Category: Blog

It’s fair to say that having children has been the toughest and most rewarding journey I’ve ever embarked on. This morning I sat on the train headed for the office, the whirlwind of my life was weighing heavily on my mind. Why am I always so busy? Why aren’t I getting far with my personal projects? Why do I have times where I’m not as energetic and enthusiastic as I used to be?

As I sat there pondering these questions, I began listening to Pure Calm, the music played during the birth of both my children. Relaxing yoga / hippie  music that’s not to everyone’s tastes though it’s very relaxing. It reminded me of quieter times, evenings spent with my wife and our first son as he fed and drifted off to sleep at night. Each time I hear it I’m also reminded of times during the day when our dog and son slept peacefully while it played in the background. The house was calm during those times, I had a new job that was going well and the world seemed to have slowed to a manageable pace.

Our first son is very calm, he thinks a lot and sometimes he’s so quiet and busy with his Lego you wouldn’t know he’s in the room with you. Then came son number two, a lively, loud, inquisitive baby, where you couldn’t possibly be in the same room and not know he was there. Both wonderful kiddos in their own way, yet very different too, despite our parenting style being the same for both. 

In the book How not to f*ck them up by Oliver James, he describes how you cannot parent multiple children of different ages in the same way. His argument being the simple fact of a new edition results in both having a different experience from that moment forward. I think he’s right and it’s the same with leadership, each person on a team is different and for teams that have grown, there are people who have not had the same experience with the leader that the original people would have had.

So here’s the thing, nostalgia is nice and treating everyone the same is what most of us try to do. As a parent and leader I want to ensure I’m always moving forward not backward. I treat everyone the same, yet the reality is that’s not possible. Past experience is essential for personal growth, though emotional attachment and bias towards past solutions and experiences can have serious consequences. Consequences to our quality of life and success outcomes at work and in business.

I’m grateful for forward thinking that includes appreciation of the past. When I find myself thinking back to times gone by, I move to considering reflecting on appreciation for what’s been, rather than wanting it again. Time moves forward not backward, thinking in this way has really helped shape positive outcomes for me. If you find yourself getting nostalgic, try simply appreciating whatever it is rather than wanting what’s been.

“The past is the past. And the only direction in life that matters is forward. Never backwards.”

— Henry ‘Pop’ Hunter (Frankie Faison), Marvel’s Luke Cage, Season 1: Moment of Truth

I sometimes get asked why I don’t write about test and quality, after all it’s the field I’ve spent the last 18 years working in. My answer is I’m unable to add anything more than people like Alan Page and Brent Jenson already have and continue to do. You can see their Modern Testing principles here. In fact the one time I wrote about test and quality on LinkedIn I called them out. They are pioneers helping shape the future and it’s spreading nicely.

So the other day when someone asked me, I was reminded that I write about all sorts. I haven’t actually written about gratitude specifically in a while. This site is named Choose Gratitude so I sat and thought about what I’m grateful for today and if it would be interesting to anyone. That’s when an email thread started with some friends. We were jokingly comparing our work locations. As it happens, for lunch that day I grabbed a sandwich from the canteen and headed down to the main canal in Copenhagen. I sat on a bench and watched the boats go up and down. It was at that point I realised how privileged I am, privileged that is, to have worked in some amazing locations over the last 18 years.

In a world that moves faster than ever, it’s important to slow down and take a check of what we’ve had and what we have now. I sat there in the sun and thought about the experiences and people I’m grateful for having in my life.

Back to places…As I sat there eating my Danish sandwich (with amazing rye bread baked onsite at work!) I thought about the many people I’d worked with and the places I’d met them. Here are some highlights:

“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way”

Walter Hagen

• Electronic Arts – UK headquarters by Norman Foster in Chertsey. This building was specially designed and built for EA and has also been used in TV shows and movies like Inception. It was there I settled into my first role in the video game industry. We had a lake, open fireplace and a sports bar. Famous actors and movie producers would visit regularly and on a Friday we had free drinks by the lake while feeding the swans, lovely. It’s still the best location I have ever worked, I miss it. 

• Electronic Arts – Guildford studios. When we moved to the modern inner town office at Onslow House in the heart of Guildford I had a historical castle, it’s gardens, and river walks on my doorstep. The architecture and beauty of Guildford is wonderful and I’ll always have fond memories of my favourite area in Surrey.

