Showing posts sorted by date for query RAGE. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query RAGE. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Wednesday 10 January 2024

Personametry 2023 - Wheel of life streams, hours logged


It's that time of the year when I sit down and review my time tracking data for the year. This time round, playing around with ChatGPT (whilst still maintaining my AWS Quicksight dashboards). I was quite looking forward to continuing to use Noteable's AI/Data tools, sadly the service shut down :-(

I've shared my dataset openly and also you can look at the ChatGPT transcript of the conversation and prompts here.

ChatGPT's overall summary:
  • Rest and Sleep (Individual): A substantial 2,856.11 hours, akin to the restorative power of a long, rejuvenating sleep every night.

  • Professional Work: Impressively, 2,051.20 hours were dedicated to your professional life, showing a solid commitment to career growth and achievements.
  • Family Time (Family-Man): A heartwarming 1,398.79 hours spent with family, which is like embarking on a year-long road trip with your loved ones, filled with bonding and cherished memories.
  • Spirituality (Individual): A profound 1,106.44 hours in spiritual pursuits, reflecting a journey akin to a spiritual retreat, deepening your inner peace and understanding.
  • Personal Time (Individual): 467.55 hours of 'Me Time', ensuring a healthy balance of personal space and activities, like taking a short, refreshing break each day.
  • Marital/Wife (Husband): 451.91 hours dedicated to marital life, resonating with the quality time spent in building a strong, supportive partnership.
  • Knowledge and Learning (Individual): 202.88 hours of enriching your mind, like attending a series of insightful lectures throughout the year.
  • Health and Fitness (Individual): 145.07 hours, a commitment to staying active and healthy, similar to a consistent routine of short, daily workouts.
  • Social (Friend): 117.06 hours, akin to enjoying meaningful social gatherings, reinforcing bonds and making memories.

Looking back, my time tracking is reaching steady state. Not sure I'm going to keep reporting these stats going forward, but I'll probably keep fine-tuning. For 2023 Scorecard, I'm glad to have focused and met largely my spiritual goals, work/professional goals was maintained year-on-year, despite the spike in work hours in the last quarter (I got "promoted", with extra responsibilities which means more work hours). Health and Fitness hours took a dive compared to 2022, but it seems that my Strava/Garmin activity tracking shows better performance in 2023 compared to 2022 (so more time logged doesn't necessarily equate to being for fit, or achieving more). Social time decreased because we lost some friends to emigration, and generally our year was focused on the kids as my son approached his final high school matric exams, we prioritised staying at home.

If you've read all my previous posts on Personametry, you would've learnt that as part of this experiment, even way back when I started in 2016, I wanted a personal-assistant AI to help me with my RAGE / Personametry framework. I wanted to engage in meaningful conversations with an AI-assistant, coach me, act as my council, gatekeeper, motivator, etc. I believe there is still a need for this and the current state-of-the-art still has some catching up to do. Nevertheless, I am quite enjoying my interactions with ChatGPT. It was able to understand my personametry data, derive some insights, create the views I would generally take a couple hours doing myself. It's just a matter of time until we get truly personalized agents, like a personametry-gpt agent. Here's what ChatGPT offered I should look into for 2024:

Here's my Personametry slides as usual:


Tuesday 19 December 2023

Wrap up '23 with my Personal Scorecard RAGE / Wheel of Life review

In 2016 I started to be more intentional with designing my lifestyle across my personal and professional streams. Without studying deeply the literature or taking personal development training courses, I used my  own work experience as a professional engineer to guide me in designing the framework, which I've called "RAGE" that stands for Reality Aspirations Goals Expectations. At the time, I treated myself as a product I'm building, using similes from agile software development, using the concept of Personas (typically products are designed to meet the needs of different user types, i.e. "personas"). Bringing these concepts into personal lifestyle design, I described my aspirations, goals and expectations in the form of agile user stories. 

This helped me in framing my goals to realise tangible outcomes. Almost eight years later, I've maintained discipline in applying the RAGE framework, year-on-year in my pursuit of the various aspirations defined in each persona, i.e. as a Husband, Father,  Professional, Friend, Individual, etc. Coming from an engineering background, I dived deep into prioritising these streams of life, first starting with 20+ personas, having stabilized on a handful of core personas from 2020 onwards.

Interestingly enough, this post, led me to learning about something called "The Wheel of Life". It so happened, according to ChatGPT, the exact date of the creation of the "Wheel of Life" model by Paul J. Meyer is not well documented in public sources -- but it is known that Paul J. Meyer founded the Success Motivation Institute, Inc. in 1960. Honestly, I'm not sure how I missed Meyer's model all this time, but I'm also comforted by the fact that I've created my own model from scratch through my own attempts in crafting a better version of myself through my RAGE model. Anyway, ChatGPT has helped summarize the differences between Meyer's model and Mo Khan's RAGE model in this post. I do like the radial diagram, which is something I hadn't included in my personametry insights as yet.

I'm writing this post in December 2023, the last post for the year - as I break away from the world and embark on a journey making the minor pilgrimage to Mecca (Makkah) for the first time in my life. I've waited a long time to save up for this journey, I made intention at the start of 2023 to do the Umrah, and by the grace of Allah (God), it is about to come true, finishing off 2023 with my most important '23 goal realised - Subhanallah (Glory be to Allah)! And aiming for Hajj (the major pilgrimage) in 4 years time insha Allah (God willing).

Work-wise, my last week was spent completing end of year performance reviews. At Amazon, we treat performance reviews with such seriousness, due care and attention to detail -- that I've never seen done before in other companies I worked with (a post for another day).  For some time now, I have taken mechanisms from my work life and adopted to my personal life. Just as in my RAGE model, breaking down the different domains of life-work streams, I've used business performance scorecards in my tracking progress through the year of my personal performance. If we maintain work logs, performance cards, "baseball cards" for our jobs, is not more important to track our all our streams of life?

