function’s interest to have a great onboarding experience. If I think something should be improved, I’ll do something about it. That kind of thinking worked for me until this week.
When the problem gets too complex
My product has officially kicked into a new phase where we will need to coordinate with 20+ teams. For the user experience, that means I have to align with about 7 teams. The source of my headache was the fact that each team wants to work on our product in different sprints, yet have dependencies with each other. Since I own the overall customer journey, I saw it as my responsibility to find a solution. Never having done anything like this before it wasn’t long before I got overwhelmed.
I know that I can’t approach this like I’ve approached things on a team-level. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’ll take the next week to do so. First thing tomorrow I will find out who I can team up with to best this problem. Again, wish me luck.
Have any thoughts on this week’s story? Leave a comment or reply to the email!
My favorite things this week
Game: Miss traveling? Are you competitive? Check out City Guesser. Played it several times with my sisters and they loved it too. You get to talk a walk in cities you’ve never been to while flexing your observation skills.
Video: I love building a library of knowledge, and discovered a fantastic way to connect ideas from different sources from Elizabeth Filips’ video My Second Brain in Notion - Full Setup. I’m having loads of fun typing in some ideas from Daily Stoic and I’m looking forward to doing the same with other books. Also, I feel very intense while doing it.
Video: My family used to always watch Melodifestivalen which is the competition to determine the Swedish representative for Eurovision. Non-Europeans look it up! It’s the biggest song competition in the world. Anyway, we watched it together for the first time in several years. It was a great experience. Here’s the winner of this year.
Quote of the week
Why do athletes talk trash to each other? Why do they deliberately say offensive and nasty things to their competitors when the refs aren't looking? To provoke a reaction. Distracting and angering opponents is an easy way to knock them off their game. Try to remember that when you find yourself getting mad. Anger is not impressive or tough— it's a mistake. It's weakness.
From The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday