Category: Personal Growth

Dear: [insert employee id here]

To my kids I am Dad, to my wife, I am her husband and to my employer, I am Employee #14442.

Sometime around 2006/2007 I was in a meeting with my old boss, who was the head of accounting. Halfway through the meeting, the managing director (MD) walks in, “how’re things?” he asks. My boss replied “not too bad, but cashflow isn’t looking good at the moment, we need to watch our spending until we received <X> and <Y> payments”. The MD turns towards the door and says “as long as there’s enough for my new car” then leaves the room without a care in the world. He got his new company car later that month, a brand new Audi R8. A month after this a colleague and I were laid off because of ‘financial difficulties’.

Andi Owen, CEO of office furniture company MillerKnoll, was recently in the news. It looks like her company missed its targets and as a result, staff did not get their bonus. Her motivational speech – “spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and not thinking about what you’re going to do if we don’t get a bonus”. In 2022, she received a $1.1 million salary plus various stock options and bonus pay, totalling ~$5.5 million. (I recommend watching the video)

In big tech, one of the companies underperformed. Seeing share prices drop to 1/3 of their value at the start of the year, wiping hundreds of billions of dollars off its value. In its financial reports, senior execs received bonuses in excess of what they would normally receive, indicating they performed above expectations, making their cash compensation in excess of $1 million each along with additional equity grants valued in multiples of $10m each. The employees? They got a 6 to 8 month period during which they expect to see 20,000+ people laid off.

We are not in this together.

We might be in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat. Some of us are on super yacths, some an are luxury cruise ships, but some of us are trying to keep our family safe on a small inflatable raft.

And to the point, putting all your eggs in a single basket is generally seen as a bad idea.

But we all do it, we all put out family’s future and livelihood in a single basket, which looks like a single paycheck from a single employer.

At best, a family can diversify against risk if both couples work. And that’s assuming you have 2 couples in the family and assuming they are both able to work.

So what can we do then?

The first step is answering the question – do I even care about this? For most people, they don’t, not truly.

There is nothing wrong with following the ‘well-worn path’, 99% of the people you meet will be following the ‘well-worn path’. You know the one, wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, do your work thing for 8 hours, come home, find something to entertain yourself, go to sleep, repeat 5 times. Then try to mix it up on the 2 days you have off, repeat 52 times per year. If you grind enough, maybe you’ll get to go somewhere sunny for a couple of weeks every now and again. Repeat for 40+ years, get a gold watch which maybe cost a couple of hundred dollars in return for spending the best years of your life at a company, as you head off to retirement.

I’m the same, that’s what I do too. I don’t want to do it, but I do it.

I’m not preaching from some high moral ground. I thought I had answered the question years ago, but I hadn’t, not truly.

But, I don’t think this ‘well-worn path’ or the ‘all your eggs in one basket’ approach is a sustainable way to live life.

Any of us could end up being that person who loses their job because the MD wants a new car.

Any of us could end up being that person who doesn’t get the bonus, the bonus you were going to use to pay for a holiday or your kid’s birthday presents, but still watches their boss get paid millions.

Any of us could end up being one of the 20k+ people who gets laid off just to boost the share value while people taking ‘full responsibility’ are paid millions.

After all, it’s nothing personal, it’s just business.

Closing Thoughts

This week has been a painful week, I’ve seen some of the greatest people I have worked with leave a job they loved, and the letter they received started with “Employee: XXXX”.

I hate to be the person to break this to you – but you, my friends, might just be an employee number to a company.

Closing Closing Thoughts

Gymnshark was founded by Ben Francis in his bedroom with a single sewing machine, and the company is now worth $1b. You don’t need a full $1b, although it would be nice. You just need a little side income to diversify your risk. If he can grow from nothing to $1b, you can grow from nothing to $10k per year side hustle. And that will be your foundation when you get the ‘Dear Employee XXXX’ letter.