Why should we only focus on professional performance reviews and not spare a moment to deeply reflect our performance as a human on this earth? How are we doing personally? How are we performing across the various dimensions of our life? If we live by a value system, how do we know how we're measuring up to that value system? When the year has come and gone, how do you measure progress? Is it only career that matters? Surely not? If not, then why don't we spend as much time, if not more time, doing our own self-assessment and scorecards?? Are we afraid of the reality check? How serious are we in terms of changing ourselves for the better? How are we improving? Do we need to improve? When someone asks you "How's life? How you're doing?" - what's your frame of reference for answering that question? What's the first thing that comes to mind? Is it our work, career? If we're going through a bad patch at work, does this mean our whole life is negative? Often this is exactly what happens. People anchor on the immediate negatives, closest, most recent experiences because without a holistic value system to reference, how should one respond to "How are you doing, really?"

So how am I doing, really - what's my 2023 Performance Scorecard like?
I am sharing my own personal tracking here, not as a means to show off - but as a means to help people, providing an example of how I've managed to use a system that is working for me. This system, called RAGE, may not work for you - but it should give you an idea of the kind of work you need to do, the kind of thinking you need to apply, and the kind of discipline your should consider -- if you are indeed determined to make a concerted effort at changing your current situation, and creating a new trajectory you can aim for to improve the quality, outcome and other aspirations you desire. 

Inspired by Vaugan from Scary Management Playbook's LinkedIn post, here is my Wheel of Life, unpacked in detail, according to my RAGE model. In January '24, I will follow up with the data analytics on time spent in my personas. Given my RAG status, it looks like my wheel of life pretty balanced and aligned with my life-work-stream choices.

My RAGE model compared to The Wheel of Life

 

[I asked ChatGPT to report on the differences between Meyer's Wheel of Life and Mo Khan's RAGE]

Comparative Report: Meyer's Wheel of Life vs. Mo Khan's RAGE Model

Comparative Report: Meyer's Wheel of Life vs. Mo Khan's RAGE Model

Introduction

This report provides a comparative analysis of two influential personal development tools: Meyer's Wheel of Life and Mo Khan's RAGE Model. Both models are designed to enhance self-awareness and personal growth, yet they differ significantly in their approach and methodology.

Meyer's Wheel of Life

  • Overview: The Wheel of Life is a holistic self-assessment tool designed by Paul J. Meyer, a pioneer in the field of motivational thinking and self-improvement.
  • Components: It typically includes segments such as Career, Personal Growth, Health, Family & Friends, Finances, Spirituality, Recreation, and Physical Environment.
  • Function: Users rate their satisfaction in each area, visually representing life balance and identifying areas for improvement.
  • Application: Widely used in coaching and self-help, it guides personal development and goal setting.
  • Learn More: Success Motivation Institute

Mo Khan's RAGE Model

  • Overview: The RAGE Model, an acronym for Reality, Aspirations, Goals, Expectations, is a framework for personal development conceptualized by Mo Khan.
  • Components: It involves introspection across various life 'personas', assessing the current reality, setting aspirations, establishing goals, and managing expectations for each persona.
  • Function: The model uses agile management techniques and a detailed scoring system for prioritization and tracking progress.
  • Application: Khan’s approach is detailed and systematic, suitable for those who prefer an analytical approach to personal development.
  • Learn More: Mo Khan’s Blog

Similarities

  1. Holistic Approach: Both models provide a comprehensive view of personal life, emphasizing multiple areas or aspects.
  2. Self-Reflection: They encourage self-assessment as a means of identifying areas of focus.
  3. Goal-Oriented: Each model promotes setting and pursuing personal goals.
  4. Personal Development: They are tools for enhancing self-awareness and guiding growth.

Differences

  1. Complexity: The Wheel of Life is simpler and more visual, while the RAGE Model is more complex and analytical.
  2. Approach: Meyer’s model is qualitative, focusing on self-rated satisfaction, whereas Khan’s model is quantitative, employing a scoring system.
  3. Focus Areas: The Wheel of Life has predefined life segments; the RAGE Model allows for personalized 'personas'.
  4. Tracking: The RAGE Model includes rigorous tracking mechanisms, unlike the Wheel of Life.
  5. Background: Meyer's model stems from motivational training, while Khan’s is influenced by agile product management.

Conclusion

Meyer's Wheel of Life and Mo Khan's RAGE Model, while sharing the goal of fostering personal growth, differ in structure, complexity, and application. The Wheel of Life is a straightforward tool for periodic self-assessment, ideal for a broad audience. In contrast, the RAGE Model offers a detailed framework for systematically setting, prioritizing, and tracking personal development goals, appealing to those who prefer a more structured approach. Both models provide valuable insights into personal development, and the choice between them depends on individual preferences and the desired level of detail and structure in personal growth planning.

Tuesday 29 August 2023

Be the leader you wish you had

BE THE LEADER YOU WISH YOU HAD

I use this saying often in my 1:1s with my directs and in my private coaching sessions. It is a powerful way to make one pause for a moment, reflect, adjust to the discomfort, then embrace the excitement of a new energy that is created.

Adopting this mindset has transformed me from standard "manager" to empathetic "leader". Reading Seth Godin's "The Song of Significance" reinforced my instinctual leadership practices. 

Quoting from "13. Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play", Seth says this:

<quote> No one goes to the gym to willingly get punched in the face by the senior vice president of boxing. But some folks eagerly pay for a sparring partner when it's time to get better.  The difference is obvious, but we've forgotten to say it out aloud.  No grades, no check marks, no badges. I'm not in charge of you, and I'm not manipulating you. I'm simply establishing the conditions for you to get to where you said you wanted to go.  You tell me where you're going and what you need. You make promises about your commitment and skills development.  I'll show up to illuminate, question, answer, spar with, and challenge you. I'll make sure you're part of a team of people who are ready to care as much as you do. We can get real. Or let's not play. </quote>
This is not some leadership mumbo jumbo. Some time ago, I developed a model for personal development that borrowed concepts from agile product management by way of user stories (search RAGE tag on this blog). I then used the same methods in the way I work with my direct reports. HR people might call this "contracting with the employee" but I take it further. I get real. It's not about objectives, KPIs & deliver results. I put myself on the line. I reach out. And so when it comes to performance reviews, my reviews are a two-way conversation. My direct also evaluates Mo's performance - because as a leader, I believe leaders mirror & contribute to the performance of their direct reports. 

