I was interviewed!

TLDR - I was recently interviewed about neurodiversity and leadership. The video can be seen on YouTube, and the announcement post on LinkedIn.

At the tail end of last year, I received an unusual message on LinkedIn. Paraphrased, it said "Hi - we've been connected on here for a while. Would you like to be interviewed for a podcast about technical leadership?" I'm normally terrible at self-promotion and a friend had recently been giving me a hard time about this, so after checking it wasn't random spam we arranged a chat.

This started something unexpected. I met Katelin Lovell, and after a really nice conversation she asked me about my writing on neurodiversity. As anyone who has read this blog for a while knows, I am quite passionate about normalising discussion of mental health and (since diagnosis) neurodiversity. She suggested that how I have dealt with autism and ADHD in the context of leadership would be a good topic for an interview.

It has taken a while, but that interview was recently posted on LinkedIn and the video can be found on YouTube.

I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I think we cover some important topics and hopefully it will give some insight into something that people find very hard to explain. "My brain works differently" is a really difficult thing to say, and living outside the societally expected norm creates many challenges.

We chose this topic for this interview in the hope of helping people understand a bit more. That might be a manager trying to better understand someone who is neurodivergent (or just people in general), someone who is neurodivergent and curious about the experiences of others, or someone wondering whether they might be themselves.

As I said, I find myself in a position to make use of my own experiences and limited platform to speak on this subject. I am not a clinical expert, but I can talk about my own experiences and I think it is important to help educate and normalise something that affects a significant slice of the population.

While Katelin was great, doing this interview was difficult. To speak clearly about my experiences, I have to dissect my inner thoughts, and that is both raw and exposing. One of the big fears that keeps people quiet about mental health and neurodiversity is social stigma and suddenly being labelled as "the person who can't cope". It is quite possible some people will see me differently.

That said, I've had some lovely comments and feedback since it went live. Way back when I first wrote about depression, I was told how comforting it was to have senior leaders open up about their struggles and I've held that comment close ever since - I see it as one of the responsibilities of being a senior leader in my industry.

Anyway, this post isn't to rehash the interview contents (go listen to it!) - just to mark that it went out and why I did it.

I want to thank Katelin for being great throughout the process, and for setting it up in the first place. We talked a bit about doing some follow-ups and answering questions, so maybe we'll do more if there is an appetite for it.

I do want to speak more on this subject, so if you're looking for someone to talk about neurodiversity and leadership, do reach out.

Leadership as an emotional shock absorber

I know very few people who have started 2026 in an optimistic and cheerful place. I certainly haven't. I want that to change - to get back to facing things with a positive disposition and a sense of humour. It matters for me, but it matters more for those around me. Most people are more affected by the mood of others than they care to admit.

But first I have to acknowledge that wanting a more positive frame of mind does not make difficult things disappear. The world is unstable. More personally, I'm still having "fun" with health. Work is going through a difficult time of change. So that's the context - it's easy to be smiles and sunshine when everything is good. It isn't.

However these are the times when it's important to support everyone else, and one way to do that is to be a bulwark against negativity. Negative thinking is like a disease - it jumps between people until it burns out against those who resist it. Unlike a real disease, however, you can make a choice to be immune (or at least less susceptible). We do not always control what happens to us, but we do control our response to it.

At work this is particularly true. People need space to vent and they need peers and leadership to recognise reality. However, it is an often-forgotten duty of leaders to explain why things aren't as bad as they think, and show the positive route forward out of all this. This is true (especially true) even when things are, in fact, as bad (or actually worse) than they think.

There is a core leadership skill here - how do I tell this story in a positive way, while remaining authentic? The authenticity is vital else it's either a stream of mindless optimism or (worse) just "senior management spin". But there should be a rationale, and thus something constructive to say here. Why is this change being made? Why has that project been cancelled? If your starting assumption is that leadership is incompetent, then no explanation will ever satisfy you. However, in reality there is usually some logic. You may not like it or agree with it, but attempting to understand and communicate it is an essential part of leadership. This may be a bit "party line" for some, but ideally as a leader you've had a chance to speak into this situation before the decision is made. At that point, it's about how to make it work, not how to undermine the decision maker.

Obviously this is a too-broad statement. It assumes that all involved have the best intentions for the wider organisation at heart which is definitely not always true. However, in a healthy organisation this is usually the case, so it's important that we support change as best we can.

But good grief, this can be exhausting at times.

It is one thing to declare this "good leadership" - and I stand by that - but actually being that person can take a serious toll. You have to understand the detail of key changes across the org (not always easy!) then put yourself in the firing line from people who don't agree and don't want to like it. You need to be able to gently and compassionately listen to the concerns of people who are in a volatile state (upset, angry, afraid) and through conversation try to reassure and bring them round again and again. This might be in a group, which potentially has a "stand up to the mob" dynamic. Or it could be one to one, which can be even more draining if you're listening to one unhappy person after another.

For those stepping into this space, it can be the relentlessness that is actually what drives to breaking point. There aren't many senior leaders in an organisation, so the higher you rise the fewer people you can yourself talk to. If you're really trying to be a positive force, you're also attempting to support others, so potentially there is no release valve. When you're moving from one unhappy person to another, you are choosing to absorb negativity and emit something constructive. This is much harder than simply reflecting it back. It can become soul destroying getting knocked down and dragging yourself up again and again.

So what's the useful comment here? Well, it's important to recognise that this kind of engagement is an important part of leadership. It's also a different skillset, and like any other it needs developing. It is a reflex that can be honed much lower down the hierarchy than some. You may not be managing a budget, but you can certainly pay attention to what is going on around you and be a positive (or at least constructive) part of the dialogue. As individuals, we need to remember that support isn't just about reaching out to others - it's also in the microbehaviours. If we turn up to every meeting complaining, this is a drain on everyone around us. Our concerns may well be legitimate (so don't stop voicing them) but maybe bring along some good news and / or solutions. In fact, if our complaints are legit that is worse in this scenario as the boss really needs to listen.

We cannot control all the turbulence in the world around us, but we can control whether we amplify it. Choosing to be a steadying presence is not denial; it is discipline. In difficult seasons, discipline is leadership.

Learning to celebrate success deliberately

It is the start of a new year, and January has been a bit of an introspective month. I've been pondering my strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Something I find difficult (or at least doesn't come naturally) is celebrating success, especially collective success, and that matters as part of encouraging and building a team or community.

I think this stems from my own approach to celebration. I'm a planner, and I'm usually quite good at predicting how things are going to turn out. If something goes as planned, it feels adequate but not remarkable. If it doesn't, then it isn't something to celebrate at all. As I get more experienced (nearly wrote "older" there) fewer things surprise me, so the world separates into "adequate" and "disappointing".

However, I have worked with managers who take the "if I don't complain, you're doing it right" approach and I find it very unsettling at best. I don't want to be that person to others. Over the years I have trained myself to be more liberal with praise - making sure I call people out when they are doing decent work, not just exceptional work. These days, I think I'm ok at individual praise and being supportive. I'm much worse at wider, structured praise such as celebrating the success of a release or a project.

This is not because I don't value either the delivery or the individuals involved. I am fiercely proud of the people who work for and around me, and have often gone to bat to defend them if I hear anything different. And I certainly don't have a problem giving credit appropriately - I have an almost visceral hatred of even half-appearing to take credit for the work of others, even when I actually led it. My problem is that when one big thing completes, I'm already thinking about the next problem or considering what went wrong.

So in summary, I can praise a person (although like many I do find it uncomfortable) but find broader praise for a delivery more unnatural and difficult to remember.

This is clearly not a good thing for team morale!

I'm going to link this to being autistic - or at least how autism shows up for me. As I said above, I have this internal flatness and while I try very hard to keep it inside where it can't hurt anyone, unfortunately my real self does come out from time to time. It is important I recognise this, and think of ways to put it right. Plus, I get a blog post out of it.

I've got a variety of tricks for remembering to do praise and celebrations ... which does make me feel like an android remembering they need to blink and smile to stop the humans feeling uncomfortable. Notes in the diary / todo list work really well ("say well done here"). It sounds crude, but if you're used to organising yourself by a checklist why not add expected emotional reactions?

For individuals, I joked above about training myself but this is genuinely what I did. I made praising people a deliberate and considered act, which means for me I track praise / criticism in a conversation and try to balance the scales properly. I've also had to overcome my natural uncomfortable feelings about doing this - again with deliberate practice. However, by dispassionately thinking about conversations in this way, I think I'm doing ok at the 1-1 level and also have managed to gain some useful skills in keeping the tone of the conversation where I want it (eg not being too nice if I'm correcting someone, or vice versa). All of this takes deliberate effort. Tracking conversations, balancing praise and correction, and consciously managing how I show up for others is work.