Secondly, I love Noah Kagan, partly because he reminds me of an old friend. But also because he’s just good at what he does. If you answered ‘yes’ to the question above, check out his $10 course.

The solopreneur

I grew up in a family, a city and a time when ‘good’ looked like a ‘job for life’. I remember when I started at BAE SYSTEMS, which was 1 of the 2 major employers in the city at the time, people said to me “you’re lucky, that’s a job for life”.

It wasn’t! They announced redundancies every year and now the site is an empty shell. Over 3,000 people left that business over a short period. For the next 20 years I saw the same thing happen in every industry and sector I came across. I saw great colleagues made redundant from roles they put their heart and soul into.

What ‘luck’ really looked like, was being able to anticipate where the next redundancies where likely to hit and not been there at the time.

In reality, there is no job for life, there is no job security.

And we’re even seeing that in Big Tech.

The world changes, the company is forced to change which ultimately hits the employees, and then hits the employees families.

Many of the people I have met often describe the solution as being their own boss, running their own thing. After all, when Meta makes its redundancies Zuck still has his billions, when Amazon makes its redundancies Bezos still has his billions and when Elon walks in with a sink and fires everyone, he still has his billions (ok, maybe a few less billions but you get the point).

Now here is the thing, being your own boss doesn’t mean creating a big company. Instead you can be a solopreneur.

Lets have a look at 4 people who did this…

The solopreneurs who grew beyond solopreneurship

Lets start with a couple of people who are not strictly solopreneurs, simple because they grew beyond that stage and needed to employ a few people.

First on the list is Gary Newman, creators of Gary’s Mod and Facepunch Studios. Gary initially created a mod for Half Life 2, which launched in 2006 and has sold 20 million copies, with an estimated sales value of $150m. Following the success of this, he went on to create Facepunch Studios which developed a game called Rust which by the end of 2019 had sold 9 million copies, making a further $142m.

In summary:

  • a solo person, made a mod for an existing game, sold it, made millions, went on to develop another business and made more millions.

Next, Ali Abdaal, a Youtube creator and former medical doctor. While training to be a doctor he created a Youtube channel which gave advice to other wannabe medical students on how to apply for medical courses. Over his Youtube career he pivoted to productivity advice and more recently it seems to also include ‘getting started on Youtube’. In this video he talks about how his top 3 videos have made him £320k combined, individually making £160k, £100k and £60k.

But Youtube is not the only stream of income he has developed, and I highly recommend you watch this video to see how he does it.

In short, over the past 2 years, he has had a turnover of $4m+ with profits of over $2m (each year).

In summary

  • a solo person made a Youtube channel giving advice to people applying for medical courses. He fell in love with the process and made more, pivoting to new content ideas.
  • he scaled the channel to the point where he could leave his job as a doctor, employ a few people and branch out from there.

The true solopreneurs

So back to the point at hand, the solopreneur.

Let’s start with Justin Welsh. I don’t know the guy’s back story too well, but it looks like he had a successful career. However, as he says, in 2019 he burnt out, so he and his wife quit their “high-paying jobs and decided to completely redesign our lives with more intention”.

More recently he’s developed his online profile and following, along with developing a course which seems to be really successful. Watch this video to find out more (and to see others).

Just looking at two streams of income, his course ‘The LinkedIn OS’ which is reported to generate $1.3m in sales. Another income stream is his newsletter, in which he has a maximum of 2 sponsored slots, each at $2k each (he has a 6-month waiting list for sponsorship). In the video I linked, he reports that he made $100k last year alone from that.

In summary

  • Justin built a following, built a course on how to build a following, and now is free from the 9 to 5.

Ok, so we’ve talked about people who have actively talked about making big money. Now let’s talk about someone who doesn’t talk about making big money, but instead says he makes “a comfortable living mostly from drinking tea in my shed or riding my bike. I am a lucky man!”.

And that man is Alastair Humphreys.