• Microsoft – UK headquarters, Reading Berkshire. Reading town for many doesn’t conjure up any kind of delight and I’ll admit outside of MS that goes for me too. However the MS campus in Thames valley Park was a great place to spend weekdays. I sat by the fountain and read books, napped in amongst the trees and walked along the River Thames for many of my meetings. This is where I grew more as a person than at any other time during my working life. The short video here doesn’t include the onsite supermarket, Minecraft floor and what was at the time an incredible learning centre with onsite librarians, it changed me forever.

• Microsoft Lift London Studios – 30 Great Pulteney Street just off Carnaby street Soho and UK House just off Oxford Street  It was in these locations I met with Jonathan Ross as he worked with us, said hi to Kylie Minogue as we shared the building with Spotify, and Noel Fielding of Mighty Boosh fame thought I was following him every lunch time as we left the office (he had one next door) at the same time each day and went to the same coffee shop.

• Unity Technologies – Brighton. I wasn’t there very long, though in that time I became more appreciative of what Brighton has to give. Forever in my heart after watching Quadrophenia as a teenager, working in Brighton enabled me to explore the lanes, sit on the beach front during a lunch break and explore filming locations I hadn’t seen in a long time.

• Unity Technologies – Copenhagen. I’ve been here almost 3 months now. It’s a wonderful city that has much on offer. Danish life suits me so far and I’m enjoying being somewhere so culturally enriching. It’s definitely the nicest and most suitable area I’ve worked in so far. Check out a pic of a spot a short walk from our office, not far from where I ate my sandwich while writing this post.

I am totally grateful for the places I’ve worked, I hope you can say the same.

My favourite advertising slogan ever. One that Apple took in 1997 and spread across the world. IBM’s slogan at the time was Think, Apple turned that on its head. 

In our society thinking differently comes with a tax, in and outside of work. I come from a family that (on both sides) tends to reject the status quo, the machine, the corporation and the idea of being managed by someone. I’m one of a few direct family members in the last 100 years that have worked for anyone else. In some ways I see that as a personal failing, by now I should have cracked that nut and taken my own path. In other ways I see it as how successful I’ve been, where I’ve been able to surround myself with smart people to learn from, as well as make time to build a strong family bond as a husband and father (something historically my family hasn’t succeeded at).

In the workplace, thinking differently can be a challenge, especially if that work place is not diverse. With diversity comes different thinking, something many tech companies have struggled with, especially in software development. For 18 years I worked for 2 major businesses, Electronic Arts and Microsoft. Each had it’s merits, each had it’s downsides.

I found out how important it was for me to be able to think differently in 2009 when I moved from a role at EA to a role at Xbox. At EA clarity reigned supreme, with measures, process and talented people (working in what was for many their dream job). We were able to approach a problem with whatever thinking we wanted and changed / created process almost daily. In Xbox at the time, the culture was pivoting, hubris was rife and lack of measures created politics that many denied existed, I was a square peg in a round hole.

Out of the many ways I approached this problem I’ve been pondering on 3 recently. After reading Adam Grant’s Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World, this sentence from the book resonated:

“Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.” 

1.After 3 months at Microsoft I was drowning in email and conference calls. Every morning I’d start the day going through what could be 100’s of emails from Seattle. With the time difference it meant when I was at home Seattle was working at sending me email. Much of this email was telling me what to do and how to do it.

On top of this, each evening I was drowning in conference calls as Seattle started their day at 5pm my time. I found advice from an old colleague who’d also moved to Microsoft (to a different division). He said ignore the email, reject the conference calls, see what happens.

At first glance this may sound like a recipe for getting fired. But the spirit of what he said stuck. The actual problem was the content of the emails and calls i.e. the hubris and politics resulted in Seattle’s view that no-one could know what they know. Xbox was huge and complicated and they felt the need to tell people how to approach what they did. 

I started to ignore the emails and calls coming through, the ones telling me how to do my job. Nothing bad happened. I was still doing my job and succeeding. The assumption was I was doing it in the way Seattle wanted me too, the reality was I was doing it completely differently and getting better results. I was then spotted elsewhere in Xbox and hired for a different role based on my original thinking. Microsoft had started to embrace non conformists, great timing for me.

2.Don’t be the only one who thinks differently. At Microsoft I quickly hired like minded people. People I trusted and knew could help drive success. I needed to be challenged and understand when I was talking rubbish, had ideas that wouldn’t work or was just plain wrong. The problem was Seattle was telling me this all the time. I know I’m not approaching things incorrectly all the time so needed others with me. Without others who could help the wave of change and thinking, to help the push back and articulate why we should do it differently the organisation was failing.