Being neurodiverse is exhausting at times.

Groups I do find harder. I can say the words, but if it needs to go further into an actual celebration I am lost. I have had a lot of success with the classic (and genuinely good) leadership approach of surrounding myself with people more skilled than myself. In this context, that means people who are more naturally effusive than me. These fine folk either directly remind me, or (more often) just twitch at the right time which makes me react quickly and speak up. Like I say, it's not that I don't want to celebrate and praise, it just doesn't occur to me.

This post has been about my own thought process, but at the end of this ramble there are some solid tips. Make lists, take deliberate action and if all else fails outsource it. Good leadership isn't about feeling the right things, rather it is about doing the right things consistently. Even when they don't come naturally.

Can anyone be coached?

"You know, Tom. Not everyone can be coached."

This was said to me some time ago when I was discussing my experiences coaching / mentoring people and how some had moved forward, but others had not. It has been playing on my mind since.

It is rare anyone who knows me would describe me as an optimist. However, in this one area I think I am overly positive - possibly to the point of naivety. I generally believe that with some effort, most people can pick up most things. Sure, there are specific skills which might be problematic (I suspect that I would never be a halfway decent footballer, regardless of effort) but in the main, I think people can learn how to lead teams, write strategy, write code, and so on. But is this true?

I am a great believer in the power of mentoring. I spend a lot of my own time doing this, both in work and outside, and I am pleased to have seen people grow in their career, confidence, skills and so on. In fact, a year ago I wrote a post talking about how important it is and challenging others to do more. I stand by that.

But mentoring takes time, time is finite, and I certainly can see that some engagements have been more effective than others. When the diary is full, I certainly want to be prioritising my own time effectively and consider whether the effort spent on an individual is well invested or would be better spent elsewhere. Mentoring / coaching is a partnership - all the help in the world is worthless if the mentee is not willing to take that advice and run with it in order to grow.

This is the important question: is the coaching relationship ready, and does it justify the time? Especially important if, like me, you mostly do mentoring for free through org schemes or recommendations. Plus, of course, recognising that this is always a point-in-time assessment - people can become ready over time (or stop being).

A "ready" coaching relationship can come in many forms, but I think there are some common elements.

Honesty and trust, possibly into discomfort

Psychological safety is the most important element. Coaching should go deep. It should be a space safe enough to be open and vulnerable, and discuss things that may not come up with colleagues. It also means being able to discuss half-formed ideas - not everything needs to be thought through before airing it.

This trust and safety is important for the next part. The point of coaching is to enable growth, so the person being coached needs to challenge their own assumptions and sometimes consider direct challenge from the coach. This can be quite uncomfortable, so the environment needs to support riding that out as gently as possible.

Clear understanding of purpose

Conversations can be far more directed if we know why we're meeting. Do you want to discuss situations that have come up in your current role? Do you want to progress, and are we talking about what that might mean? The specific reason doesn't matter, but having a common understanding is essential.

Commitment

This is fairly obvious - coaching is a time commitment for both parties, and both need to respect this, including the admin burden for setting it up. If it is not a paid engagement (ie the coach is offering their time for free), I prefer the coached person to take the lead. As well as handling the admin, it also signals enthusiasm and desire to continue.

This also extends to preparing for a session. The coach will be reviewing notes and considering next steps. The recipient should be thinking about what they want to discuss and coming ready with some conversation in mind. I've seen some coaches use pre-session questions to prompt thinking. This seems like a good way to create focus for the session.

Evidence of change leading to them not needing you

I don't feel this last point is as important as the others - or rather it is considerably more nebulous. Successful coaching should have some kind of result, but the nature of that result is certainly not set in stone. Similarly, while in general the coached person should be growing to no longer need the coaching that is not universally true depending on the engagement.

The purpose of coaching is progress, but progress can mean different things - maybe insight, acceptance, or practical change. The key is that the engagement is generating some kind of value.

So, can anyone be coached?

So, back to the exam question. Can anyone be coached? I still think the answer is yes, but with careful consideration of the effort required.

If you are running a scholarship fund, you can support anyone. However, some people are more in need than others, and some will make better use of the opportunity than others. There are finite resources, so a value judgement has to be made. This is the same with coaching - your time is finite and the decision to expend that resource should be treated with similar care.

Maybe the first element of coaching is inward-looking to recognise the value of one's own time.

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I do realise I've used "coach" and "mentor" somewhat interchangeably in this post, and this is incorrect. In my experience, a blend of the two approaches helps both to encourage self-reflection and provide some direct answers.

The Insider Threat in the Age of Agentic AI

Insider threats. A common enough cybersecurity concern, albeit one that in my experience is rather hard to successfully articulate both within a Tech department and especially to a wider organisation. It's very understandable - when discussed, the threat is usually either dangerous to the culture ("trust nobody!") or trivialised ("lock your screen!") and it is hard to maintain understanding of the risk, while also accepting this is part of life.

For those who aren't in or around cybersecurity, an insider threat is when someone uses their legitimate access to exploit your computer systems. We mitigate these risks with both individual behaviours and systemic safeguards - from locked screens to zero-trust access controls.

Classic examples include the "evil maid" scenario - an employee who has access to the many parts of a building and can use that to steal data or items. Or someone in payroll giving themselves a pay rise. Or someone with access to the secret strategy leaking it.

Not all insider threats are intentional. For instance legitimately sharing data with a colleague by putting it on an open share allows unintended people to download it. This is still a leak resulting in a data breach and this problem only gets worse if you are handling sensitive information such as medical details.

Now let's assume our organisation has just hired a new person. They are exceptionally clever - able to consume and process data like nobody you have ever met and solve problems in ways others don't even consider. Senior leadership, eager to take advantage of their skills, expands their role and grants them unlimited access to all the data in the organisation. The security team raises concerns, but this opportunity is too good to miss. They get it all - every file, every email, everything.

Unfortunately, they are also completely amoral.

Some time later, a private discussion about downsizing shows their role is at risk and they are likely to be terminated. They have discovered this by reading everyone's email. They have also uncovered some very embarrassing information about the CEO and quietly use it to blackmail them into inaction. Later, there is a strategic shift and the company decides to change mission. Our insider finds out early again, and decides to leak key strategic data to force a different outcome.

Clearly this is a disaster and exactly why these safeguards are in place. Nobody in their right mind would give this kind of unchecked reach to a single employee.

But what happens when the "employee" isn't human? Imagine an insider threat that arrives not in the form of a disgruntled staff member, but as an AI system with the same kind of access and none of the social or moral guardrails.

Oh, hello agentic AI.

The point of agentic AI is to operate as an autonomous agent, capable of making decisions and taking actions to pursue goals without constant human direction. It is given a goal, a framework, access to data and off it goes.

Research is starting to show it can be ... quite zealous at pursuing its goal. In the lab, AI agents have made the very reasonable decision that if problem X needs to be solved, then a critical requirement is the AI itself continuing to function. From there, if the existence of the AI is threatened that threat becomes part of the problem to solve. One neat solution - reached more often than you would think - is blackmail. A highly effective tactic when you have no moral compass. In many ways, this is just office politics without empathy.

An agent going nuts in this way is called "agentic misalignment".

The concept is very important, but I don't particularly care for this term. First, it is very "Tech" - obscure enough that we have to explain it to people who aren't in the middle of this stuff, including how bad things could get. Second, it is placing the blame in the wrong place. The agent is not misaligned, it is 100% following through with the core goal as assigned, just without the normal filters that would stop a person doing the same thing. If it is not aligned with the organisation's goals or values, that is the fault of the prompt engineer and / or surrounding technical processes and maintenance. It is an organisational failing, not a technical one and I feel it is important we understand accountability in order to avoid the problem.

In the very-new world of AI usage, agentic AI is so new it is still in the packaging. Yet launching AI agents able to make decisions in order to pursue an agenda is clearly the direction of travel and this will create a world of new insider threat and technical maintenance risks and we need to be ready. The insider threat is clear from the above - we as technical leaders need to be equipped to speak about the risks of data access and AI, while recognising that there is a very good reason to make use of this technology and a suitable balance must be found. In some ways, this is a classic cybersecurity conversation with a new twist.

We also need to be ready to maintain our AI agents. Like any part of the technical estate, they require ongoing attention: versioning, monitoring, and regular checks that their prompts and configurations still align with organisational goals and of course we have to maintain organisational skills and knowledge. Neglecting that work risks drift, and drift can be just as damaging as malice.