And perhaps he’s being a little modest, one random guess from a random website is that he would have a net worth of $1.5m. A more modest guess, based on companies house data, would be an annual turnover of £80k to £100k.

Now let’s be honest with ourselves, earning £80k to £100k per year for doing something we enjoy is fantastic. For me personally, it would be a dream.

Before all of this, Alastair did something amazing, he cycled around the world. It took him 4 years, covering 60 countries, 5 continents and 46,000 miles. Since then he’s talked about micro-adventures, finding adventures all around you, and the 5 to 9 adventure window.

In terms of income, he does everything from making Youtube content, writing books, public speaking and many more. He’s even written a book about making money as an adventurer (click here).

For a more detailed breakdown, I would recommend reading here and here. And while Alastair is doing all this stuff focused on ‘adventure’ I would challenge you to think how you could do this about something you know about.

In summary:

  • Alastair has built up a great living from doing things he enjoys and he’s found ways to monetise living adventurously.

Summary

So there you have it, 4 people who built a living from nothing.

I would also say, they are not extremely lucky people, they are not unique or significantly different to you in any significant way (apologies to those who I featured here, but from your content, I would assume you agree with that statement).

The only real key difference is, they did something about it, and they kept doing something about it even when they didn’t see quick results. As Alastair says he “gave over 300 talks before I earned any money from it”.

Luck = preparation x opportunity

Luck, why do some people seem to have it and others don’t, and what can we do about it?

Luck plays an important part in our lives and to our success.

Imagine you are a happily married person, you probably met your partner by pure chance. You didn’t try to meet all 7 billion people in the world, it was pure luck that you met and things worked out well.

Or if you’re one of those people who won the lottery, you didn’t buy the only lottery ticket available, you bought one of the millions and still managed to win £10.

So maybe these are not the best examples – but hopefully, we can agree luck does play some part in our lives.

Here is the bad news, not everyone is as lucky as others. But there are some things you can do to maximise the luck around you.

Breaking it down

Let’s break it down into two key components. You may have heard the saying…

“luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”.

This gives us two components – opportunity and preparation.

First, let’s acknowledge, not everyone has the same opportunities/advantages as everyone else. This is just true. And while this is the case, it is possible to do things about it to still make great progress in life.

Not everyone has the same opportunities/advantages

Now before we start, here is a video which I think is very poignant, I recommend watching it.

In short

  • some people have unfair advantages
  • some of these advantages are obvious, some not so obvious
  • some people have further to travel in life than others

For me, and I’ll keep this short, I had some advantages but I also had some challenges too. Using the video as a reference point, I wouldn’t have stepped forward many times.

  • I was from a broken home (multiple times)
  • I didn’t have a father figure in the home
  • I didn’t have access to a private education or a free tutor
  • I did worry about where my next meal would come from
  • I did struggle to pay my mobile bills and many others
  • I had to work through university to keep paying my way

And many more that I’d rather not share.

And I imagine many other people were in the same situation at the time too.

But I still did ok (in my opinion), however, I did learn how to maximise my opportunities and that really helped.

Maximising Luck

Let’s have a look at a couple of the things I did to maximise my luck…

Do more with what you have

This is probably my life thesis – do more

[although I don’t recommend it to others]

When I was doing my apprenticeship, I studied at business school part-time on evenings and weekends.

This led me to a full-time undergraduate degree, where I worked part-time, this part-time work led me to my first full-time IT job.

When I was teaching, I was learning how to develop games as a hobby, this led to a promotion/team change which led to my employer funding a masters.

Working my arse off on the masters (evenings and weekends) and getting distinction on every module led me to a full-time PhD.

When doing a PhD, the uni I did my masters at offered me a part-time lecturing job (because I did so well on the masters). That part-time job involved me supervising MSc students which exposed me to very complex data science projects.

