2021's First Big Ticket

You very nearly escaped my last musings of the year, we’ve said so much in all the other editions of this newsletter and you have all been so incredibly supportive and open that the break was justified, but I realised I still need to ask something of you.

First - a "thank you". On a personal level, I’ve realised I have much to be grateful for, aside from writing my book “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teams in the Digital Age”, my magical talks with TEH Gene Kim and speaking at DOES, my 2020 revolves around so much learning and growth I find it hard to properly moan despite how I feel by deferring it, I may be missing on this natural “moaning window” as it looks like we all have a tough few months if not a whole hard year ahead.

Above all, my greatest personal gain has been being welcomed into the DevOps community. I say “welcome” knowing it will make some eyes roll at my lack of seemingly well-deserved imposter syndrome. I’ve never built a DevOps pipe myself, never had to explain the point from scratch to some stubborn enterprise, never had to vouch for either the tech or the process at great risk to life or limb while still potentially writing code and doing stand-ups and while I have built teams, fought tough intrapreneurial battles inside bellies of beasts, or made sure DevOps was the soul of my startups, I’m not and will never be enough of a techie to feel like I’m worthy of the company of greats and yet I’ve had a warm reception over the past few years since I’ve “left” the FinTech world and focused firmly on my work on Psychological Safety and my obsession with Agile from this community, so thank you.

I hope we all have a few entries on the personal gratitude retro despite the year we’ve had, but the greatest collective net win of all has been on the people side across the board. With the “POC of WFH” proven, a new and worthwhile dialogue about humans and humanity both at work and in society re-started and, above all, with more momentum behind the idea of teams and the need to be Psychologically Safe to be performant than ever before, we stand to make great strides once we come out on the other side of this.

Still, as I was saying, this article is not just a list of wins but contains an ask.