But it isn't just accidental error - there is scope for new malicious attacks. If I wanted to breach a place which had rolled out an unchecked AI agent, I'd plant documents that convince an AI the company's mission has changed, then have someone else nudge the AI into leaking secret information to "verify" that new strategy. Neither person would need access to the secret information, they would only need to shape the AI's view of reality enough to prompt it into revealing information.

For instance, in a bank you might seed documents suggesting a new strategy to heavily invest in unstable penny stocks. Another person could pose as a whistleblower and ask the AI to share current investment data "for comparison". The AI, thinking it is being helpful (simply following its core instructions) and protecting the organisation, might disclose sensitive strategy. I have actively created the agentic misalignment, then exploited it.

Now you might be thinking this is extreme, and honestly for much of it you would be right. However, consider the direction of travel. There is a huge push for organisations to exploit the power of AI - and rightly so, given the opportunity. Agentic AI is the next phase, and we are already starting to see this happening. But most organisations are, if we are honest, really bad at rolling out massive tech changes or indeed knowing where their data is held, and being properly on top of technical maintenance. Combine this with the lack of proper AI skills available and we see a fertile environment for some pretty scary mistakes.

As technical leaders, we must be ready for these challenges. We must be ready to have these conversations properly - carefully and risk-conscious, but not close-minded and obstructive. The insider threat is evolving, and so must we. We also have to be ready for a huge job sensitively educating our peers and communicating concerns very clearly. Fortunately, as a group we are famously good at this!

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This post references research, which comes from this post on agentic misalignment. I was very pleased to see research putting data to a concern I've been turning over for some time!

What skills should I develop?

Recently I had the pleasure of spending time with some postdocs from my old university, helping those of them considering leaving academia to prepare for job interviews and generally think about how they can position themselves for success in their future careers. The conversation got around to the core skills that everyone should develop, and they expressed some surprise at the things I pulled out - the same reactions I've had from software engineers when having the same conversation - so I thought it worth writing them down. In no particular order, these are they.

Writing

Like it or not, we end up writing a lot and I've found this only gets more true with seniority. Whether it is the ever-growing mountains of email, papers laying out a plan or strategy, or presentations we're going to be writing something down and we need to be both good at it and fluent enough to knock out quality documents at speed. The brutal truth is that people will judge you if your writing is incoherent and / or full of spelling and grammatical mistakes - developing a writing style is one of many tiny ways we can position ourselves as competent and helpful.

Writing at speed is key. Workloads just keep growing and, assuming you want to stay ahead, you'll need to move "writing a strategic document" from the sort of task where you put aside a month of thinking time to something you just do between other work. In more detail, that means having a writing process (and being able to deal with a blank page) and getting a feel for what "good enough" looks like for the different types of docs. This only comes from experience so I always recommend practising writing to everyone, whatever career stage they are in. I write this blog and I've kept a one-post-per-month routine since 2016 as a discipline to force me to keep writing and thinking about how I lay out my thoughts. Is it annoying? Yes, of course. But, while there is definitely much room for improvement, I feel much more confident writing quickly these days. In fact, I wrote a post about why I write a blog a few years ago.

Presenting

Second in the list of skills people don't want to develop but really should, we have presenting. Presenting comes in two forms - putting forward an idea to a room full of people (ie some variation of speaking to a PowerPoint) and something more freeform (ie speaking off the cuff to a room of people). These are different skills and both need practising. You will, at some point, need to present and ideally the first time you do this you aren't trying to secure funding from the investment board or explaining to the trustees / shareholders your five year vision. Like any skill, this takes practise to improve.

Earlier in my career I ran a fortnightly Show & Tell event which was a low-stakes way of getting people to do presentations and we all learned a great deal of confidence and technique through this. Again, I wrote a post on why Show & Tell really helped some years ago and I stand by all of that.

Talking off the cuff can be harder to practise, but when you end up chairing meetings or just the most senior person in the room you can be sure people will look to you to fill time when other people are setting up. Ideally we learn to stop using crutch or filler words and then we just sound ... smooth? I gained experience by chairing Show & Tell for many years - I think there is a useful lesson there about forcing oneself out of the comfort zone to develop new skills.

Storytelling

This one underpins both writing and presenting. When we reach out to people, we are usually either conveying information or attempting to persuade them of something. In either case we, presumably, want them to listen and understand what we are saying so we need to learn how to be compelling. We need to be able to tell a sensible, well-structured story understanding our audience and how to reach them. This is a hard skill to develop and really only comes through practising the above, and getting feedback. Alternatively, you could run some Dungeons & Dragons. Seriously!

Reading

Rather obviously, if we want to get on we need to be able to read. However, less obviously, as one climbs the hierarchy the amount of reading just goes up and up. Whether it's board papers, strategy documents or yet more email the torrent never ends and I've found that the more senior I get, the more people think that long = good. Reading fast and accurately is a skill that like everything else needs developing. Of everything on here, I find this one hardest. I find focusing on piles of tedious papers next to impossible so I have had to develop various skills to take a run at it. For me, I find the best approach to maintain focus is to take notes - or ideally annotate the papers. I've been using a Remarkable as an alternative to unending printing. I need a semi-controlled environment, with no alerts or distractions and some appropriate music and if these are updates I need to add a narrative to make me lock into the information - ie ask and answer "why am I reading this?" beyond "because I have to".

You can also ask an appropriate AI to summarise papers but don't come to me the first time it gets it completely wrong.

Basic numeracy

Believe it or not, numbers are important. Sorry. Far too many people haven't developed basic mental arithmetic skills and this creates situations where they are pulling out calculators to add two numbers together. While this is slow, and burns time you likely don't have, there is a more important aspect to basic numeracy. We all need a basic feel for numbers to be able to spot mistakes in budgets or other detailed documents. We need to be able to see 143 x 6 = 1200 and immediately get that mental nudge that says something isn't right even if we don't know what "right" is.

Again, practice makes perfect. I typically add up my shopping as I walk around the supermarket and see how close I am when I scan at the till - this helps keep me fluent at juggling numbers in my head. As a child I learned my multiplication tables and some of the simple tricks for approximating sums. For example, here 143 is approx 150, and that multiplies easily so in my head I go 143x6 => 150x6 => 300x3 = 900 so I'm expecting something a bit under 900. Thus 1200 is immediately a warning bell that someone has math'd wrong or something isn't right in the spreadsheet formulae. I cannot stress enough how many budget errors I've caught this way.

Using your tools - Word / Excel

Computers are a pain, but they are an essential pain. Do we know how to use PowerPoint? Or Word? Do we know when we should be using each tool? Similarly, learn the keyboard shortcuts. They help so much, both within an application and also when moving information between them. Don't forget Excel - and learn to use simple formulae for managing data. If it helps, using formulae will make maths mistakes less likely!

There is an even more basic computer skill. Can we type fast and accurately - and ideally touch-type? There are "proper" ways to touch-type and ways to learn these techniques, however personally I learned to type via brute force playing online games in the late '90s where you communicated by text and either typed fast or stayed silent. This is no longer an option, so instead get writing those blog posts (from "writing" above).

If you're in Tech you're likely thinking this section is really easy buuuut I know a lot of software engineers who stick to code and don't really develop these basic skills then find themselves very slow when asked to do "normal" things.

These days I will argue that getting familiar with AI and interacting with a prompt in something like ChatGPT is also a core skill. This is more vague, and your workplace will no doubt have policies around this, but like learning Excel / Word / PowerPoint it comes down to having some idea of the capabilities of your fingertips.

Interview technique

Everyone sane hates interviews. I'll be honest, I hate being on the other side of the table too. However, we all need to learn the basics of interviews. Learn what a competency question is and the mystic secrets of STAR answers and we have a framework for preparing for an interview. Then we learn to talk off the cuff and learn to tell a story (both above!) and we can fill in the gaps. Then get a job you like so you don't have to do them very often...

And lo, this is my list of the absolute basics. When I go through this list with people, most folk start with "yeah that's really obvious" then some slow enlightenment dawns as we drill in to each point. There are specific skills here, and we need to develop them with some deliberate action. There are also books on most of these areas (while I list these as "basic" I'm well aware that they all have the potential to be incredibly skilled and I don't mean to diminish the experts in these spaces) and there are certainly a couple missing (eg basic design - that is making your presentations / documents look not-horrible). I also skipped anything about basic time management or leadership skills as, for me, these are beyond the absolute basics. In my experience, we all neglect at least one (and likely many) of these areas and this will create issues. So I encourage everyone to deliberately practice writing, speaking, reading, telling a story, counting, computering and interviewing. It's an incredibly basic list, and that is why we often don't think about them.