So I was lucky…

  • I got into university (first in my family)
  • I got a funded Masters and funded PhD
  • I got offered jobs

But all of this was on the back of…

  • Studying evenings and weekends for many years
  • Being prepared to drive 2.5hrs each way to teach for 3hrs (part-time lecturing job)
  • Quitting a nicely paid job to become a full time student again (PhD)

Seek out new experiences, do things for FREE and say YES more without the expectation of any reward

My best example of this was when I was doing my PhD, I would attend C4Di one day every week, which is an incubator “that helps tech companies grow, and traditional businesses innovate”.

I would do free data science/machine learning work when I could.

I met anyone who came to C4Di, and built a positive reputation.

I’d attend tech talks and present at any of them just to help the organisers succeed.

And I was lucky again…

  • I got offered jobs
  • I got offered shares in startups
  • I got to meet some of the industry leaders in the region
  • I got offered my first job which I started after completing my PhD

Again, on the back of…

  • Giving up 1 day per week for 2 years
  • Offering free services and advice
  • Turning up to events in the evenings to present
  • Showing support to other people trying to get their thing off the ground

Invest in yourself

It’s probably evident that I’m keen on personal development, but it doesn’t have to be expensive education.

I’ve committed hours and hours to learning web development, and games development just for fun. But it helped me be a better programmer.

I’ve built mobile apps as personal projects too.

I learned everything from Youtube or cheap Udemy courses. No fancy degree.

When I could afford to do, I did invest real money in my growth – I paid to do an MBA. Something I had wanted to do for around 20 years.

So where’s the luck here?

  • I was lucky that I could code when doing the MSc
  • I was lucky that I could code to get the promo which led to the funded masters
  • I was lucky that I could afford to fund an MBA for myself

You know what’s next, what did the luck cost…

  • hours and hours of self-development learning to code
  • 20 years of effort to get into a position to fund the MBA
  • Instead of buying my dream car (Land Rover), I used that money to fund the MBA

In short

If luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, then you have 2 options….

  • Make sure you are prepared
  • Get yourself out there and look for opportunities

And yes, know that luck is not fair, opportunities are not equal, and it is harder for some than others.

4 ways to gain experience (that work)

There’s this meme out there which goes something like – “entry-level position, applicants must have 10 years experience”.

It’s the chicken and egg scenario – you need a job to get experience, but you need the experience to get the job.

So how do you get that experience without having the job first?

Here are 4 ways I have done it in the past…

Find associated roles and work your way through them

Early in my career, I pivoted from engineering to IT. I primarily did this by completing a degree in Business and IT, but I knew I would still need some IT experience to help me stand out from the crowd.

Fortunately/Unfortunately – I had to work to fund my degree. One of the jobs I had was working in customer service in a call centre, and the product I was supporting was an ISP (Internet Service Provider). The role was simple, customers would call in mostly about account issues but we’d also handle basic first-line support issues too – “have you tried switching it off and on again”. It was a very basic role, but it was my first IT role.

This then enabled me to move on to my second IT role, Network Support Engineer at a company called NRM. At the time we supported one of the world’s largest gaming networks – doesn’t that sound amazing? Don’t get too excited, it was the Bingo gaming network – and yes, I would have to listen to a bingo game every night to make sure there weren’t any issues with the network.

By the time I finished my degree, I had experience in IT and it helped me stand out from the crowd, and get my first full-time IT position on a graduate management scheme (at the time called TCS).

Do work for FREE

Some people don’t like this at all, but it can be the quickest way to gain experience.

I did this to break into data science.

At this point I was studying for a full-time PhD, I was in my 30’s and for the last 5 years, I had been teaching at the local college. I knew I would be leaving uni in about 3 years’ time and that I would want to work in industry rather than academia. But I didn’t have any work experience on my resume in this field.

To fix this I signed to C4Di which is an incubator “that helps tech companies grow, and traditional businesses innovate”.

I would turn up one day per week, every week for around 2 years.

