Connecting things

As the new year starts...

It’s only been a couple weeks into 2024, and already I’ve been experiencing various twists, turns, highs…and lows! (and I’m not just talking about the intense polar vortex blasting the Deep South — brrr! 🥶 )

For instance, I’ve seen the unexpected departures of valued colleagues as they pursue new directions, in the hopes of connecting with their passions or re-connecting with a sense of time and space for their own personal reflection. I’ve also been helping other colleagues seek out pathways into higher education, for intellectual enjoyment or further expansion of their knowledge — indeed, this has been quite fulfilling for me, to support them in their pursuits. 🙌🏽

Additionally, over the next week I’ll be holding “career conversations” with my team of designers, so I’m preparing diligently by reviewing peer feedback, revisiting our career tracks/levels, and identifying growth areas that align accordingly. I’m actually quite looking forward to these sessions; I see them as a fun departure from the usual design grind. 😇 They provide a valuable moment to connect about what matters, what motivates, what empowers my team as people and aspiring leaders in their own right. This is perhaps the most rewarding part of being a manager, serving as a coach and guide to help them fulfill their goals… and perhaps transcend my own achievements! I totally support that. 💯

Also, last week I coordinated and facilitated a couple of major internal workshops, borne out of different needs/goals, but both focused on being successful this year in their own ways. One was basically a cross-functional kickoff: to inspire, inform, and unify multiple teams around “selling solar” — by celebrating last year’s tremendous work, surveying our roadmaps & visions for this year, and identifying potential success metrics, while revisiting our users’ top needs to be their best. It was a great way to galvanize and also connect everyone (over 60 people) — if at least virtually — so as to feel and function as a cohesive team, with the versatility & resiliency of their talents and skills. ⚡️

The other workshop was a new one: a “pre-mortem” around a top company priority we aim to achieve by the year’s end. So, looking out to a dark future where failure has happened, how could we trace back to those potentially strong risk factors, with high probability and severity of impact — using an objective, rational lens? Far from being all “doom & gloom”, it was an insightful conversation that connected colleagues across disparate departments and domains. What resulted was a first draft of potential mitigation approaches with “high value actions”, to help ensure a positive outcome. Time will tell, and we have a long way to go… 🤔

The year ahead is so full of many unknowns in work and life; we’ll find out soon enough what happens. But perhaps an emerging theme this year, at least for me so far, is around “connection”. It’s so easy to get mired in the tactical grind of work stuff, anxieties about AI or fears about the economy, toxic politics, worsening climate, and losing sight of connecting with what matters to you, your friends, family, team, community, society at large. Connecting matters. Connect to inspire, to learn, to remind, to achieve, to believe. 🌟

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect...
— EM Forster, ‘Howards’ End’