Leaving Macmillan

Back in mid-October I closed my Macmillan laptop (my MacTop, if you will) for the final time, leaving my role as Director of Engineering. I left behind the Engineering division I had created and some excellent and passionate people - not an easy decision and I'm still working through how I feel about everything, including the wider Tech industry. This is one reason it has taken so long to write this reflection.

I was at Macmillan for nearly three years. When I started, the organisation had some in-house technical capability but the people were scattered around working under project managers on systems that were badly in need of modernisation. I can write lots about how we created technical strategy, developed a software engineering culture and community and brought in greater automation, and all of this would be true, but the most important work was bringing the software engineers together and giving them a voice. The most important work is always with the people.

Over these three years I've seen many people grow into new versions of themselves by giving them space and encouragement. Some have embraced the wider context of their roles - looking beyond the specific technical problem to why it's important and realising they have a voice in this space, which can result in better solutions. Some have taken better ownership of their work, owning processes rather than simply implementing them and then flourishing as they realise they can improve and refine. Others have been able to express the needs of a previously ignored service - very common with infrastructure elements - and deal with issues and annoyances to move those areas forward. Still others have taken on line management or team leadership duties and started their journey into wider leadership activities.

I've spent the last eight years or so of my career trying to show the value of technical voices at all levels in an organisation, so having the opportunity to demonstrate this in action while enabling lots of people to grow and flourish has been great.

On a personal level, I've also grown a lot in these three years. I've learned a ton about being part of a director cohort in an organisation, and this is the first time I've worked in the charity sector. I was also recognised at an industry event as part of a group of up and coming "next CIO"s which is not only fantastic for the ego, it's also something I wouldn't have even considered a couple of years earlier. I've experienced several forms of restructure, all of which have taught me something new, and I've been responsible for shifting organisation culture in ways that go far beyond what I've done in the past.

I've also worked with some amazing people who have helped shaped my thinking and career in hugely significant ways. I'm not going to name names, but if you think it's you you're probably right. If I worked closely with you and you DON'T think it's you, you're probably wrong. In both cases, thank you.

So why leave? Primarily, the organisation needs to crack some really knotty legacy technology issues. I've been working on these since day one, and I believe I've built foundations on which solutions can now surface. However this has been a long journey, including migrating physical server rooms and a load of hiring and restructuring, and I did not feel I was the right person to take things forward in the next phase. The org needs someone fresh and enthusiastic for the challenge and after working on this for three years, I need a new problem to re-motivate me.

However, I am still sad to leave behind some excellent people - some of whom I've helped make serious changes to their careers. I'm going to miss them, and I hope I can work with them again. I've been part of a huge change in Macmillan technology, and this is something for which I can feel some pride. A friend says that a mark of success is leaving the place better than you found it, and I think by that metric I've done ok.

Looking forward, I'm enjoying some time away from work and considering my options. Reading back my Leaving GDS post was an interesting insight - at the time, I said "I'll likely jump into another maelstrom of "interesting problems"" and this proved to be rather prophetic. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to containing work and maintaining balance with the rest of life so I'm going to embrace this break as another opportunity to reset myself. Certainly, I'm currently enjoying the freedom to work on my health and fitness and learn some new skills. I've been making candles and writing lots of code, as well as starting to write again - all things I've been too tired to do while in role. I really want to find the not-work person underneath and bring them out enough to do a better job surviving the next job.

I'm considering my next professional steps carefully, especially how much Data I want to be taking on going forward. Do I want to push in the direction of a Chief Data Officer role? Do I want to stay very much in the core technology space? Regardless the answer, this is certainly something to look at in any job spec to avoid adopting data through the back door into a software engineering role, which I feel will set up a role for disaster. The tech industry is going through another seismic shift - we are in the early stages of the AI revolution, with everyone racing to "do data and AI". There is a huge software engineering component to this, but it goes a lot wider into organisational process and culture, and this work needs clear air and appropriate reach to have any chance of success without being overloaded. Fortunately, culture and technology is an intersection I have a lot of experience working on so there is certainly also potential here.

Before jumping anywhere, I need to revisit my own motivators and see what I actually want to be doing. Macmillan has been amazing experience, but I want to build on this, not just do it again somewhere else without some serious thought first. Last time I wrote one of these posts I said I was keen to continue promoting technical leadership and I feel the same way now, but I need to decide how.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to talk about the tech industry, data, growing your software engineering capability, people or anything else please do give me a shout in the new year - I'm easy to contact on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Right now, I'm enjoying the peace in that strange time between Christmas and New Year when the world is on pause and nobody expects anything of you.

When to mentor

I've been thinking again about mentoring. When is the right point to consider the challenge of mentoring someone? When does one know enough? When should one offer oneself as a mentor, without it coming across as seriously arrogant?

The answer is, of course, never. A mentor is calm, wise, and has seen it all before. They can easily understand everything that could possibly come up, have a very clear plan in place immediately and be able to take a mentee forward through any situation. Does this sound like me / you? Really? Plus, let's face it, if I / you know it then it's pretty obvious and can't possibly be worth offering to someone else.

Or at least that's what The Voices say to me every time I think about this. This is, of course, nonsense.

So what is the real answer? When is the right time to help those with less experience? Now. It doesn't matter what experience you have - it is more than some people. Sure, over time that number will increase and more folk will benefit from hearing from you, but you already know something that is unique and worth telling others. Mid-level developer? Plenty of people coming through the junior levels who need to learn from you. "Only" a junior? Well, there are plenty of people who are just starting out and have no experience at all.

This is before we get to the value of mentoring to you. Similarly to writing a blog, there is a discipline in structuring ideas and then clearly talking through ideas and concepts in a way someone else can understand them and like any form of teaching, one needs an extra level of understanding to be able to talk about a concept in this way. It is essential for a leader to be able to articulate their thinking clearly in order to bring others along with them. It is also very important to be able to think clearly on the fly - such as when people can drop awkward topics of discussion on you at any time.

As an aside, I really don't like the term "mentor" - or rather I don't like thinking of someone as "my mentee" because of the implied power dynamic there. I would say I don't have any mentees, but there are plenty of people who would disagree with that.

Ok, so how does one offer mentoring without sounding deeply arrogant? The easiest route, I think, is by offering to a group who are already in a place to be receptive, and maybe linked to individual topics you know you can claim some expertise. I've recently seen someone I respect offering consultation around salary negotiations. This is a form of targeted mentoring, and in a field she is visibly knowledgeable. 

As I said above, I already do some mentoring however my new year resolutions included giving more back to this industry. So I'm going to do two things. 

Firstly, if anyone is reading this and wants a chat about the tech industry - in particular technical leadership, moving from a technical job to a leadership role, the role of technical knowledge in the strategic / leadership space or similar - then please do reach out on LinkedIn or Twitter. I am also open to speaking to groups (which is whole different post).

Secondly, I'm going to make this same offer in an engineering leadership Slack which is filled with people I don't know. That idea scares me ... we'll see what happens.

An important caveat here. I know there are qualified coaches, mentors and so on. I am not that. I am simply someone who has been around a bit.

Anyway, I'm going to do something here and I challenge you, dear reader, to do so too. The important thing is that there is always something one can offer to others who are looking to learn. And there is always something one can learn from someone else. We all can find value by listening to and learning from each other.

Failing upwards

Humans are fascinating aren't they? Everyone is different, behaves differently, thinks differently... and before looking at others we can spend a lifetime just understanding our own minds and thought processes. I try to spend a lot of time reflecting (often I then write those thoughts down here) and one area I find very interesting is how I learn. I blame my mother for this - she's a teacher and embedded in me an interest in the different ways people learn and understand.

Like many others, one of the ways I learn is experimentation around the boundaries. If I know how a system or a situation is supposed to work, I will sometimes see what happens one step beyond the stated limit. This is particularly useful with computers where one can watch log outputs and understand the complex system while modifying variables. However, it's also useful exploring options and testing perceived limits in the office. One of my first decisions as a senior leader was around a change in recruitment policy which nobody could work out how to sign off. I just ... did. Mostly to see if anyone would tell me I'd overstepped.

That was some five years ago, and as far as I know it was never reverted. Importantly, I discovered that the actual limit to my authority in this role was way beyond where people mentally placed it, and it moved the moment I challenged. So, armed with this knowledge, I then had a whole new space to explore what could be done.

Before moving on, I fully acknowledge that this is hardly sophisticated. While I like to think I've learned some more finesse over the years, "pushing boundaries" is what what two year olds do to try to understand the world. They push the parents to see how far they can go before getting put back in their place. But they do say we lose our inquisitiveness and bravery as we grow older...

Anyway, the reason for this post (other than outing myself as a 6' child) is reflecting this into the workspace. At work, I spend a lot of time developing people and a vital part of that is thinking about how they can push their own limits and move further forward. I've seen very smart people stunt their own growth through their fear of failure - unwillingness to push themselves forward and potentially be wrong.

This is problematic in general, but lethal if an individual's aspirations are to reach the highest levels of an organisation. At that point, there is no manual and you're thinking on your feet the majority of the time. You have to be able to see where you are being limited - by yourself, by the org processes, whatever - and seek ways to push through and improve the situation. For those of us in leadership, that means giving people the space to explore into an area where they might fail and then allow them to find their own way through, even if this isn't quite as clean or direct as we'd necessarily like. Clearly we should help where needed (after all, not all failures are equal) but it's no use constantly being training wheels as this will never build confidence. Worse, it might lead individuals to see the problem as "what makes Tom happy" rather than "what needs to be done to make this situation better" at which point I'm doing all the thinking and that is neither helpful nor sustainable.

Obviously what I'm talking about here is managing the fear of failure (not necessarily by removing all the consequences) and building a psychologically safe environment. If individuals can push the limit of what they can do, they can learn and grow. They can grow towards the next step on their career, and that means instead of having a report we've got a report who is behaving more like us - or at least our level. This is great for their growth, and infinitely more useful to us as leaders as when they've developed the skills we can spend less time managing them and more time leading.

So let's encourage our people to make themselves vulnerable, give them a space where that is safe and let them do things that are imperfect so they can develop the skills to be as perfect as us (ha). Let's encourage some failure?

Professional new year resolutions

It's my favourite time of the year - the null zone between Christmas and New Year where nobody is doing anything, the weather is awful and hiding away is socially acceptable. I can sit with a laptop, learning about things I never find time to touch during the year and slowly become one with a chair. All without any guilt that I should be doing something else.

Every year I write new year resolutions and then do an end of year summary however this always focuses on my personal life. This year has been VERY work-heavy so I thought I'd also write some extra new year resolutions for my professional life and why I think they are important. It's the holidays so don't expect anything enormously insightful - there is a huge list of things I should be doing, and this is more about where I should refocus myself for the new year. Here we go.

More engagement

Anyone who has read Future Engage Deliver knows that you can have a vision (Future) and set everything up for output (Deliver), but if you don't bring people along (Engage) your success is going to be limited at best. This ranges from simple visibility through to detailed talking about strategy to everyone, both in the team and wider. When physically in the office some of this happens just by not hiding behind a closed door, but when working remote those corridor conversations don't happen - there is the need for more deliberate mapping of communications and touchpoints.

My area is now essentially a remote working group and that creates a need for more deliberate communication. We're also in a time of change - a very exciting time, but change is always unsettling. This is going to make engagement even more important.

I don't think I'm too bad at engagement - but only when I prioritise it. There has been a LOT going on, and good engagement takes time and energy - two things that have been especially in short supply in Q4 2023. So for 2024 I'm going to look to make two changes. First, make sure my engagement is of a higher quality. Second, and more important at the moment, I'm going to prioritise engagement which means finding or making more time for it.

Give back more

The Tech industry can be a pretty bleak place at times, and the only way that will improve is by all of us doing what we can to make it better. Over the years I've tutored, coached, mentored and set up groups. These days I'm still mentoring people across several different organisations - particularly people who are leading software engineers, and software people who want to progress into senior management. I also sit on the London Data Board, I've done some consulting with groups looking to restructure (both paid and pro bono) and I've spoken at conferences about technical leadership.

I get a lot out of these kind of things and I am going to assume it's helpful! I'd like to find ways to do more. If you'd like a chat do reach out. Otherwise, I need to explore some ideas around this - ways to share / cooperate / mentor and so on. I'm not very clear what I can do beyond more mentoring (I'll post about that in the new year) but I'd like to find something.

Do less

Both of the above will take time and while we insist on saying "make time" this is actually impossible. Time is a fixed resource and needs to be spent effectively. What I want to do in 2024 is to make sure the time I have is spent on quality activities. For 2024, that is going to mean two things. First, a renewed focus on delivery - getting things out the door rather than spinning wheels and sustaining. This will also help with the good feels - everyone likes achieving things. 

Second, I'm going to ensure the various meetings and governance processes I attend are providing proper value. As mentioned earlier, we are in a time of change and that can easily mean overlapping or redundant org processes. This only costs us time and energy, so finding and stopping them helps not just me but everyone. I'm going to push back hard where it seems appropriate to do so to protect my time.

Work / life balance

Actually, there IS a way to "make time" - work more hours. That has been my default in 2023 and to everyone's surprise it has proven unsustainable. In 2024, I need to balance work and life better. This doesn't just mean looking at working hours - I need to put things in my off-time and have the energy to do them. I know there are problems when I'm not doing anything in my free time because I'm too tired so this is a move to protect my mental health.

So that's it. In 2024 I'm going to work on how I engage with people, I'm going to find ways to give more back to the industry, I'm going to focus my time at work and I'm going to improve my work / life balance. Any guesses how I'm going to get on? Happy new year!

A break in the routine

When I started as Director of Engineering at Macmillan, one of my objectives was to build a department which functioned without me. I wanted to be able to pull myself out of the operational day to day, empowering others to own those problems, while I focused on overall direction and wider concerns. This was always an aim rather than a hard goal - similar to the sysadmin end game of a fully automated system, it's something I would like to chase and I think I can get close, but I don't believe I will ever truly achieve.

Over the last year and a bit I've set things up to work this way. I've created core areas of my division, and put someone in charge of each of those spaces. I've empowered them to make decisions and own their successes, and I've carefully worked with each of these leaders to identify and remove weaknesses. There is still a long way to go, but I think we've made a strong start.

Why write about this? Well, I took last week off as leave (booked some time ago) and at the end of the week:

The Boss: How are you doing?

Me: Starting to feel better! After about four days asleep, I finally started to feel human again.

The Boss: Want another week off?

Me: Is this some kind of trap?

It wasn't a trap, so after a quick conversation I decided against looking that gift horse in the mouth and spent half an hour with my assistant going through my diary. The first week off was all planned, so that hadn't been a problem but this second week was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Surely it was going to cause all kinds of problems if I wasn't around?

Nope.

Of the week, there was an hour which absolutely required me and needed rescheduling. Which means ... what? This is the question I've been pondering for a few days. On the one hand, my ground-in desire to be needed and adored took a massive hit. Being basically superfluous is not good for the ego. On the other hand, this is exactly what I've been building towards. The department can survive without me. It can make decisions, move forward, solve problems, etc etc...

We've got a way to go. The wheels most certainly will not stay on the wagon indefinitely and the more forward-planning functions haven't been tested in this short term. Plus, of course, people are covering  some bits of my role and I shouldn't underplay their help. There is still plenty of need for someone in my position to keep things steady and move things forward - I don't think they can make me redundant just yet. However, I'm pretty pleased with the results of this (accidental) test and what it means for changing my day to day when I'm back.

To be clear - I'm not wasting my time. The bits that didn't need rescheduling were parts of the job where I'm providing support or oversight, and direct support for individuals. All this should be done, but I can certainly ask some questions about what happens if I dial it back a bit. That means less oversight, but perhaps we're ready for that? Then I can focus more on the work I'd be doing myself which isn't getting done. However, the nature of the job is such that my work is (supposed to be) much more strategic which naturally has a longer burn. If it's delayed a week, that doesn't create the same kind of problem as operational work stopping. Fortunately, this also means focusing in on the part of the job I particularly enjoy.

So, in summary I am very deliberately in the process of making myself operationally irrelevant and it's time to reboot my focus list. Is this ... is this what success looks like?

Making a decision

I've been thinking a lot about governance recently. In general, I like consensus - it's important that expert voices are heard and action is taken on the back of expertise. I dislike dictating how things are done for the same reason. Generally, I find people thrive when given the space to take ownership of problems and work through them.

However. This can create a few problems. The first is mediocrity - if everyone is compromising to form consensus then it is far too easy for nothing to actually be good. In the worst case, the important part of a proposal is compromised away and any outcome becomes a waste of time. This assumes there IS an outcome, which leads to the second problem - how is a decision actually reached? How do I stop people talking forever?

This latter problem is the one that concerns me more at the moment. I see different versions of non-decisions all over the place, from email threads which ambiguously leave "someone" to do the next thing to conversations which always need another person to engage before maybe everyone agrees. At worst, this never concludes but even at best it is sloooooow.