When things were quiet I’d just work on my PhD, other times I’d work on my own projects too. But every now and again I’d come across an opportunity to offer my services for free.

One rememberable example was when a startup asked how they could match candidates with jobs, for their startup idea. Now that was interesting, so I went away spent a week or so hacking some prototype together and gave them it. They were blown away and shocked that I had done this and had done it for FREE. I was happy for the experience, it became a talking point at future interviews but also that relationship became an important one with my next career move (a story for another time).

Another benefit from turning up and offering free services was that I got offered a bunch of opportunities to talk to people about their problems and ideas. One example is a company that wanted to use machine learning to solve a business problem. I listened, asked questions, came up with a technical solution and then told the guy – “I don’t think you need machine learning to solve that”. A few days later he offered me a job, which paid pretty good money (I didn’t accept the offer as I was still completing my PhD).

By the time I had finished my PhD, I had a bunch of experience in applying different data science and machine learning techniques to a bunch of different problems in a bunch of different domains.

If I had charged for my services? – then I would have made a little bit of money but had a lot fewer experiences.

Personal Projects

IDK if I’m just built differently to most people, but I always have some personal project going on.

During my 20’s I was obsessed with web development and was always playing with different web technologies. Building hacky websites in PHP, learning how to power them with MySQL.

During my 30’s I started to become very interested in game development. I even released a couple of mobile games, and built even more unfinished games just for the experience (I’ve even tried building Minecraft probably 5 or 6 times, in both Unity and Unreal Engine – which moderate success).

Now in my 40s, it looks like content creation is my newest hobby still sprinkled with a little bit of game development. But I’ve also built a robo-advisor, a news aggregator and recommender system, and a mobile app and played about with different cloud backends. And to be clear, that’s in the past 3 years.

But does this count as experience? In my opinion – of course, it does, especially if you don’t have anything else.

The goal here is to “have things to talk about during an interview”. 

Interview questions aren’t – “tell me a time when you sat at a desk in an office”, instead they are “tell me a time when you had to solve a complex problem”.

One example I did was conduct my own research in computer vision (during a quiet time when I was at C4Di). I did the full research – from collecting the data and experimenting to writing and publishing a paper.

Other machine learning research also looked at NLP (Natural Language Processing). I didn’t publish a paper on this but when I get asked the question “tell me about an NLP problem you worked on” – well I have a project to discuss.

Find experience in your current role

This is really dependent on your situation. If you’re flipping burgers at Mcdonald’s you might not have the opportunity to try building aeroplanes (2 random examples from my life).

In my current job, we’re very lucky. I’ve seen people go and work with other teams to try it out for a month or two. If you’re interested in a project then people will often welcome you in and often talk you’re head off because they’re so excited to share.

One example I have was gaining experience as a manager in big tech. I’ve managed before across my career, but managing in big tech is different. My old team was piloting an IC to a manager training programme for 3 to 6 months, and I had a very supportive manager who got me on that. In short, I did it, gained the experience, applied for a bunch of manager jobs and got one. All off the back of that experience.

An earlier example comes from that period in my 20s I discussed earlier. I was super interested in web technologies, the company I was working for had a problem tracking inventory – I wrote a tool/software system for that.

Summary

There is the chicken and egg scenario – where you need a job to gain experience, but you need the experience to get the job.

But there are some things you can do about it.

You can work your way through different roles, making incremental steps towards your goals. I did this in the earlier part of my career.

There are opportunities to gain experience by working for FREE. Payment doesn’t always have to be cash, you can get paid in experience. See it as an investment in the future.

Having personal projects has always paid off for me too. You’re not only learning, you are trying to solve problems while learning.

And finally, have a look around in your current role – you might be surprised to see opportunities to gain experience around you.

The original ‘big tech’

Let’s set the scene, it’s 1997, I’m 18 years old and I’ve just started work in a high-tech industry, building military aeroplanes (I’m in the photo above).

