#14. Stepping back, growing plants

also Pina, Ted Chiang, The Magus (still), roast chicken

Hello!

Feels good to be back writing again. This week I started on one thing and it turned into something else as I wrote it. This process always reminds me of this book about Montaigne (“father of the essay”) who believed that it is only in the ‘attempt’ (‘essay’ in French) to write things down that you actually understand what you think.

I enjoyed having a week off. And although it was harder writing after a break, I’m also wondering whether I have enough to say to write every week. So I might drop this to fortnightly for a mix of self-care and self-humility reasons. I don’t want to be like one of those columnists scraping the barrel every Sunday…

Stepping back

I’m learning a ton of things at the moment about how and when to step back.

Two weeks ago I wrote about framing the discovery work for our two new teams. I’d created two teams, written discovery framing documents (Alex pointed out that I had reinvented the Amazon memo!), answered questions from people in teams about context, and asked each team to write their ‘discovery is done when’ objectives.

At that point our delivery manager Elisse stepped in and took over. She pointed out that she should be running the inception, ways of working and planning workshops. That these were delivery manager moments, not product manager moments.

This was both a relief and a lightbulb. It made me realise that I’ve been a product manager that veers into delivery manager territory too often by running lots of team workshops myself. This squeezes out delivery managers (sorry Niall, sorry Andrew). It puts me at the centre of workshops where I end up ‘solving’ things rather than letting the team do the work themselves (sorry teams). And it takes time away from doing the product work that’s my actual job (sorry me).

Elisse asked me to come but to be ‘quiet Will’ (lol if you’ve worked with me!). I watched in silence as the teams answered all the questions and made all the plans. Like any group getting to grips with a challenge there were awkward silences, disagreements, and false starts. I wanted to jump in and say things all the time! (All. The. Time).

But I stayed quiet.

It reminded me of training myself as a user researcher. To let a silence play out in an interview for longer than my conversational-self would ever do. To let a participant struggle with a terrible prototype for longer than my helpful-self felt comfortable.

And, just like a researcher, the more I stayed quiet the more I learned. I saw people step forward and own different parts. I saw them come up with approaches I would never think of. And I saw them negotiate their own roles and positions.

Obviously I don’t know how the work is going to play out. They’ll get some things right and some things wrong (like we all do). But stepping back gave them space to form as their own teams. I hope it adds autonomy to their existing mastery (from being professionals) and purpose (from working on an important public problem) so that they feel highly motivated.

Also, it gave me space to go think about the wider view. Which is important because digital identity is….complicated.

Growing plants

One of the weird joys of the last year has been learning to grow plants. I know it’s a lockdown cliche but I don’t care. At the start of lockdown Esther bought us a VegTrug and Veg in One Bed. It was like opening Pandora’s jar! Starting in the planter but then spilling over into any part of the garden we could colonise we grew:

• Vegetables - tomatoes, runner beans, potatoes, leeks, turnips, radishes, lettuces, spring onions, peas, purple sprouting, dwarf french beans, kale, broad beans, garlic, swiss chard

• Herbs - basil, thai basil, coriander, parsley, mint, dill, peppermint, chocolate mint, apple mint, oregano, rocket, wasabi rocket, rosemary, thyme, tarragon, sorrel, chives, chervil

• Chillies - 13 varieties that I planted way too late in the year, from which we got two measly fruits with NO heat, which I then over-wintered, and of those only about 5-6 plants have survived (luckily I’ve got a whole tray of chilli seedlings)

• Houseplants - revived an areca palm, rescued an aloe vera’s 12 pups, fed a snake plant to new heights, made a closed terrarium, repotted cacti/succulents, added a parlour palm, mistletoe cactus, maidenhair fern, peace lily, kalenchoe

It’s slightly daunting to see it all written down. But the reason we did so much was that I just fell hard in love with five aspects of growing plants:

1. The erratic rhythm of tending. I love calendar rhythms (daily meditation, weekly newsletter, monthly finances etc) but plant rhythms are semi-regular at best. Watering and feeding depends on plant and weather. Growth and pruning depends on seasons and sun. Placement depends on what the plant likes. You have to be alive to what your eyes and fingers are telling you. It’s a much better metaphor for dealing with life than an industrial calendar rhythm.

2. The revelations of attention. I had no idea how plants grew. First leaves are not true leaves. Seedlings lean to the light. Vines twist clockwise. Fruits form from flowers. Pinching out growing tips encourages growth. Mint has this message not roots. Coriander will ‘bolt’. Basil goes tough in the sun. All this I’ve picked up just by paying attention. It’s a whole world within a world.

3. The reward of labour. It’s been surprisingly physical. Tearing up bushes. Sieving soil to remove bindweed roots. Constructing raised beds. Putting up a new back fence. Re-roofing the lean-to. Getting down and weeding the beds. Building wigwams and a-frames for the beans. Carrying bags of compost and grit. And all of that watering in the hot summer. I sleep well after gardening.

4. The reappraisal of space. Last year my house was made of rooms. Now it’s made of growing zones. It has a front (sunny windowsills for seedlings), middle (shade for tolerant houseplants) and back (bright indirect light for palms). The warm, bright space between inner/outer front doors is for overwintering chillies. The humidity in the bathroom is for ferns. And I reclaimed the battered lean-to potting shed, re-roofed it with clear plastic, and grew-on hundreds of plantlets.

5. The thrill of not knowing. Growing plants has been gently teaching me to let go of my anxiety about not knowing the right way to do things. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I didn’t know what I was doing so I made a database of all the plants I was growing. But my neighbour, Alex, said no Will - you just have to try things and see what you learn. This liberated me. I went back to being a novice, trying a bit, failing a bit, succeeding a bit. It’s been a long time since I’ve approached anything with this beginner’s mind and it’s been healthy for me.

I don't know how much of this is going to survive post-lockdown. My plans for this year are more modest. But after getting sucked in by Thomson & Morgan’s email marketing I’m training honeysuckle and jasmine up the back fence and getting a floral hanging basket. So who knows where the world of flowers will lead….

Watching

Pina by Wim Wenders is incredible! It tells the story of contemporary dance choreographer Pina Bausch through moving and beautiful stage productions, individual dances in locations, and interviews. Honestly, the movements are like nothing I have ever seen. It’s the best of a series of documentaries that Esther has been bringing for us to watch (although Minding The Gap was also strong).

Listening

Someone recommended a podcast episode called Why sci-fi legend Ted Chiang fears capitalism, not AI and it kind of blew my mind. I’ve got one of Ted Chiang’s books Exhalation which I love (sent to me in the post, thanks Matt!) but I’ve never heard him talk about his ideas. A joy to listen to. You can tell I loved it because I bought four books that he recommended at the end…

Reading

Still reading The Magus. It’s a 25 hour audio book. I have 9 hours left. It’s good. But it is also very long.

Eating

Made a roast chicken last night by rubbing smoked paprika, garlic, salt and oil over it and stuffing it with a quartered lemon. With roast potatoes (obvs!), roasted cauliflower (mustard seeds, nigella seeds, turmeric, salt, oil), steamed purple sprouting (from the garden) tossed in the roasted lemon flesh, and gravy. Pure comfort food.

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I realised in the course of writing this that I’ve lost confidence in how and when to use italics to mark works of art. So I’ve given up entirely and just used links for now. I’m sorry for anyone whose sensibilities this offends - if you want to give me a crash course in how and when to use italics then hit me up!

Stay safe,

Will