This is how I work…give or take
@jukesie establishing a zeitgeist again! Thank you Debbie for nominating me. These have been fascinating to read. Sorry mine is long 😬
Location: South Somerset is my home, Bristol for work
Current Gig: Delivery Director at Delib
Current mobile device: An iPhone 8 with a really lame protective case because I’m a clumsy oaf
Current computer: A MacBook Pro for work and an older MacBook Pro for home. They have pretty different tools on them.
One word that best describes how you work: Committedly (but this is an ugly word to say)
First of all, tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in villages near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. My dad was a sales director and my mum a nurse. He died when I was 10 after living with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia for a few years, which is like an intensely cruel housemate who moves in when you’re on holiday and eventually turns all your friends against you. After many aggressive rounds of chemotherapy he was given a bone marrow transplant using his own stem cells, but after a short time in remission the cancer returned in an alarming way while we were on a short break to our favourite place in Cornwall. He was then given six weeks to live and died early in the summer of 1992.
These and the years after were formative. There are many features of my personality and ways I deal with conflict, difficult times, resolution, support and relationships which are shaped by this period of my life, I think — I hope — for the better.
During his illness, my sister and I fundraised for the soon-to-be-built Cancer Care and Chemotherapy Unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital by running bring and buy sales at the top of our street. We were featured with a photo in the local newspaper, one of my few claims to fame. I got to hold a dust buster (50p, bargain) like an automatic weapon.
My mum went on to work at the unit, and I did occasional days over school holidays ferrying blood from the unit to the pathology lab and back again. I suspect that would not be allowed now. I was not on the payroll.
After school, I was due to study French at Kings College London, but that summer I hitchhiked around Ireland with my friend Cath who was off to study philosophy. I decided, after many chats about parallel universes, that this was what I wanted to do instead. I then went through clearing to get into Reading Uni to study philosophy and linguistics, the only place that ran this combination course.
Was it a good decision? No.
Do I regret it? Only a little. Though I made some poor choices while I was there which I regret more.
After university, I moved to Oxford then London. These were taxing years, going through the motions in financial services, paying off student debt, waiting for someone to realise my obvious well of enormous potential.
I moved into low management and mentored a great teenager called Kayleigh who taught me a lot about what it takes to gain people’s trust and how to look after your team.
Personal circumstances, the kind that only happen in your early twenties, led to me making the move from London to join friends in Bristol in 2004. That was a good decision. I remained working in financial services gathering some qualifications and moving from advice into account management, advising advisers rather than the public on larger sums of money. Then the financial crash happened and I was made redundant along with thousands of others.
I took a fixed term contract with DWP to be able to continue to pay my mortgage. This was one of the few places with jobs available as staff were needed to plug the gaps in job centres now that so many people were out of work. I maintain that any minister taking on a brief in DWP – or perhaps any minister at all – should spend three weeks undercover in a job centre. I moved from there to assessing Attendance Allowance claims in a decision centre.
This year of my life was both relaxed and stressful, but for different stress reasons than I’d experienced before. The stresses here came from navigating the bureaucracy, reading the claim forms and remaining objective, and how old and clunky the IT system collecting this huge mass of decisions was. Around this time I’d applied for fast stream and got through to the assessment centre, but no further. I left at the end of my fixed term and moved back to the private sector to become a territory manager for Olympus Medical covering the south west, south Wales, and UK overseas territories.
Here I worked mostly alone, becoming a revolving and temporary part of the hospital teams I was working with. My area was Gastroenterology, the amazing flexible camera equipment that is used to investigate and treat pathologies throughout the digestive tract, including cancers. It was a very hard job, I was hardly at home and juggling appointments and logistics and equipment constantly. However it taught me a lot about commitment, adapting to unusual and challenging environments and different teams on a daily basis, training large groups, NHS contracts, infrastructure project management, and staying sane in a corporate environment.
I have seen more colonoscopies than I ever imagined I would.
Through all this I was still looking for my cause to fight and somewhere I could really be valued and validated, where profit might come second to doing the right thing. Then I saw the job at Delib and joined as an account manager in October 2013. I was made Delivery Director in January 2017 and here I’m responsible for making sure we deliver for our customers, helping government to improve clunky old democratic processes with better technology, and to get Delib into a place where it’s fulfilling to work and to do good things. Finally I don’t have to have a work me and a home me — they are the same person.
Take us through a recent workday.
I get up at 06:00 to leave the house for 06:45, we live an hour and a half from work so we stop at the swimming pool on the way in for Jon to swim and I run for about 40 minutes. If I’m not driving, I check my emails on the way so that I can come in to the office with a clear house. Most days I get home between 19:00 and 19:30.
My day is often pulled in the direction of other people, both customers or colleagues, which is fine. My day today so far looks like this, but other days it might be travelling and training, or working through our workflow tickets:
- Call org about upcoming meeting
- Answer incoming customer question via phone/email
- Add stats to an annual report
- Read new call-off contract and show colleagues how to complete them and what to look out for
- Read our updated information security policy
- Read extra GDPR detail in relation to data controllers
- Answer incoming customer question via phone/email
- Chat with Andy (MD) about potential process changes
- Look at cashflow and begin forecasting out for coming year
I should also say that Delib is hiring. Please come and work with me.
What apps, gadgets, or tools can’t you live without?
I could live without almost any of them if I really had to, like we did in the 80's. Grow a wild beard. Go off-grid. Though I’d probably still want my phone to chat with my family from my cave. And I do like showers. Can I also have a nice thin-tip biro and a sturdy notepad? Then I could write notes and draw doodles which will be discovered years later and analysed for clues.
What’s your best shortcut or life hack?
Erm..setting up email rules maybe? Or when I discovered password managers.
Oh, actually, my best life hack is remembering to be nice to people and use a calm voice, even if they’re making it really difficult.
Take us through an interesting, unusual, or finicky process you have in place at work.
I like our 1:1 process, detailed here. Our support workflow board has been through many iterations and is mostly kanban-based, but to the untrained eye might look totally bonkers.
How do you keep track of what you have to do?
I have a to-do list which I update daily and contains my tasks listed in order of the time they’ll take to complete (smallest first) and priority (often circled). Then longer-term tasks are broken into chunks with what I think I can get done that day and a good deal of hopeful optimism.
What’s your favourite side project?
I’ve just started a short story writing course with the London School of Journalism.
What are you currently reading, or what do you recommend?
I have recently finished The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I would always, always recommend East of Eden by John Steinbeck and anything by Raymond Carver,
Who else would you like to see answer these questions?
I’ve really enjoyed reading everyone else’s so far (I am nosey). If not already nominated then Katherine Rooney, Keri O’Donoghue, Sharon Dale, but no obligation as life is busy enough, eh?
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
For running up hills (I was always sick at the top of them in cross country): Take tiny steps, look at the ground a couple of feet ahead of you, don’t look up at how far you have to go.
Feels like a life metaphor, but it’s really about running.
And Henry James: “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind”