Before this, I was flipping burgers at McDonald’s. At that time you had a name badge, like the one below except my name wasn’t Vikky, and I never earned all 5 stars. The side story behind the stars is that you had to study and pass a test to get each one. I only ever got the ‘sweeping up and mopping’ star. I had one go at taking the orders, but I was rubbish at it. Luckily I was good at flipping burgers, so that’s where I spent most of my time.

Before McDonalds, I worked at Burger King, and in the 2 years between leaving school and eventually leaving McDonald’s I had done a whole bunch of stuff: block paving, trainee joiner, trainee mechanic, trainee plumber, pizza maker and even a short stint trying to study business at college (a story for another time).

Back to the story…

When I left school there were two major employers in Hull (my home town), BAE SYSTEMS and BP. A sign of success for a young person was getting on an apprenticeship at either of those companies.

I was lucky that I met the minimum requirements to get into BAE SYSTEMS. I applied, and the process was a full-day event full of aptitude tests, behavioural tests and interviews. It was intense.

I passed, with about 50 other people and began my journey.

Within the first couple of weeks, I discovered there were two pathways, the engineer and the technician. One was a blue-collar worker, destined to work on the shop floor building aeroplanes and the other was the white-collar worker who would work in the offices.

I was a blue-collar worker, and I was happy with that.

The real difference was that the engineers (blue collar) would get trained to apprenticeship standards (Level 3) whereas the technicians (white collar) would get trained up to university level (Level 5 or 6).

At this point, I didn’t even know what a university was. This might be hard to believe, but the university wasn’t on my radar. No one in my family had ever been to university and I remember during ‘career conversations’ at school when I was put into a group which only focused on vocational routes, not academic routes. So the word ‘university’ wasn’t really in my vocabulary.

So here I am, having this realisation that there was a whole new world beyond my horizon.

And I wanted some of it…

As the first year went on I started to see some engineers move across to the technician track. So I asked the training manager – what about me? Can I do that?

The answer was – No.

This repeated almost on a weekly/bi-weekly basis – for 2 years (I am very persistent).

Still – No.

There were a couple of reasons why I got this answer. Firstly, I didn’t have the grades (remember – I only just met the entry requirements). Secondly, I was pretty disruptive back then, which is the polite version. As an example, I discovered you could walk around the 86-acre site for hours with a blank piece of paper. If anyone asked where you were going you would simply wave the blank sheet at them and say you were ‘going to the stores’ – no one ever checked.

And if you ever meet me face to face – ask me about the chicken gun!

In short… I didn’t have the grades, and I didn’t have the attitude.

So what was my next move?

Obviously, I wasn’t happy. There wasn’t even a route I could take. Because even if my behaviour changed, my grades wouldn’t have (not quick enough anyways – my training window was too short). So my opinions were limited, I was upset and I felt trapped.

So what did I do? I applied directly to the university.

I turned up to an open evening at the university, met the lecturers, told them my story, showed them my passion for the subject, my wiliness to succeed and I had a great narrative on how I would fund it, and how I could fit it all in while still working.

You could see them weighing everything up, which seemed like an eternity and then the answer came…

“NO – you don’t have the grades”

FML – I’m done – that’s how it felt.

Door after door was shutting, less and less options were available. I’m done and I was out of ideas.

So that’s it, right? That’s the end of the story? For most people maybe but not for me. Maybe I’m too stubborn, some might call it ‘driven’, maybe I just don’t like being told that I can’t do something – IDK what it was, but I couldn’t let my journey end there.

The Pivot

I went away and licked my wounds.

And if you don’t understand what a big deal this was to the now 19-year-old version of me, then perhaps I’ve not been descriptive enough. But it was a terrible time for me.

And while licking my wounds, I tried to understand what it was that hurt me the most. And in short, it was being blocked from moving forwards. See it wasn’t the technician (white collar) route that I wanted. It was the route forward, it was that I had discovered this whole new world of universities and degrees, and my path was blocked.