What's my mechanism then?

I ask each person to write a user story in this format:

In order for me, [Name] to do [XYZ] (e.g. my job | grow | be inspired | learn | etc.) I need my manager (Mo) to support me by doing [....insert your wish-list here] so that I can ....

So I start the year with level setting on our contracts together, and in our 1:1s, we check-in and inspect, comment, re-calibrate, adjust.  

Guess what? 

This mechanism might seem simple but it's quite challenging for people. Usually, it's the first time they're experiencing a manager doing it this way. There's hook both ways. Often, it takes a few iterations to get the user stories crafted in way that is mutually relatable and agreeable. My mechanism goes beyond the standard business SMART goal setting. I make it human. Real. Personal. For me, this is my song of significance.

Here's some real-world examples in play, from senior managers that report into me - See how doing so puts me, Mo, on the hook?

* In order for me to do my job, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by throwing me in the deep end and exposing me to as much as possible so that I can quickly learn and understand this business

* In order for me to do be inspired, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by leading by example so that I can learn from his vast experience

* In order for me to do grow, I need my manager (Mo) to support me by pushing me out my comfort zone so that I can grow in all directions.

* In order for me to do my job. I need my manager (Mo) to support me by throwing me in the deep end and exposing me to as much as possible so that I can quickly learn and understand this business

* In order for me to grow my skillset, I need my manager to support me in blocking out time on my calendar so I can complete the ‘make great hiring decisions’ course (5hrs)

* In order for me to get promoted to L7, I need my manager to support me by identifying key opportunities so that I can start building a roadmap of promotional milestones

Monday 3 July 2023

Personametry + ChatGPT = personametry.ai (a truly personalised AI)

Around this time of year with 6 months already past us, I spend some time reflecting on my Personametry and RAGE model - keeping in check how I'm performing against my own personal and professional goals -- just like we do in business with mid-year performance reviews. 

If this is the first time you've come across my work on Personametry, here's a view of my time spent in 2022 compared to 2021, click here

My workflow until then was:
1) Export data from Harvest
2) Update Amazon Quicksight dataset by importing the Harvest export, creating transforms
3) Create a new analysis
4) Modify all the charts and views to include the latest data, publish a new dashboard
5) Create a Google slide deck 

NO MORE!! ENTER CHATGPT and the NOTEABLE plugin!

My new workflow is now much more simplified:
1) Export data from Harvest
2) Import to Quicksight, creating transforms
3) Export CSV from Quicksight
4) Prompt ChatGPT to produce the insights in Noteable I would normally have manually created

Okay, so I spent my Sunday locked up in my office playing around with ChatGPT geeking out on data analysis & visualisations. So not much gain in time productivity there - but the learning was fun and immensely rewarding. Yes, a good investment of time, spent learning and preparing to adapt for the new world of AI disruption!

I've been on my data capturing journey since 2015. My end goal to end up with an AI personal assistant that truly understands me. I suspect realising my aspiration isn't that far off and neither far fetched for that matter. My entire workflow would be a fully integrated AI assistant that has the ability to track all my activities, by the minute (imagine "personametry.ai"). To get there, the next simpler step would be to automate the data ingestion piece, leaving me with the only manual entry of starting and ending tasks. My next experiment would be to use the raw data export from Harvest, without doing any data transforms and let the AI do that for me. If that works, I can build in automation that does monthly data imports and produces insights for me automatically. Ideally, I would build personametry.ai as a task into my personal assistant. Imagine a time when we're all wearing a device that "just knows" what we're doing, who we're interacting with, and what we're spending our time on? This device, i.e. "my AI" or "personametry" will act as a guide, coaching us along the way to improve - and hold us accountable - calling us out on what we're paying attention to (i.e. deviating from our goals.)

Lessons Learnt - Still early days but very hopeful

  • The tools are still early days, but still nevertheless very powerful and will definitely improve my productivity in future.
  • It takes a few attempts to load data files with the plugin, CSV seems to cope much better than XLS files.
  • ChatGPT/Noteable uses different methods each time for approaching the data analysis - some coaxing on the nature of the dataset produces better insights.
  • I didn't need to edit any code myself so there's an immediate empowerment driver right there.
  • Don't trust every output though, as the AI can get things wrong
  • Double check calculations, ChatGPT still doesn't seem to get some simple math right the first time round
  • It is amazing what one can accomplish with simple, clear prompting
  • I am definitely going to learn more
  • I had so much fun learning, I was in a state of flow for 10 hours and couldn't stop thinking about the world of possibilities of this technology!

Here's a video of ChatGPT prompts - Play at fastest speed (sorry, no time to edit)



Here's the conversation history with ChatGPT


Here's the Noteable project that I've released publicly

Here's a screen grab of the visuals in a nice slide view


Here's all the questions ChatGPT answered in various sessions

Wednesday 29 March 2023

ChatGPT as my new research assistant

I continue to be blown away by ChatGPT. This is a game changer!

One of my biggest misses in my life is missed opportunities converting my ideas in starting up my own company. It's not like my ideas were not great, it's that I lacked the follow-through and risk-taking to get started executing once my idea was validated.  I would spend so much time researching, doing the market analysis, identifying opportunity, writing up the idea and then failing to take it further forward. Here's one example -  the start-up research I did for my original personametry idea about the application of monitoring physiological signals that can help manage mental well-being, like stress before this topic hit mainstream. Check my Trello workspace if you're curious. 