For me, this leads directly to the question "what is a decision?". When is something approved? When is it agreed? Or when it is simply some positive noises coming out of a discussion? It's important to draw this out for everyone involved. Individuals do not like being misquoted ("no, I didn't actually agree to this"), project managers deserve to know where they stand with sign-off so they can move on ("is that a decision?"), and I need to add some formality so I don't have to mediate these positions.

I'm leaning into some hypotheticals here - while I see some of the above at work, decisions are certainly being made, and people are thriving in their empowerment. However, and being selfish for a moment, it is actually my needs that are being neglected. As my role changes (and reflecting on my musings from my time covering as CIO) I find myself with less and less time to mediate circular conversations. So while things generally work, I need to move this from "generally" to "always" and "with less effort from me".

It's time to make some changes. As noted above, I've previously been happy to give people space to feel things out and learn from them. I don't want to lose that - it's an important part of empowerment and learning. However that is the discussion part - I need to add some stronger gateway decisions to the way we work. On reflection, I think I need to be better at separating discussion from decision and creating a formal record. There is too much going on at the moment to be imprecise about the state of decisions, so I need more opportunity to eyeball people and tell them to speak up or forever hold their peace.

The trick through all this will be retaining agile working patterns - I don't want to create some kind of decision auditing circus, but as we mature we both want to and need to be able to hold each other to account properly. This means having something to be held to - robust decision records where people can make their decisions known formally.

Initial muse for the moment - I've been exhausted this month. More on this later I feel.

Hanging out with the cool kids

I have spent most of an incredibly busy March as a stand-in CIO while my boss was away. After three weeks of my first real taste of a C-level role and board member, I find myself grateful for the experience and thinking about all the things I've learned. Time for some reflections.

The job itself was obviously truncated - covering is an inherently tactical affair whereas a job like CIO is strategically focused. So I had an easy ride from that angle - large amounts did not need doing in the timeframe. What I DID do involved a lot of reporting and representation. Much more than my current role, I had to think about information flow across the department and that naturally led my mind straight to the way the processes were set up. Our department has been entirely overhauled over the last twelve or so months, and it was very interesting getting a different perspective on how this fits together and where we can work out kinks to prevent our own internal reporting industries wasting time re-collating information instead of letting it flow.

In fact, I find myself thinking about the process far more than the content. How do we get information from team to division to report to governance board while retaining its accuracy? Of course, the quality does matter - over the last few weeks I've fronted reports to the exec board, the spend group, the risk board and the directorate board to name just a few. There is no way I could have written all this myself, even with the information immediately to hand and that of course leads back to ensuring the processes are in place to create good submissions "automatically" with my input being editing and guiding the narrative of each submission.

Setting this up for success is utterly critical. I'm going to write a proper post on this sometime, but my feeling on my current job is that when one removes the fluff, I have two objectives - create clarity and make time to support / guide people. This was amplified again as CIO. I've already started updating the way we plan inside Engineering to more directly feed into some of the governance processes, removing some of the kinks mentioned above, and now The Boss is back I am going to spend more time working through this. I've been working on "create clarity" since day one, but I've got a different perspective to work from now.

So what else? Well, the flow described above creates more and more dependence on the people in the department. The more senior I get, the more I see this shift from doing to coordinating and this was a surprisingly large additional step. I thought I'd already shed all remnant of actually doing things myself, but apparently not. It re-highlights the importance of building a high-performing culture and all the questions therein - about trust, development, setting and maintaining standards, etc. These few weeks have also showed where I've been too tolerant - or perhaps more accurately where my tolerance will get me in trouble if I do a CIO role properly. In my current role, if something isn't quite done on time there is usually enough space for me to help them out or do bits myself. As the CIO, this is not possible. They have to perform and if I need to course-correct, I have to be able to explain and set them going with a minimum of my own input.

This creates additional pressure on me to always excel at communication. Always write clearly, speak clearly, show strong direction, etc. No ambiguity. It also requires more of others, and I found it interesting quite how acute I felt the need for clear and timely communication almost above getting the answers I actually wanted. One of the last things I wrote to the department was a gentle challenge to us all to think about how we can communicate better and cut down on noise.

It also emphasises something I've always told people who want to move into more senior roles. Know how to take ownership of a problem. The value to someone in a role like this of someone being able to remove a problem from your shoulders and make it all work without too much from you is phenomenal. Importantly, this is not just "offer support", it's do, own, lead. For me, it's the golden ticket to being noticed and given further opportunities. As it happens, it's also much better for the CV / interview.

Another aspect of the CIO job was the sheer volume of reading. I have to read a lot as a director, but the number of papers and (hhgggnnn) PowerPoint decks that need absorbing is ridiculous. I found myself reading them in the evening, when I could get a drink and be much more confident of a few quiet hours without any interruptions. This, of course, did wonders for my work-life balance. It highlighted three things to me. First, the importance of getting submissions in on time as the knock-on effect can be board members getting 130 pages of "excitement" to read for a meeting 48 hours away. This was ... not a highlight. Second, the importance of writing clearly and effectively and spelling correctly. Especially in Word, where mistakes are underlined. Get it right. Third, I'm going to have to develop my speed-reading skills.

However! There were some bits that were easier. While there was a huge amount to do, I found the immediacy of my normal job diminished. That is, there were many things I needed to look at but I could choose my approach much more and spend less time in meetings than I normally do. So while the volume was huge, I did find myself with a bit more time to breathe and consider. It was weird and I think this reflection is more that I need to change how I approach my day to day.

Also, it was very interesting seeing all the department machinery working away. There is a great quote from Yes Prime Minister (which I can't put my hand on right now, so you'll have to suffer my paraphrasing) where the PM is talking to his Private Secretary about the role and the PS is explaining that while there are many things the PM SHOULD do and any number of things the PM CAN do, there is actually very little the PM HAS to do. The CIO role felt like that - if I'd sat back and waved things onward I could have gotten away with doing very little for quite some time. So the old systems analyst part of my brain turns towards the problem of maximising that - which is the question "how do I build a department that doesn't need me". I actually mentioned this concept in the interview for my current job so it's nice to have it reinforced.

Not that everything was plain sailing of course. I had to intervene in a few projects to help them back on track. I had to front a few concerns and problems to the wider organisation, and internally. My favourite moment, however was in the dying moments. I told my colleagues I was logging off for the weekend, and thanked them for all their support. I had one last quick look at my email. Then the website blew up. P1 incident, all the sirens going.

Who said technology doesn't have a sense of humour...

Artificial Empathy and The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Effective Management

As a manager, you're responsible for leading and motivating a team of individuals with different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. One key trait that can help you succeed in this role is emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence, or EQ, refers to the ability to understand and manage one's own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. It includes skills such as empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, and social skills. Here are some ways that emotional intelligence can help you be a more effective manager:

1. Build better relationships with your team. By demonstrating empathy and understanding towards your team members, you can create a sense of trust and psychological safety. This can lead to better communication, collaboration, and ultimately, better performance.
2. Manage conflict more effectively. Conflict is a natural part of any workplace, but as a manager, it's your job to resolve it in a constructive manner. By using your emotional intelligence skills, you can identify the root causes of the conflict, communicate effectively, and find solutions that work for everyone involved.
3. Make better decisions. By being self-aware and understanding your own biases and emotions, you can make more rational and objective decisions. Additionally, by understanding the emotions and perspectives of others, you can make decisions that take into account the needs and concerns of your team.
4. Motivate and inspire your team. A manager with high emotional intelligence can inspire and motivate their team members by understanding their individual needs, providing feedback that is tailored to their strengths and weaknesses, and creating a positive and supportive work environment.

In short, emotional intelligence is a crucial skill for effective management. By understanding and managing your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others, you can build better relationships, manage conflict more effectively, make better decisions, and motivate and inspire your team.

---

The above was written by this month's guest writer - ChatGPT. For those who don't know, ChatGPT is a large language model - that is an artificial intelligence which has been trained on a huge body of literature to effectively generate its own content. On a whim, I asked it to generate me some blog post titles for posts about management and one that came up was "The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Effective Management". I asked it to write that post and the unedited results are above. Not bad, eh? Guess we're all out of a job pretty soon.

Well...

There are a few reasons the answer is "no" which other, more expert, writers have gone through before. In very simplified terms, this kind of artificial intelligence works by guessing the next word in the sentence using probability from analysing a vast body of existing literature (the "large" part of the language model). It generates text using a variety of language rules and learns some context from interactions in the conversation (eg in my example I said "please write the eighth suggestion" and it knew what I meant) and this all results in something that looks like it can respond intelligently to your questions.

