If I could turn back time - The Manager - Cultivated Management Newsletter

The Manager

THE

manager.

Edition 6

Move Forward

Hi and welcome to this week's Cultivated Management newsletter.

I hope you've had a good weekend and are now all set for a busy week ahead. 

This week I'll be discussing why moving forward is the only choice for managers.

Rob..

History always teaches us that we can't turn back the clock, but I seem to be surrounded by people who keep trying

Why moving forward is the only possible choice for management.

I was very lucky last week to have been invited to speak at a Technology in Higher Education event in Manchester run by UCISA.

I did a newish talk on going agile and the approach I take to building highly agile teams. 

It resonated with lots of people in the audience, but as usual, the talk about agility and rapid releasing also alienated a few people as well. This always happens at events. 

In Higher Education the industry is at a crucial moment in history where funding is being cut and, in the UK, society itself just doesn't have enough 18 year olds, to keep every University simply ticking along. Universities need to attract students and demonstrate value faster - there's now a fight to attract and retain good people and good students. 

One way many Universities are doing this is through improving their IT systems, student's experience of technology and learning whilst at Uni and speed to market for new technology implementations. In other words - they really are needing to adopt agile - and a great many of them have with brilliant effect. 

Moving forward is the only way

A number of heads of tech though aren't ready to embrace this future. It's the same in commerce as it is in Higher Education - there are early adopters, laggards and people in between.

But when your markets move fast so too must your release process. There is little point clinging to the past and trying to turn back the clock of time when others aren't and the market doesn't want it. 

As managers it can be hard to constantly push forward, evolve and try new things. It can get tiring. It can be frustrating to find some normality after change, to then have to change again. 

Innovation for the sake of it isn't the answer though. Consistent and steady delivery is the real path to success, but this too requires pushing forward and finding new ways to be consistently better. Managers are the very people that must open doors for people to try new things, lead the way if needed and give support and air cover for those pushing boundaries. It's management's job to ensure innovation alongside consistent implementation and delivery - it always requires moving forward. 

Learn from the past, but push or pull to the future. Other strategies seem pretty risky to me. Either keep up, or be run over, or left, or ignored. Be careful with innovation and new shiny toys, but clinging to the past is a risky strategy too.

Rob..

 

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