One thing I’ve realised over the years is that my interests seem to span more ‘boundaries’ than those of many people. I first came across this during A-level selection: my school initially told me my choice was too diverse and that I should choose subjects that fitted together more cohesively. I soon discovered that my choice (which I stuck with) wasn’t really all that extraordinary, but it’s a notion I’ve come across since: that someone is either technical / analytical or otherwise creative / softer skilled, and that those of us who embrace all sides are in some way unusual.
I find this curious.
I am very analytical, and of course this is reflected in the career path I’ve followed. Even my recent studies in philosophy have required the ability to think very analytically and precisely about quite nebulous concepts and to draw them together into a cohesive argument.
But I’m also very creative. I hugely enjoy photography, I play an instrument, and although it’s something I don’t currently have a lot of free time for, I like to draw and paint, both with real media and digitally. In the workplace, this allows me to create really effective visuals, both in terms of models and business diagrams and in terms of communication material.
On top of that, I’m fascinated by development and, as an example, I am currently making great progress on an online course that is rounding out my web dev skills. I’m not aiming to be a web developer professionally but I’m incredibly keen to have more control over the websites I maintain; I also enjoy being able to ‘talk the language’ of developers – and it’s just fun and interesting.
And yet, in addition to all that, I’m passionate about people – how they think, how they engage and connect (or otherwise) with each other, with leadership, and with the process, rules and systems around them, whether that’s within an organisation or in more of a societal context. One of my strengths on a project is to ‘understand the user’, not just at a technical requirement level (although I’m passionate about quality requirements too) but at a ‘will this really be usable?’, ‘how will this go down?’, ‘how can we implement this to the user in a way they’ll really get it?’ kind of way.
This broad range of skills gives me a hugely flexible ‘toolkit’ to problem solve and to support the entire project and programme process, and I’ve had fantastic feedback in the past for my ability to bring so much to the programme team.
However, one thing I’ve had to learn as I’ve progressed through my career is that sometimes it is assumed that if someone is creative, they won’t be good at analysis (and possibly the other way round, although I’ve always worked on the analytical and technical side). I worked for one particular manager many years ago who was very vocal in this assumption on his first day in the organisation, and I had to work extremely hard to disprove his theory.
I find my skillset to be hugely helpful. I have found in the past that project teams can, on occasions, have a very technical focus, leading to decisions being made based on what is technically feasible or preferable, without a real consideration of what that means for users (or, for that matter, for the business case). The agile methodology has helped hugely with this but there’s still some way to go before the people side of projects is considered as important as the technical side. And yet, benefits are derived not from the systems we deliver but from what people do with them – so it’s hugely important to consider the user aspect throughout.
That said, I’ve observed that representing the user on a technically focussed project can be seen as being unsupportive of the project itself. I’ve learned a lot from this over the years, and for the need to put forward things in a way that will be heard.
Over time – although it took me a long time to really realise I needed to do this – I’ve learned to identify the managers and organisations that prefer people to sit more clearly in ‘boxes’ of skills and interests and to put myself forward accordingly, although this makes me wonder just how much latent potential organisations are missing by not realising the full capabilities of their resources.
In the meantime, I shall continue to develop my range of interests, diverse though they might be…