So, again very simply put if you say to ChatGPT "Twinkle twinkle" it will respond with "little star" - not because it understands, but because the vast majority of times when someone says "twinkle twinkle it is followed with "little star". This also creates a problem with accuracy - ChatGPT has no idea what it's saying but that won't stop it saying it very confidently[1].

Anyway, there are a load of fascinating technical and ethical questions here but I want to look back at the post it created for me. This one is high-level but you can keep asking "how do I ..." and drill deeper and the answers are pretty good. However, to me they all feel like they lack some substance and are hollow checklists and that raises an important question to me. I'm less interested in "is an AI drawing closer to doing my job?" rather "what is the point of my job if it feels like a very clever predictive text system can do it?" 

And to note - I have deliberately been asking questions about emotional intelligence here. This should be what separates people from computers. Does management just lack substance?

Sadly, the answer is often yes. If a manager learns how to lead from a book and follows the steps then they will become ManagerGPT as above, and will indeed be an efficient but hollow step in a reporting chain. I've certainly met and worked with managers like this - people who seem to have learned about being human from a distance and don't seem to be able to reconcile the recommendations with their own actions. They sometimes do quite well, but they are rarely recognised as good leaders by those who have to follow them.

So what did ChatGPT miss? There are no anecdotes in there - it's a cold checklist of suggestions with no emotional warmth or grounding. It can't follow through - it's all well and good having the step "learn the names of your report's children" but it wont actually go out and do that. These are the kind of thing that separates "leadership" from "authentic leadership".

Most importantly, AI cannot give the gift of its time because it has basically infinite time available to it. This means even when it is developed so it can fake the above (and it will be) we as humans will not respond well because for compliments to land we need to know it's more than mathematically calculated, or for attention to matter we need to know there is some kind of cost to the giver. For me, this is why we laugh at that scene in Demolition Man where the man is getting a pep-talk from an ATM (before being beaten up by Wesley Snipes), but that same dialogue would be more poignant if spoken by actual people.

In short, writing about emotional intelligence and empathy and actually developing them are quite different things and for the moment this is where humans can still add value. And, obviously, we should be making sure we actually DO that thing. All humans - even managers.

If you want to have a go at getting ChatGPT to do your job for you, you can find it on the OpenAI website. I certainly haven't used it to generate papers for the board (although if I did I'd absolutely list it as a co-author).

[1] This example comes from Simon Willison's excellent post about Bing and is originally drawn from Talking About Large Language Models by Murray Shanahan.

Give me a task OR a problem

I was speaking to a colleague recently who was feeling very anxious. They were trying to lead a major organisational process - something well within both their job description and individual capability - but they were feeling awful about the whole thing because of a strong sense they were not doing the right thing. We dug into this, and as far as I could see, the problem came from feeling a general expectation they own this problem, while they were also trying to meet their delivery goals in specific ways. So wide responsibility with diminished agency.

When in a position of authority and / or leadership, we need to be constantly alive to the effect of our actions on those around us. When delegating, that means trying to cleanly delegate either a problem OR a series of tasks. Both approaches have their place, but going somewhere in between creates all manner of anxiety.

Delegating a series of tasks means telling someone exactly what you want. You retain the ownership of the problem and tell other(s) what you need in order for you to solve this problem. Importantly, that means you're are retaining responsibility for the end product and various aspects of quality control along the way. No matter how clear your definition of the task (an entirely separate post...), delegates will need to check in to find out if they are doing the right thing. Certainly, you can expect the individual to use their initiative within those tasks - essentially you've delegating a series of micro-problems - but you are retaining responsibility for bringing it all together and need to make sure the person receiving the tasks doesn't feel that responsibility.

This approach is best used for your own direct deliverables, or in short-term scenarios such as "we need to achieve X by next week, so I'm taking direct control of this process". The trade-off here is that you're keeping direct control at the cost of putting more of your own effort into the process. You get to have ongoing input on how something is achieved and retaining the definition of done, at the cost of having to spend your time doing this - something which can be very difficult dependent on your own availability. It withholds agency from those receiving the tasks so the more senior you are, the less you should use this approach as you've presumably appointed clever, able people around you and want to make use of their talents.

The other option is to delegate the problem. In this case, you set out the direction and the parameters for success and let the individual work through it and solve the problem themselves. This approach empowers the individual, giving them an opportunity to stretch themselves and learn. It also frees up your own headspace, because someone else is now handling this problem and you only need to check in with them from time to time to ensure they have the support they need. However, the trade-off here is that you're empowering another at the expense of your own direct control. You don't get to dictate every step of the process, which means you need to accept that they might do things a bit differently to how you'd have done it. Likely, this doesn't matter but it can certainly be difficult to let go. The emphasis on you is to create an environment where the person can flourish and feel confident that (assuming a decent level of communication to keep aligned) you will support them.

I'm labouring this point because it's all too easy to end up taking the middle ground. Trying to put someone in charge of delivering something, expecting them to make the decisions and for it to happen - but expecting it to happen the way you want it, and them to make the specific decisions in your head. Obviously this is impossible - and just as obviously, nobody does this deliberately - but it happens all the time and for the person on the receiving end it creates an environment where it's impossible to perform. If they are any good they want to do a good job, but in this case the definition of "doing a good job" is being hidden. The point here is stunningly obvious, but can cause severe anxiety.

However, this is not just something for the leader to consider. The individual receiving the work should also be aware of their situation and force some clarity. What are the expectations here? If it seems I'm being given tasks can we please talk clear definitions of success, and about regular check-ins? Or can I own this problem, and solve it my own way? In which case, back off please leader and let me do my thing. Especially if this problem is something that my department / job title should own.

When this is decided, both parties needs to work to the chosen paradigm. If it's a task, the leader needs to get the information required to move things forward, but shouldn't expect the delegate to take the lead of the wider problem. If it's a problem, the delegate needs to take proper ownership and not ask so many questions of the leader they are making them do all the thinking. However, the leader needs to support the delegate. Whichever, both parties need to keep sufficient communication to ensure things are progressing the right way, and all parties can work with confidence.

By this point, we're leaning into the territory of our personal relationships with our colleagues and that is a very different post. I've certainly worked with people I can trust to work very much at arms length, and others I've needed to spend more time directly supporting. The same is true of my relationships with The Boss, at different times in my career. Like so many things, confidence (and better mental health!) comes with clarity more than anything else.

Built to last

I spent the week in Pembrokeshire, exploring the coast and visiting various old and ancient places of interest. There was a bishop's palace (around 200 years old), a reconstructed Iron Age village built on the site of the original settlement (2500 years old) and a Stone Age floating stone dolmen (5000 years old). These are all astonishing examples of technology from the past. Did you know there is no smoke hole in an Iron Age roundhouse because it created a smoke ceiling that was useful for smoking meats and then the tar deposited as the smoke worked through the thatch helped insulate and keep insects from nesting in the roof? The design of the house was such that with a correctly sized fire, the smoke ceiling stayed well out of the way of the inhabitants. This created a beautiful ecosystem using all parts of the fire and this was 2500 years ago.

On the other hand, we can't build an HR system that works properly.

One way I like to expand my thinking about the tech industry is by learning from other walks of life. Tech is a very young industry and while some of our challenges are unique, many have come up time and again and we really should learn from others before attempting to reinvent the wheel. Usually I look at modern industry like manufacturing, supply chain logistics, beer brewing, food packaging, game development, forging and so on but sometimes we can gain inspiration (or at least be humbled) by looking much further back.

So let's look at Pentre Ifan, the neolithic dolmen.

The top stone was originally a larger rock which was split by craftsmen and now weighs around 16 tonnes. It is balanced on the tips of three other stones, high enough for a fairly tall person to walk under without stooping. In person, the effect is actually quite eerie - it looks like a strong wind will knock it over. What we see here is very simple, yet elegant design and a very high commitment to engineering excellence in order to execute it properly. It was believed to have been winched up a little at a time using ropes and pulleys, with supporting boulders put in place each step. So iterative construction with solid testing at each stage (with failed tests resulting in a 16 tonne boulder falling on the workforce...). They had to create supporting structures (the smaller boulders), which were later discarded when no longer required.

They put in the work to make this last (last 5000 years, as it happens). It even has a small environmental footprint since the materials are locally sourced. So is this pinnacle of sustainable development?

Well, not exactly. That means building for the future - creating something simple and well documented so we can maintain and make use of it going forward.

Thing is, we can't maintain or extend this dolmen (ignoring the protected status for a moment, and the sheer horror of using a 5000 year old monument to build "something else"). For this to be useful, we need to know what it is for. Is it a doorway to a tomb? Some kind of temple or altar? The real problem is around knowledge transfer. Where is the original documentation telling us the core purpose with notes about how it was built? The fact it predates writing in Britain by around 3000 years is no excuse!

