Ask the Right Question: Week Notes #33
It’s been a week of interviewing. Interviewing on two fronts: for new team members to join the agency. And for a project we’re running in which our first stage of work is stakeholder interviews. I wouldn’t profress to be a confident interviewer. I do really enjoy it though.
Whilst the nature of the conversations is always entirely different. Its been useful to develop a tool box of questions. At a minimum good questions unblock blockages. They keep the flow of conversation moving. At best, they offer revelation.
Questions can also be something we ask ourselves. I went through a process for a job about 18 months ago and was unsuccessful. My response to an assignment was good but not astonishing. They wanted to be challenged or scared, not just reassured I could do the job, I was told. From that moment on, I vowed to always ask myself ‘what is legitimately the most provocative thing that i could say’ in a session like this. This is a way of pushing the thinking. Of pushing the person on the other side of the conversation.
Other useful questions are more prosaic. Martin Weigel said that he always asks prospective team members what they are reading. It’s a good question in many scenarios. In interviews, certainly. But also as you leave a friend in a coffee shop. Questions are far better than answers, I think. Or, perhaps more interesting at least.
Doing
I made a committment to myself over Christmas to put some proper effort into coffees and chats and networking-adjacent behaviours. I used to be pretty good at this and certainly found that over the COVID years and my son’s toddler years I lost the desire, inclination and energy for it. A live project that I’m working on in the background focusses the conversation with David, Stephen and Steve. All are helpful. All offer unique perspective on the problem or the potential solution. All offer to make intros to other people who might add some texture to the conversation.
Work is busy. A new project is gaining momentum. At the stage where explicitly focussing on the task is yielding negative reward. I know that the post it notes which are clinging to my daybook like barnacles will yield something. It’s just a case of trusting the process and working hard when inspiration eventually arrives.
Met Harry for a drink on Friday evening. Had Dickie over for lunch on Sunday. Roast Potato experimentation continues.
IWL continues to go from strength to strength. Run rate of new subs is accelerating again. Compound interest is a real thing, though I suspect it’s called ‘network effects’ where media platforms are concerned.
Played golf and got round my local course in 76 blows. A new personal best. Some XP deducted for the fact we’re playing off slightly forward tees… but invariably Golf is alot easier in the summer months given the roll on the ball you get and the slightly more tropical temperatures. Handicap reduced to 8.1. Nearly my best. Plans to get down to 7.4 are on track.
Reading
Finishing stretch for Prophet Song. I haven’t really enjoyed a book like this in some time. Continues to feel remarkably plausible as a story.
Ploughed through Ed Zitron’s Deep Impact. Blog post with key quotes to follow. Some definite grifting vibes.
Not a read… but enjoyed I was wrong about AI. A useful companion to Zitron’s stuff.
Watching
TV is disappointing at the moment. Severance feels like it’s going down the route that Lost took and quite frankly no amount of modernist design and architecture is going to convince me that is worth sticking around for. I watched the first episode of American Primeval. I don’t have the stomach for the rest of the series or even the stomach to find out if the rest of the series is like the first 60 minutes. It was too relentlessly grim and violent and brutal. There is too much of that out there at the moment for that to be a legitimate form of escapism.
Started watching Paradise. Enjoyed it enough to continue.