I spent a good 300+ hours doing the research and thinking of the opportunity. I'd wake up at 4am every morning, doing the research, before starting my official work-day at 8.30am, after doing the school run. I also invested in working a 4-day work-week to create space for researching my ideas, because my goal then in 2015/16, was to startup a product company. Since I was consulting, I could manage my own time and take a hit on my earnings because my personal goal was important at the time literally putting my money where my mouth is. Unfortunately the consulting work got busy, and my personal life went a little off-balance, that made me rethink my focus areas - so I left start-up ideas aside. If you've read my posts on my RAGE model tracking, I dropped the start-up ideas focus since 3-4 years ago. Work, Life & Family took priority over my aspirations of booting my own start-up entrepreneur.

Until now, with ChatGPT in the mix, I'm reconsidering my options. I can save so much time, exploring my ideas without compromising my other life streams. All I need is to timebox at least an hour each day, and a couple hours over weekends to get back into tackling my backlog of 100+ ideas that were sitting on the shelf that last few years.

My latest thesis is this: As I enter into the second half of my working life, with at least another 20 years left to work in a career - I need to be doing more purposeful work during my core work hours and not as side volunteering gig. Since being a Muslim is at the centre of all my decisions across my life and work streams (part of the reason I left a CTO job had to do with staying true to my personal moral value system: example - promoting video content I'm not comfortable with, targeting people to spend time on endless watching of video for entertainment wasting hours of life away, building gambling and sports content betting technology, etc. This is why I joined AWS and decided to get inside the engine room in B2B enterprise systems but it's been a tough adjustment after 20 years building consumer apps). So, now I want to be spending my time working on impactful, value adding streams. As a Muslim, we believe in investing for the Akhirah (the next world). My ultimate BHAG was about becoming financially independent before retirement so that I could start an NGO/NPO focused on socially beneficial projects. Unfortunately, I'm very, very far from this goal. The other option was to join an NPO/NGO and contribute my skills as a GM/CTO/Manager, earning a reduced salary but at least I'll be happy doing good work. Alas, my searches to date have yielded nothing material (living in South Africa is also a limiting factor). So my latest idea - why don't I find opportunities in the Islamic Tech space? After all, I am a seasoned technology leader, surely there are opportunities in the Islamic tech space worth checking out? The total addressable market for Islamic Tech is 1 billion+ people. Introducing tech for this space initially (which would scale to the entire planet maybe), benefiting the ummah, in this world and the next, would be something, wouldn't it?

This is where ChatGPT came in to help. In the past, I'd outsource the research to some gig worker and pay up to $10 per hour for a research report. Or, I would spend hours of my own time, doing the research. No more! With ChatGPT, I can do the initial research in just one hour!! 

I am still to dive deep into the research, during my weekends - but I'd like to share with my readers, and especially for the muslim professionals out there, similar to me, looking to find opportunities to contribute to spiritually uplifting projects (either community or paid-for work), the amazing power of ChatGPT.

I'm not leaving my current job anytime soon though, insha Allah (although this is never guaranteed especially when there's real uncertainty now with Amazon's latest round of layoffs). 

I am however, being open about a topic that is becoming increasingly important and relevant to the aging workforce - as people approach their fifties, their stage of work-life changes from chasing the career ladder to seeking fulfilment, doing work they can feel proud of, to leave a legacy behind, to leave the world in a much better state they found it. That's where my head is at. I am not interested in chasing the next promotion. If promo comes my way, it should be an organic, natural result of my sincere contributions, backed up by people who value my contributions. I want to invest my time wisely doing work that matters to me. Right now, my work is about building leaders and growing people, being the modern elder. Ideally, it would be great if I could find something that builds up my Akhirah points and also get paid for it at the same time :-) 

Here's the transcript of ChatGPT as my research assistant:



Saturday 11 March 2023

My first 100 days as CTO: Resetting the Mental Model

[Disclaimer: I write about my past work experiences, dating back to 2017 referring to entities that no long exist today (in 2023). Previous mentions of such entities are widely in the public domain through news media outlets, press briefings, launch announcements, etc. I take time to ensure that nothing I share exposes commercially sensitive material. My intent is to rather showcase my work portfolio to current and future prospective employers, through my writing].

In my previous post, I shared how I switched from being a high level Business, Technology & Operations Program Director to a General Manager of Technology & Platforms (fractional CTO) - and disclosed my feelings of imposter syndrome at the time.

Looking back, this role helped me immerse myself fully into the fast-moving-pace of "immediate get done now, everything is important" culture, ambiguous and uncertain, competitive, make-a-plan do-it-yourself courage, sheer multitude of technology options, rapid development at internet-speed -- not that I wasn't familiar with the domain before -- but this time, I was in the trenches, with full responsibility to turn the ship around and make something a success. Previously, as a management consultant, I would advise and highlight risks, I would coach and help the business put together some plans - and then coordinate the delivery. But I wasn't accountable for delivery as consultant. I wasn't responsible for people management. I wasn't responsible if the platform crashed and get paged 2am. I had no skin-in-the-game...this time, it was totally different. I had skin-in-the-game - which meant that I was leaving the world of consulting behind, back in the trenches, leading from the front as well as guiding from behind, and at times digging the trenches myself. 

What I'd accomplished in the 3.5 years was largely positive on many fronts with more upsides than downsides - but it wasn't all hits! - there were some big misses too. (A future post will share my hits and misses). But in the end, after my time-box was over, despite embattled with some scars of hard graft, I left the world of TV/Video behind, knowing that I'd met my aspirations...handing over the baton to a very capable 2IC that would end up lifting the team even further.

The Situation - VUCA !

I joined the company at a time of massive change and uncertainty. The group company embarked on a complete overhaul of its business and organisational design across the board. Typical with most corporates in Africa, the company contracted one of the big consulting houses to lead the transformation program. Their intention to create a new operating model that would better set them up for the future, i.e. "future fit the business". As a result of this new operating model, entire businesses were remodelled, some businesses reducing roles (job cuts), whilst new lines of business set up for the future (new roles to be advertised & fulfilled). Some businesses were also merged and thus resulting "duplication" were optimised for efficiency. This FutureFit program started slowly and would run for 18-24 months, with its orbit soon to approach my business unit later that year. 

