04-18-25 - Brick by Brick

Third week in and we’re still writing, does this mean the habit is forming? Does it mean I start to enjoy it? Maybe?

Okay, Okay, Okay I am aware that I am publishing this on a Wednesday. What can I say the pareto principle came into effect. I wrote up 80% of this last Thursday, it just needed the finishing touches but atlas, the bank holiday weekend took over. Sue me :D

This was my first week back tritating on my ADHD meds, definitely had some side effects at the start, but now those have thankfully faded away, I have only been on 1/3 of my final dose, so thus far I have not seen any noticeable impact on my symptom, but the coming week will tell as I go on higher doses.

My main high this week has been outside my role as AI Delivery Lead. Last week, I volunteered to cover a retrospective session for another team. I was a little nervous going into the session, a. I had no context about teamwork, b. I had planned a slightly different retro using my favourite facilitation tool… LEGO.

This session was virtual, so we used virtual blocks and to warm people up to using the Lego, I asked the team to build a representation of themselves using lego, ther role, skills, outside interests. After 5 minutes, we went around the virtual room and talked through our interpretations. It was a nice way to get to know everyone on the call and for people to get used to using the bricks.

Example - Samuel Hoskin - Delivery Manager

You can see how I represented myself as a delivery manager. My original thoughts were that the tiger was agile, I am holding on to the tiger making sure that the team is going forward and delivering value often, the bricks on the back represent members of the team and their various professions, with the flower on top representing a healthy, happy and psychologically safe team. Oh and the top hat, purely just for fun. I posted this in our delivery manager Community of Practice and I got various interpretations, none of what I had originally thought but all valid and interesting.

The next task for the team, in groups of 3, was to build how they as a group see the team now. They had 10 minutes to this and what came of that was really interesting, in some of the moods, events and feelings that were prevailing in the team. Now I’m not going to show what they built as that is private for that team, and me posting that publicly would break their trust, but consistent across all of the groups was some deep meanings behind there builds… and a random brick like a elephant throw in for fun.

After that, I got the groups to build what there ideal version of a future team looks like. Some copied what they had built before and built on top, others started from scratch. Regardless of the approach, there was more insight into what the team wanted to work towards.

As a final task, I asked the groups, what are the actions and steps required to reach the future states of what they have built.

I don’t feel this is the best explanation of the session (especially without images), but this is part of the 20% I didn’t finish and I am writing it on a train with a self imposed deadline. If you want to talk about using Lego for facilitation, let me know as I will 100% make time for it and explain it 10x better.

It was a one off ad-hoc retro for that team, and they found it fun and interesting and valuable with a good list of actions for them to work on over their coming sprints.

What I enjoy about using Lego, it brings out some big ideas that would not normally be captured so easily in a post. It also creates the room needed for discussion,eg, For me using a red-brick to build a wall might mean that I am frustrated or angry, someone else might see that as my favourite colour, while another might think it represents a blocker.

And also most importantly, it is good fun to play with lego!

Back to the rest of my week:

Highs

• Had a chat with Leyla, who is not only a great content designer but a brilliant human being. I had been feeling a little worn out and defeated over trying to fix the unsexy but foundational issues in my work. It was much needed chat that has re-energised me that although annoying at time’s, doing the hard work to make it simple, always pays off.
• Found someone else in the organisation that is looking and publishing our digital standards in the open, following in the footsteps of DfE Standards. Yay! More people passionate about working in the open!

Lows

• My line manager is great and as such has only got themselves a well deserved new role, but it means that I am losing them as a line manager :(

Small Wins

• I did a CrossFit session before work and it did not kill me!
• Over last weekend set up the (Privacy Focused) analytics for this site, I think I am going to do a separate post about them, but it is nice to have data on how many people have visited the site… and I am going to be an optimist and assume all the visited also read
• I shared a link to my week notes on my Instagram, and we pleasantly surprised at the amount of friends that read my notes and then messaged me questions afterwards.

Learning

• For a long while I have wanted to do a Degree Apprenticeship, not because I want or feel the need for a degree in my career, but because I want to have dedicated time to develop, learn and tangent away, exploring a skill. This want has surfaced again in my brain, especially as if I do want to do it, I need to apply soon. In my ideal world, I would like to do something like a polymath degree spanning a few fields, like what LIS offer. The list of approved degree apprenticeships are quite limited, so in the absence of anything polymath, I am leading towards Data Science as I value being evidence based, and it would be great to have higher confidence in the analysis that I produce.

Wouldn’t it be nice

• This week I have spent some time trying to track down the right people both inside Defra and in other departments. Would it not be great if every department used MOJ’s people finder and we could search around ourselves, compared to being signed posted 2-3 time before getting to the right person/team.

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