So what did I do? And don’t laugh, because I do see the funny side of this next statement…

I applied to Business School and got accepted.

The real lesson

So there I was, a 19-year-old, apprentice engineer working full time at BAE SYSTEMS, completing a vocational course during the days and now studying 2 nights per week at business school.

At 19 years old, I was the youngest in that class by at least 10 years. And, excluding me, the average age would have been mid 30’s. I was an outlier for sure.

But I did it, I turned up 2 nights per week, 6 pm to 9 pm, completed assignments at degree level, and succeeded.

I finished the first year of the business course at the same time as I finished my apprenticeship, and I left both to go on to a full-time degree in Business and IT.

I had not only unblocked my route to university, I had also started walking down it. And the rest is history, as some might say.

My Takeaways

Throughout that journey, I learned a lot about determination. If I didn’t have the attitude that I had back then, I wouldn’t have gone on to achieve the things I have. I would have just accepted my fate.

Life isn’t fair. Others do get opportunities that you don’t. And sometimes you just can’t do anything about it. But you do have more control than you think.

You grow and change over time. Who you was yesterday doesn’t mean you have to be that same person today. I wasn’t ‘smart’ enough to get straight into the engineering course – since then I have completed an MSc in Machine Learning and an MBA, both with a distinction, in addition to completing a PhD.

Don’t let other people’s opinions stop you from doing what you want. But also, don’t be a blocker for someone else too. Your words have power, be mindful of that power.

Be prepared to work hard. I was working 40hrs per week, plus 2 nights at Business School. During those 2 days, I would leave my home at 7 am and get back in at 10 pm. Weekends also consisted of reading papers/textbooks and assignment work. And this was the same for everyone else on that course.

And as I reflect on this, I think of the words of two great philosophers:

  • Seneca – “It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness”
  • Rob Schneider…

1:1 (pronounced ‘one-to-one’)

The 1:1 is a term given to a meeting between two people.

Here we are talking about the 1:1 between a manager and a direct report – here is where the 1:1 becomes impactful. Impactful for both the people and the business.

Since I’ve worked in big tech, both as an IC and as a manager, the 1:1 has been the most significant tool/technique/approach which has had the most impact on me, my performance and my growth.

So what is it?

It’s a 30-minute to 1-hour meeting (depending on what you both agree is a good length) and you do it every week. And, we prioritise that meeting above all. The rules on cancelling are that the direct report can cancel when they want (even 2 mins before the meeting), but the manager should not.

Everyone does them differently.

When I do them with my direct reports I sometimes have an agenda, but mostly it’s whatever the IC wants to discuss. It is their time, dedicated to them.

We cover all sorts of things. We might start with a general chat like “how’s life?”, we might talk about progress on a specific project, or we might talk about a cross-team relationship that someone is struggling to build. It really could be anything. It’s whatever is on the direct report’s mind.

A few times per quarter I’ll dedicate time to career conversations. We’ll talk about aspirations, bounce ideas off each other, discuss growth opportunities and even make some plans.

For 1:1s with my manager, I mostly turn up with 2 or 3 key points I want to get feedback on. It could be – “I’m struggling with X”, or “X is on my mind, what are your thoughts?” or if I need to I might just give an update on a project which I think is important to share.

Overall, 1:1s are a big commitment. But they are hugely important to everyone involved.

So what makes it successful?

  • It develops a culture of fast feedback. Problems don’t sit for longer than a week, we talk openly about them.
  • It gives you a dedicated channel every week which is dedicated just to you.
  • It builds trust and shows care.
  • And by the manager prioritising it every week it shows that people are valued.
  • I use mine (with my manager) for advice and guidance, and for highlighting when things are not going so smoothly.
  • I also encourage my team to ‘manage up’, they should tell me when I’m wrong and help me understand if I don’t understand something, this is a forum for that.