So joining in May 2017, knowing there's upcoming organisational changes, already started my engagement on uncertain, unsteady ground. So as a result of this uncertainty, I decided to transition first as a contractor (Interim fractional CTO consultant) to wait-and-see what happens with the new business operating model designs; and if/when an opportunity presented itself for a permanent role, then apply. 

At the time, I joined the digital business "DStv Digital Media" (DDM) had already been through change, having merged Mobile & Online businesses into one, focused on Digital Media. The product portfolio was expansive covering 55+ countries in Africa, servicing 5 commercial entities in the areas of: web sites hosting, content management, voting applications, sports app, video streaming apps, set-top-box applications, etc. Servicing these product portfolios was a single technology team, which I was responsible for. The role in itself was ambiguous and sensitive, as I had to take over from the previous leader who decided to hang around as an individual contributor focused on innovation.

Despite the uncertainty and impending changes that could come by FutureFit program, my teams still had to get on and deliver. Our business customers were increasingly losing trust in the engineering's team ability to maintain commitments to timelines - almost every project or product release was late. Further, the end customers weren't enjoying great levels of customer experiences as the platform was unstable. Almost every weekend there were outages, that took long times to recover - sometimes customers issues and outages over weekends would only be looked at the next Monday. The state of the technical platform drove many of the business stakeholder and my product customers to insist on the engineering team improve to becoming "world class".

Their partners (other technology teams within the group) also didn't enjoy the best relationships with this new team I was joining. Lack of trust, failed commitments and constant tug-of-war on systems ownership and capabilities - a clash of the traditional structured "IT" versus the modern, fast, scrappy digital tech pirates. There was always tension, most of it being unhealthy.

The state of my engineering team in terms of morale, motivation and appreciation - was not in the best health either. As a result of the constant pressure from customers and stakeholders, late deliveries, being pulled in multiple directions, having to support multiple projects simultaneously with limited resources, not having enough budget for adequate tooling and infrastructure - being on the receiving end of loud, upset customers...I'd inherited a team in distress. Futurefit was also looming, people had seen their friends leave the company as redundancies (layoffs) were made public. It was just a "matter of time" that the restructure find its way to them. So, yeah, fair dose of volatility there. Add to that, their leader was replaced by someone renown for hardcore program delivery - what did this guy know about tech, and why should they trust him when they still had access to their previous leader?

The outgoing leader was still attending the management meetings, contributing to strategy discussions. I had to tread carefully because the work I need to do, demanded calling out all the problems & issues in a respectable manner. The respected the the principle of "respect what came before", but it was still an awkward interaction to be in, sharing my ideas for getting the engineering team in shape and on the road to being "world class" with their ex-leader in the room.

A further sensitive issue was one of my direct reports, a senior software manager openly challenged me for the position - and was extremely unhappy that I was given the role (as they were allegedly promised the role as being next in line). Not a good way to earn trust on the first week on the job! So I seriously had to earn trust upwards (customers, stakeholders), downwards (directs) and sideways (peers & partners) as well.

Added to this was a level of complexity of the system in the way that newly created DDM business co-existed with a few commercial entities as well as how the technology division (my group), interacted with the wider enterprise technology group body. Engineering platforms for multiple products to run in 55+ countries, with each country having its own unique custom features as well as priorities for differentiating markets - all supported by a small scrappy team with a shoestring budget, adds a different spin to complexity.

With all this, I was still excited to take this challenge on. The experience was going to stretch me initially, take me out of my comfort zone. I entered the role knowing the known unknowns, was fully aware of what I needed to do. 

I was in for quite the ride! My opportunity to turn the ship around...

My 100 day plan

My first 100 days had to demonstrate: 1\ A bias for action to address the burning technical issues; 2\ Earn trust of my customers, stakeholders and people by pitching a credible technology plan in place; 3\ Deliver results that showed positive progress; 4\ Influence Futurefit program with new ideas influencing positive changes whilst protecting the team to focus on delivery.

Here's my morning papers (journal entries) setting out my 100 day thoughts:

Fri 11-May: Morning Paper

This DDM role is seemingly chaotic, need to find a balance and a way of prioritising and managing my work in progress. I can't be working every day long hours, need to find the balance and time for my other interests. Officially my days start from Monday, of which I will enter a countdown from 90 days! I must set myself something to achieve in the first 90 days.

First stab: By the end of 90 days, we should have:
- settled with product management on a common backlog that drives the work
- delivered at least one release of DStv Now
- kicked off a stream and have a concrete plan of action for a Platform SDK API
- have a realistic plan for the platforms improvements
- agreed on roles and responsibilities between the various customers and my teams

Within the first 30 days, I need to:
- workshops with product & planning team
- complete handover with R (1st week of june)
- complete a 360 review based on feedback from DDM & External customers
- complete view of all the people in the division
- a full view of people by skills, competency and career aspirations
- a view of the vision and strategy for the group - Why do we exist, What are our outputs, how we go about it?
- agree reporting from all lines - Architecture / Dev / Platforms
- set clear objectives on delivery
- agree a way of working/transitioning VOD Wars program

Within the second 30 days:
- town hall with full tech team
- objectives, pds, measurements of performance clearly defined and agreed by all

Within the third 30 days:
- publish approved strategy & objectives
- must have delivered some feature increment
- reporting & dashboards in place
- improved working relationships with customers
- platform network optimisation plan executing in full swing
- vod wars program transitioned out

Tuesday, 2 May 2017

Ideas for DDM-GM role

Here's some topics to note if you take the GM role:
  • Workshop retrospective - aim is to get people to understand the current reality. Timeline of company showing where they started, turning points and current period
  • Map out worlds of interaction of teams - micro and macro worlds. Showing customer relationships and where DDM teams fit within this world.
  • Talk through the trust curve and get people to vote into areas of the curve. Where do they think they sit? Need to draw quadrant map.
  • Talk about RAGE model. Do a workshop mapping out current reality, aspirations, goals n expectations.
  • For each line manager, draw a job card mapped to rage, split by work worlds (DDM, VET, customers, etc.) career and personal categories. For each apply the RAGE model
  • Self Assessment. Create survey based on Agile Good Ugly book. Get leaders to rate themselves according to criteria of systems engineering practices.
  • Workshop with team to define what "world class" means
  • Develop vision and mission for group. Tie back to company objectives. The Why golden circle. Why, How, What. Why does DDM exists? How do we behave to reach the Why? What actions or results to we produce that speaks to the Why?
  • Get to know everyone. Radical candor. Review CV, skills and experience. Growth/Performance matrix - who are the rockstars? Who are the superstars? Who likes stability? Who wants to grow fast?
  • Discuss the Cynefin model.
  • Teach the Dreyfus model.
  • Team self-assessment down to each last person (identify gaps, growth, training, etc.)
  • Career Ladder - does DDM have one?
  • Build authentic relationships
  • Build trust from outset
  • Do not dictate - listen, embrace collaboration & welcome criticism
  • Implement Personal Kanban - time management - teach it?

My first All Hands / Townhall - Reset Mental Model of 150+ People

Despite the uncertainty with the group business redesign, our business unit, DDM still had to deliver the years goals. As the financial year runs from April to March, I joined at the start of the fiscal year, a new division where I had to put together the plans for the year, strategy and guide an organisation through turbulent waters. My first All-Hands was meant to set the major scene for the transformation the teams were about to embark on, with me as their leader. On the day of the event, I was somewhat nervous but confident at the same time. Having worked through the leadership and consulted with them on my ideas, this was going to be the first time I'd be addressing the full group, engineers who I've not had any skip-levels with, not having the time to meet everyone since from Day One, I was immersed in operating, putting fires out. Looking back now, I feel I could have done a few things differently (future post).

Below is the slide deck I used for the All Hands. It was an in-person session, in the campus Auditorium that seated 200 people. I'd previously addressed larger crowds before at the same venue in my big program kick-off sessions. This was my first All-Hands to not only my engineering team but I also extended the invite to core partners (product management) and my manager as well.

My aim was to reset the team's mental model, helping them understand our purpose, where we fit into the system and how I see us transitioning, reminding them on our goals for the year - and finally busting some myths from corridor talks.

More Flux thrown into the mix for fun

Just as I was getting into a rhythm after publishing my yearly operating plan in the All-Hands, around September, 4 months into the stabilisation journey, the parent group company announced a big change to its business structure, creating a brand new business unit altogether, called "Connected Video" which found find DDM and Showmax coming together...this merger brought its own share of angst, anxiety and nervousness into the engineering teams - as now there were essentially two technology platforms providing video streaming capability to largely the same set of customers. The subsequent few months to Q4 of 2017, was me experiencing additional turbulence in the sea of change and flux of making career-changing decisions, contending with people (peers and directs) seeking to lead and emerge as the CTO for the new business. More posts on that later.

Did I deliver on my 90 day plan then?

Yes. Check it out... Whilst my engineering teams were deemed "stable" for the next two quarters at least, I was focused on working the bigger picture: Unbundling the tech stack, removing non-core services not related to video stream (website support, ISP-support, voting apps, sports apps), working with partners on new commercials, and designing for the future Connected Video technology organisational design, even though I was still a contractor and had no control, nor influence, of what the CEOs in the decision-making-seats would eventually decide.


Sunday 5 March 2023

How I switched from Program Manager to CTO

During the first quarter of 2017, I was wrapping up a massive digital transformation project "VOD Wars" in its second year of running and nearing completion. A program that I led from inception in the capacity of Chief Program Director (for Multichoice Group) as some classic corporates call this role, Amazon has a similar role called the  Single Threaded Leader (STL). 

I was responsible for co-ordinating multiple programs and workstreams  that cross-cut multiple businesses. Each business had their their own heads of technology, engineering, program & project offices, operations & support functions. Each business also had their their our business goals & KPIs and in addition, had to support group-wide goals (Group-wide goals are akin to Amazon's S-Team goals). Whilst my primary stakeholders were CEOs of the various business units, I had to not only keep my eye on the high level (managing upwards and indirectly influencing across businesses that I had no positional hierarchy at all (as I was doing my own thing as an independent senior management consultant), I also had to stay close to the technical engineering, operations, support, marketing and customer experience details on the ground. The program was a great opportunity for me since I'd always wanted to experience every piece of the Video Entertainment value chain puzzle as much as possible. 

Prior to VOD Wars, I'd further strengthened my exposure to all domains of the media Video Entertainment business, by being the chief program director for launching a new video streaming business "Showmax" to Africa, in 2015. This too, was a wonderful experience, launching a business start-up from zero to launch in under ten months, co-ordinating every business (legal, finance, marketing, strategy), technology (buying a new tech stack, integrating new offshore development team, building & customising product features, integrating payment vendors, 3rd party integrators, etc.) and operations (content workflows, infrastructure & customer support). 

And before Showmax, I'd been leading major group-wide initiatives for advanced and internet-connected devices (I was lead end-to-end program manager for DStv Explora, for a small stint delved with the then nascent DStv Mobile), and before that, spent my time as technical program & product manager for advanced set top box middleware software, NDS Mediahighway/Videoguard platforms.

In fact, the last time I was engineering-focused, strictly speaking was in 2010 - when I'd taken up the role of Principal Engineer after inventing a Speaking TV/EPG - a role change, after being involved in project, program and product management before then. And the years 2011-2013, when I'd helped transform the consumer devices division of Multichoice, to use modern software engineering methods of planning, product development and end-to-end systems integration, in getting them to launch their first version of DStv Explora.

Being a rock-star program manager consultant in a niche industry in Africa, did come with its perks! I billed by the hour, and was mostly in control of my time. I had back then in 2014-2017, experimented with 4-day work-weeks, I took personal time off (PTO) for long periods of time (sometimes 2 months unpaid or more). It was around this time that I had started working on my RAGE model for personal development. As I dived deeper into my professional self-reflections, the following realisations about my aspirations started to really gnaw at me:

  • I was getting bored of being a program manager, I felt there was no challenge left and I was no learning anything new any more. I'd been reading, studying, applying and mastering the many forms of project & program management since 2008 and by 2017, I think I'd arrived and was feeling satisfied with my craft, as an expert program manager, a project leader at the top of PM hierarchy as explained here.
  • I felt I reached my goals of understanding how to run a full blown video entertainment business as I had experienced by then, every single aspect of business, technology & operations of the Pay-TV value chain.
  • I had my program management work mechanics down to an art form: I had a repeatable process, had built templates for structuring program charters, communicating progress, etc. There wasn't much more I could learn from the mechanisms needed in program management and was operating at the highest level of project leadership. A lot came naturally to me, operating on instinct most of the time.
  • I felt could run a Project Management Office (PMO) with my eyes closed. I'd started mentoring and coaching other project & program managers but I was not interested in specialising in PMOs.
  • I learnt the secrets of engaging and managing high-powered senior executives, I was confident in discussions, meetings, presentations and contractual negotiations.
  • I was not sure I could continue being a consultant without having skin-in-the-game, or having a seat-at-the-table. 
  • I had failed to land other consulting engagements outside the scope of Video / Media - so my "business" AS3 (Africa Systems & Software Services) was a one-man show, tied to one big corporate without hope of branching out of video - so why remain a consultant when I could have a seat at the table if I wanted to?
  • As a consultant, I'd developed my own prime directives of knowing when to offer advice, opinion or put a proposal together. Consultants serve a purpose, they can lead through indirect influence but also need to remain humble and fully aware, that they don't really have any clout or say in strategic decision making. Something, if I'm completely honest with myself, I wanted to influence directly, I wanted my ideas to be heard, I wanted to be directly responsible for change, and influence strategy and change the status quo, if given the chance. I could sit on the sides and offer advice and witness slower pace of change, or get in the ring, get my hands dirty and experience true ownership, accountability and responsibility. I yearned for an opportunity to experience being a senior executive, responsible for a big organisation.
  • I felt I'd drifted too far from the technology domain - and needed to get back to the core. After all, I built software myself in the early days, and have degrees in Engineering and a masters in Computer Science. I wanted to get closer to the tech teams building modern apps, internet scale. 
  • I wondered if a Program Manager could switch back to being a Technology Leader - looking at people around me in executive roles, I felt I had more than the requisite experience and technical know-how to adapt and do the job.
  • I needed to experience what it meant to be a manager with direct responsibility for people and bottom-line P&L. No more assisting from the sides.
With those reflections in mind, I explored new opportunities in the tech space, landing first an Interim CTO/GM (fractional CTO) role, still as a consultant for the first year which then later converted into a permanent role as Head of Technology/CTO for DStv Digital Media, Online Video Platforms, which then later became Multichoice Connected Video. I would spend the next 3.5 years intensely immersed in the role of CTO, learning new skills and soaking the experience all in: VUCA, big organisation of 150+ people, handling large budgets to the tune of R1.5 billion, growing people, making decisions with the seat at the table, navigating and surviving corporate politics and most importantly, getting my hands dirty with technology development again, turning around a distressed platform and reviving an engineering team...I decided to leave again as soon as I felt it was time for another change...however, I'd like to think I'd left the place looking better than I first found it. I'm going to share some of my experiences of this journey as and when I feel inspired to do so, like today. 

Getting to apply for a CTO role was nerve-wrecking at first, even though the job advertised was a General Manager - Technology & Platforms.  I felt like an imposter, full of doubt - classic imposter syndrome. I was vocally self critical so much so that I analysed and critiqued the original role guidelines advertised and provided a deep dive of my self assessment with regards to the role's expectations, benchmarking myself against what I assumed was the high bar for the role. I wanted the hiring manager to be fully aware of who I was, what my experiences were, and what my aspirations were as well before going into the interview. 

Looking back, I was only able to gain this trust based on my previous work as a program manager with a reputation for getting the job done, delivering results by earning trust, that the executives entrusted me with the role. 

One executive who is now the CEO of a large business, once stopped me in the hall-way and said "Mo, I don't know how you do it - but you have a remarkable way of making the complex look so simple!" 

Below is the original self-assessment I shared with the hiring manager for the role. I remain truly grateful to him for the opportunity and trust afforded to me. Here is the doc with my self-assessment. I'm sharing this with you because I believe it could be useful for your own professional review. When applying for a new role, even if it's outside your immediate comfort zone, it helps to take the time to analyse, commenting and rationalising how your present or past experiences can help you delivering in the new role. You don't necessarily have to lay all your cards open to the hiring manager as I did (because I'd already built up the trust relationships over previous years, so people knew me as a program manager but they weren't necessarily aware of my tech background). The prevailing advice you'd find in most career counseling is understand your current reality (be brutally honest about your current reality whilst being positive about your future aspirations) and look for ways your past skills and experiences can speak to the gaps in the role you seek. Every job spec asks for more than what's realistic, so don't give up without at first trying. Every new role comes with an opportunity to learn and acquire new skills, why else does one seek to level up, if not to learn? 

Tuesday 10 January 2023

2022 Personametry Tracking - Work/Life Balance & Harmony Update

Image Courtesy
Courtesy
It is time for my yearly ritual of analysing my time spent the previous year. This ritual is one of analysis and reflection, setting up the stage for planning & making new intentions for the upcoming year, 2023! 

I've been doing this exercise consistently over the last eight years! Am I crazy? Maybe?! I've become quite the data junkie, and I'm loving it! 

I know that tracking every activity and accounting for every minute of one's life might seem like overkill to most people. I on the other hand, actually quite enjoy doing so! :-) Primarily because having insights into how I spend my time has really helped me be more conscious and intentional about my aspirations, goals and expectations covering all dimensions of my life, seeking balance and harmony in my personal and professional streams. My methods allow me to focus and maintain discipline with my time...

This is my value system that describes my streams:

Muslim | Individual | Professional (Work) | Husband | Family-Man | Social/Friend

When someone asks me the following: Mo, how's life? Mo, how are you doing work-wise? Mo, how's things? Are you happy? Are you meeting your aspirations? Mo, what consumes most of your time these days? I can have a sincere and authentic conversation about it.

Yes, as some of my friends have argued that you "just know" instinctively where your time is being spent, on what and you just know the areas you need to improve on. Sure, I get that and agree. I find it much more useful to validate my instincts, verify anecdotes with quantifiable data & metrics to help me answer such questions: Where am I spending my time? Am I spending time in the right areas according to my priorities? Am I heading in the right direction? How am I growing? Where am I in my stages of growth across all my personas? How do I measure success? Am I growing holistically as a person?

In 2015, I researched productivity and personal development methods extensively, culminating to me creating my own frameworks:

  1. RAGE (Reality Aspirations Goals Expectations). Knowing yourself, i.e. what you stand for, your value system, by identifying Personas. For each Persona, define Aspirations/Goals that becomes your long term personal roadmap. What emerges from this is a scorecard that you can track your progress, see example from 2020.
  2. PERSONAMETRY is another concept I created that essentially captures key metrics about yourself, TIME being our most valuable resource. If time is our most valuable resource, do we not owe it to ourselves to account for it? For each Persona you identify with, Personametry is your personal telemetry. It can be extended to a variety of use cases, including overall happiness/stress sentiment analysis. If you're keen to learn more, check out this product specification document I created years ago, but alas, haven't developed the app for it as yet (alas, no time, wasn't a priority!)
Personametry complements RAGE by providing data insights, that I use to analyse if I'm trending in the right direction or not. Keeping a personal RAGE scorecard helps me keep track of how I'm progressing against my personal roadmap. In the last eight years alone, these frameworks have helped me reach my highest potential in climbing up the career ladder (making CTO, executive role), becoming debt free and remaining debt-free for 7 years and-running, improve my marriage enhancing the foundations (insha Allah), and rekindled relationship with family members, including long lost friendships, develop a more consciously confident identity as a Muslim in the workplace, make big bold decisions of starting over in my career (like walking away from CTO and big financial incentives rewards, take a pay-cut and step down in role) or start my own consulting, also make time to focus on paying it forward by offering my time to coach/mentor for free, etc. RAGE/Personametry has also helped me in being critically selective of where/what/whom I spend time with, I've learnt to say "NO" more often guarding my personas and setting boundaries, even with my own family and dearest loved ones.

Emerging from this experience so far are some interesting learning experiences, such as how one's goals and aspirations can change with time, depending on one's stage of life. For instance, where I'm at right now in 2023, is my profession is no longer what drives me (I'm consciously not seeking out the next promotion or level up because I've been there already and experienced the life of an executive), as I'm now seeking new experiences centred on creating more purpose, meaning and fulfilment...Having said this, I remain a pragmatist and so am open to new job opportunities that more closely align with my value system (example: NGOs/NPOs looking for CTO/CIO expertise, Africa-friendly timezone working hours is also being considered). If you know of any opportunities in this area, do get in touch!

Analysing 2022 v 2021 - Data Analysis & Insights

Since 2016 I've tracked 24,983 (±25K) activities as data points, tracking my life streams as: Muslim | Individual | Professional (Work) | Husband | Family-Man | Social/Friend - thus logging 60,572 (±60K) hours with an error tolerance of ±0.5% (99.5% capturing accuracy). In 2022 alone, I logged 8,715 hours, of which: Professional Work consumed 23%,  Personal Life 43% with the physical constraint of Sleeping accounting for 34%. Yep, we sleep for a third of our lives, and I have the data to back that up!

Suffice to say, I've made some good gains in 2022 that I hope to carry through into 2023. Check the slide show for the rest...

P.S. If you'd like to have a coffee/virtual chat about my RAGE/Personametry concepts, or you're curious to learn more, or seeking a mentor/coaching/networking opportunity or you simply want to learn about my workflows, then please get in touch!


Wednesday 7 September 2022

GROW Model - Coaching questions to consider

I recently came across the GROW model which I think complements my own RAGE model quite nicely when it comes to inspecting aspirations and goals. It's all about seeking clarity through questions:

Goal - What do you want? What's your desired outcomes (Aspirations)?

  • What would you notice if you were performing in this area more proficiently?
  • What would others notice if you were performing in this area more proficiently?
  • What would be the benefits to your team / family / business / friends of you gaining proficiency in this area?
  • What is the short- and long-term impact of you not enhancing in this area?

Reality - What's your current situation? Be brutally honest about current reality.

  • What is the current state of your proficiency in this area?
  • What have you done till date to develop proficiency in this area?
  • What has helped your progress?
  • What has held you back?
  • How long have you been working on enhancing yourself in this area?
  • Where do you feel stuck?
  • What perceptions about yourself might be getting in your way?
  • Are these perceptions accurate? How do you know?

Options - Exploring possibilities / Expectations. What could you do?

  • What do you feel you need to gain proficiency in this area?
  • What are the possible actions you can take to enhance yourself in this area?
  • What else can you do? Probe deeper
  • Now that you are aware of the possibilities, which one would you try first?
  • What would you like to have happen?
  • If you do nothing, what will be the impact?
  • What does the wiser part of you tell you?
  • If you were coaching someone on enhancing themselves in this area, what might you say to them?
  • If there were no limitations/restrictions, what might you do?
  • What options are within your control?

Will - What will you do? Commitment / Next Steps? 

  • What support do you need to be successful in your next steps?
  • What obstacles do you anticipate? How will you navigate them?
  • How might you motivate yourself when things get tough?
  • Who might be able to help you in achieving your next steps?