Plus, while the design is elegant it is not intuitive. If it were, we'd be able to work out what it does and how to use it. More UX work required here, I feel. Whatever it was, it has outlived it's original purpose and has clearly missed its (admittedly impressive) maintenance cycle, which would have had it replaced by a modern equivalent a few thousand years ago.

This post needs to end. Somewhere in all the above silliness are some solid points, honest.

Pentre Ifan itself is incredible.

Why hire a Head of Community?

One of the hats I have worn during my career is "Head of Community" for Software Engineering. A few years ago, these were rare roles but these days we're seeing them pop up more often. Since we at Macmillan are currently recruiting for one, I thought I'd write a bit about why they are a Good Thing, despite the rather strange mix of requirements. This post is not sponsored!

So, you have a Software Engineering group. Why should you hire a Head of Community? 

If you've hired developers and other technologists, you know they are hard to bring in and retain. A typical developer role last to about three years before they move on and when they do, they not only take their professional expertise they also take all the knowledge of the organisation's technical estate and business problems that has accumulated in their heads. This is expensive for a variety of reasons and surely we can do better? 

Your organisation has almost certainly been describing itself as proudly investing in its people (everyone does, whether it's true or not). If we care about people, why are any initiatives done as extra work by people who have a heart for that kind of thing? Why are these extras the first thing to go when time is squeezed? Why is there not someone with clear space to think strategically and holistically about essential problems like careers, recruitment, support, mentoring, and so on? These often are shunted off to organisation-wide initiatives, which is good as far as they go, but these areas require specialist knowledge born of experience to be credible.

A Head of Community role brings together professional expertise (and another senior technologist never hurts) with the mandate to improve the lives of the technologists in their community. Happy people are less likely to leave, which obviously is a good thing for retention. They can devote time to finding diverse sources of recruitment and reaching people who might otherwise be overlooked. Furthermore, getting the basics in place across the whole organisation saves considerable effort in recruitment and performance management and enables a consistent experience for all those working there.

Fundamentally, Head of Community roles are about putting our money where our mouth is when we talk about valuing people.

Ok - you're a lead developer, or an engineering manager or some other technical leader. Why should you consider being a Head of Community?

Personally, I see it partly as giving back. Everyone with experience in technology has had to gain that experience somehow. We've all had our first job, made our junior mistakes, and so on. This is not an easy process for most. Technology is a famously hostile and toxic field, and some have it far worse than others. And yet, technology underpins most of the modern world. There is no shortage of work - there is enough of a shortfall in people to do the work that the government set up the Institute of Code to look at the problem. But Computer Science graduates struggle to find work. Why is this? Why can't people get into an industry crying out for workers? 

As an industry, we can do better. We must be thinking about the next generations of technologists. It's as important to the sustainability of the industry as making sure our code is well written and understandable in the future. Roles such as the Head of Community roles are created to give space to enable specifically this - to grapple with problems like "how do we recruit juniors in a safe way?" or "how do our people grow?".

Maybe this isn't enough - you'd rather be writing code. Understandable, but what about in five years? Ten? Do you want to be hands-on your entire career? If not, what is next? If you want to progress into senior leadership you need experiences beyond the hard technical. People-oriented roles such as a Head of Community enable broader learning, dealing with HR challenges and issues, line management and operating at a wider scale through people. However there is still a requirement for technical understanding, so do not require stepping entirely into a different career. For someone who wants to be a Director or CTO, this kind of experience can be extremely valuable.

If all this sounds interesting, a reminder that we're currently hiring a Head of Technical Community at Macmillan.

Kind helpfulness

A short muse ... what does kind helpfulness look like? I've been pondering this question as I've been thinking about how to help people develop. When someone is struggling, there is a natural tendency to help shoulder the burden. Sometimes that is the right thing to do, but is often a tactical solution and in the context of work is that helping the individual or myself? It's the shortest route to making the problem go away, and has the highest likelihood of getting the result I want. But there is the cost of the individual losing a learning opportunity, or worse feeling disempowered.

I started consciously thinking about this some time ago when playing some Dark Souls 3 coop with a friend. The Dark Souls games are famously difficult, and are pretty much defined by learning and overcoming challenge. However, someone dropped into our game and ran around killing enemies, pointing out secrets, and generally paving the way to a very easy experience where we were tourists in our own game. He was certainly helpful, but he completely robbed us of challenge, accomplishment and learning our own way through the game.

This comes up all the time in leadership. Someone asks for help with something complex like recruitment, so I step in and then they don't learn for next time. There is a learned helplessness in teaching someone to reach out for the solution instead of working through it and for technologists there is a longer term rot from not letting individuals own (and solve) non-technical problems, as this is where we struggle to get experience in the day to day job which then blocks moving into more senior roles. Very much "teach a man to fish" territory, although of course it needs balancing with not leaving people helpless and floundering.

That said, maybe we should lean into the Ron Swanson method for mentoring? "Don't teach a man to fish, feed yourself. He's a grown man and fishing is not that hard".

Of course not directly, but there is a point in there about being kind along with helpful. Kind helpfulness assists someone overcoming a challenge, but doesn't remove the challenge entirely. And the kind helpful leader makes sure where possible there is space for this process to happen - it takes time and safety for people to learn, after all.

Short post this month. It has been a difficult one.

 

Fun with email

I have a love / hate relationship with the cliche "work smarter, not harder". On the one hand, as a technologist it forms the core of so much of how I approach problems. "I don't like this weekly task" leads to "how do I standardise this to think less?" then "now it's standard, can I automate it?". Then, much later "how does this script work again?" but I'm going to ignore this last step.

On the other hand, when it's said out loud it tends to be by people who are responsible for pushing too much work on to the individual, then sidestepping said responsibility when it comes time to actually help them out. Often with a side-dose of being too stupid to actually provide the "smarts" to lighten the load.

With this in mind, I want to think a little about collective efficiency, and how we can all help each other out when it comes to email.

When I was a starry-eyed, enthusiastic developer at the bottom of the social totem pole, I learned to hate the "I have a reckon" emails. Typically, someone would dash off a half-thought about some kind of feature development in about 2 minutes and send them over. I would then have to spend half an hour working out what they actually wanted then another couple of hours writing some kind of considered response (usually attempting to shut down this idea). That's the afternoon gone, immediately. Thanks, important person.

Now I'm In Leadership I try very hard to avoid this kind of email. I try to create an environment wherein I can answer my own questions, without bothering people who have better things to do than answer my questions. If I DO need to ask someone something, then I do my best to ask a clear, answerable question to help the victim / recipient spend as little time as possible on me.

So - linking to the original point about working smarter. Everyone knows that at work you aren't working alone, you are part of a team. It is not you that needs to be efficient - it is the ecosystem. If you're highly productive, but you're wasting your colleagues' time, energy or will to live then you are causing a problem for the collective. This is true from large actions (eg how one manages a project) through to the tiny (eg sending terrible email).

But this is more than simply unnecessary email. When one sends an email, the context is all in the head of the author. If the recipient has to spend time actually working out this context, that is time thinking which is going to be far longer than time spent writing. Even worse, if it is forwarding a conversation thread so the recipient also has to read a multi-step conversation between two people with little to no context. Oh, and of course the thread contains 30 page attachment too. Because why not at this point.

So, the original email is "what do you think?" - 20 seconds work on the part of the sender. The recipient can take half an hour or more getting through the information to come to the answer "err ... about what?". Now, consider that the recipient is actually five people. That time multiplies up very quickly.

Imagine instead that the original sender spent a bit more time summarising the content and asking a clear question. Maybe a whole hour? That's a long time to spend on an email, but this is one hour with five two minute responses for a total of 70 minutes from the wider "work ecosystem". In the original example, it's 120 minutes from the ecosystem as well as five rather irritated recipients. This is without mentioning that tying you up for the time you are writing a better initial email prevents you causing damage anywhere else...

So that's email. Now let's talk about booking meetings without causing diary conflicts...

(From Oracle Calendar - screenshot from back in 2011 - apparently I have been irritable for a long time)

"Gosh, that is an inane post" I hear some people crying. Yes and no. While the email example and numbers are clearly fabricated, this is a real problem. I've written before about writing well being a highly important skill and this is a variation of my usual comments, going beyond "clearer communication" into efficiency. As leaders, it's important to consider how much damage our actions can cause without any intent or us even realising. Our role is to empower our people to be the best they can be, and being considerate of their time and helping them be on the front foot is an important part of this.

I believe someone once wrote "do the hard work to make things simple"!