The downside to surrounding my self with like minded people at Xbox is that I now often under communicate my ideas. They’re already so familiar to me that I regularly underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them. I didn’t need to get good at this in Xbox as I was part of a group of non conformists. We were original thinkers together. When you’re alone it’s a tough place to be. Priority number 1 on my learning right now is improving my ability to articulate an approach without the voice of others

3.Understand the problem. One of the things that helped me in those early days at Xbox was Stephen Covey’s short film Max and Max. I was Max in the dog sense and the employee sense. I read his book The Eighth Habit and gained inspiration for understanding how to thrive with others and realise those leaders with ego’s, hubris and conformity always move on. It also helped me realise what was actually happening to me. I was being stifled and not allowed to approach work with my own flavour. I couldn’t understand why I’d been hired. Why hire people for their talents only to tell them how to approach their work? It’s in my DNA to challenge convention, I need to work where that can happen. Understanding what was happening to me at that time was the first step to being able to take action and change my situation.

So, we all benefit from listening to others and others listening to us. When ideas are not heard a part of you can die inside. That’s when a business loses a person. That’s when society loses a person. We cannot afford to lose people. More than ever we need passionate people to stand up for what they believe in, whether that’s big or small.

I want my children to know a world where different perspectives and views are valued. A world where they can stand up and be heard. A world that embraces thinking differently.

Worker politics otherwise known as office politics can appear anywhere. Often found in offices, other work places are not immune, especially retail, factories and transport. Why is it that some people are so wired to get ahead they’d do anything to anyone to get there?

I don’t have the answer, though I have a lot of experience on the receiving end of other peoples agendas.

This week I was chatting with an old friend, I say chatting, we were in fact txting over What’s app (who actually talks anymore? 😎). We touched on the subject of back stabbing and office politics. It reminded me of the journey I’m still on (it’s a continuous one) to limit the effect of other peoples power and agendas, a journey that started way back in school. I’ve mastered some aspects over the years, though even now I still have to walk out of a building and sit in a cafe to get away from specific situations and people. I do this to remind myself of what’s important and how best to respond.

So what are worker politics? In an age where knowledge is valued over delivering something tangible, politics exist because what gets measured gets done. More often than not what gets measured is some form of target requiring individual accomplishment over team accomplishment. Or worse still, an undefined direction / lack of vision from leadership, resulting in personal agendas, backstabbing and highlighting ones self over others.

The worst politics I’ve been unfortunate enough to experience were back in the Steve Ballmer Microsoft years. Where stack ranking people was the number 1 method for handing out rewards. It was a tough time and I almost left the company several times.

If you work somewhere that measures peoples accomplishments by comparing them to others, rather than measuring peoples impact across areas such as contribution to others, leveraging others and wider customer experience, then I hope you’re doing ok as you’re in a place I never want to return too.

So how have I survived so far? Or as one person recently put it ‘how do I stay so calm?’ Well the answer is that on the inside I’m still hurting, yet I’m working on the Viktor E. Frankl principle that “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” i.e we can make space (seconds, minutes, hours) and choose to respond internally and / or externally in the best way we can (which can sometimes be not responding at all).

Strangely however, the main source of my knowledge on how to best deal with worker politics and then put solutions into action, has actually come from television. TV shows are dramatic in order to get viewers, and there are some spectacular ones I’ve enjoyed watching and learning from in regards to back stabbers, personal agendas and the politics of life.

So below are, in my opinion the most effective TV shows at helping you see and navigate those nasty situations you may (hopefully not) encounter:

• The House of Cards (the original UK one and the US reboot)
• The West Wing
• The Shield
• The Good Wife
• The Good Fight (particularly good for seeing how decent people can overcome others lying and backstabbing)
• Studio 60 on the sunset strip
• The Newsroom

There are plenty more, like The Sopranos, The Wire, Better Call Saul etc. yet the above list contains my favourites as they encompass drama with humour. They are also very good at helping build a moral compass and understanding of all the different types of people and motivations you may encounter in life.

So if you watch TV and are interested in better survival of worker politics, you could do worse than watch any or all of the above. In the unlikely event you’ve not seen any of them yet then I recommend starting light with The Newsroom and The Good Fight.

Enjoy!

Note: From a book perspective I can recommend Oliver James’ book Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks