#15. Pete's influence, helpful nudges
#15. Pete's influence, helpful nudges
also Freshwater, Wolf Hall, You're Not Alone, frozen dumplings
Hello!
My friend and colleague Pete Herlihy left GDS and the UK this week. I told him I was sad that he was leaving because I've learned so much from him. I got a typically gruff and straightforward reply. "Pay it forward. That's all I did".
It’s not all he did. But whatever. This week I’m going to pay it forward by sharing a couple of things I learned from working with Pete. One about how to approach the work we're doing at GDS. The other about supporting people with helpful nudges.
Pete’s influence
On Thursday, as one of his last acts at GDS, Pete gave a talk to our digital identity teams. He talked about how he led Notify from an idea to government infrastructure that is used by more than 4,000 services across the public sector. The talk was a version of this blog post (read it if you want to understand Pete’s influence on my worldview!).
Notify is a simple idea. It lets government services easily send text messages, emails and letters to their users. It works well for digital teams who build automated services. But it also works if the service is run by normal people using everyday computers and Microsoft office (50% of Notify's services do not use the automated sending functions).
Notify saves government millions of pounds because notifications stop worried users making expensive phone calls to services. It's been pretty useful during the pandemic too. Chances are you’ve received multiple messages through Notify in the last year.
Notify is one of the two most successful products GDS has made for government. The other is GOV.UK - the single website for the whole of government - which Pete also worked on. I’m always interested in thinking about GOV.UK and Notify as two different approaches to delivering successful products for the whole of government:
GOV.UK was mandated from the top of government with strong political support. A brilliant team built a great product and ran a hands-on process to transition hundreds of government websites to the single new website. One benefit of the top-down approach was that it happened quickly. One cost was that that it forced departments to move at GDS’s pace.
Notify was designed to meet the needs of service teams in a bottom-up approach. A brilliant team built a great product and ran a self-serve process that allowed thousands of government services to sign up and send notifications. One benefit of the bottom-up approach was that it allowed departments to move at their own pace. One cost was that it happened more slowly over time.
I'm not interested in which approach is better. Both of them worked. They’re different approaches for different contexts.
What I am interested in is a simple idea that unites GOV.UK and Notify:
In the early days of GDS this was about making public services to such a high standard that people would use them by choice. Even though people usually have zero choice but to use the services government provides.
But these days, as departments rise to this challenge, the role of GDS has changed. We’re not usually the ones making the services for people.
Pete’s influence has been to show us one way to stay true to this original idea. He built a digital service (Notify) so good that people (service teams) preferred to use it. Those service teams could have used anything they liked to send text messages, emails, and letters. But they chose Notify because it was better. Not because they were told to.
One way I’m going to pay it forward is by trying to do this kind of work. It's a high bar and, if I'm honest, I'm a bit scared to live up to his standards. But it's worth a shot.
Helpful nudges
The other thing I want to say about Pete is more personal. Over the last five years he gave me a series of helpful nudges that changed my career direction.
In 2018 I switched from being a designer/researcher to being a product manager. I'd been thinking about this since 2015 but it was Pete's gentle, insistent nudges that gave me the confidence to finally do it.
I can break this down into four helpful nudges:
At the end of my time working as a user researcher on Notify in 2016 I was frustrated that some things weren't getting fixed. The team solved nearly everything but this weird handful of issues persisted. So I broke my own rule that user researchers don't make recommendations and - for one time only - told the team what they needed to change to fix the problems. Pete took me aside afterward and said, Will, you should think about being a product manager.
Early in 2017 I got frustrated that the Government as a Platform leadership team were talking about new platforms without understanding the needs of service teams. Pete said, OK Will, get out there and find them out. I ran a guerilla discovery where we spoke to 150 service teams and to understand their needs. This was the first time I'd run anything as a product manager.
Later in 2017 we took the biggest unmet need - services collecting information from their users - and I ran a legit discovery with a multidisciplinary team as a product manager. Pete coached me through the process of running that discovery and sharing the results. That led to Submit as our next product and convinced me that I had what it took to be a product manager.
In 2018 I left GDS after Submit got canned. I couldn't see how to switch to a product manager role outside GDS where I'd been able to do product roles as a researcher. Pete said Will, you’ve got this, go and find a product role and do it. This gave me the confidence to apply for the role Local Welcome and that’s where I learned how to be a product manager for real.
These things were my doing. And yet, even though they were my doing, and even though I'm a confident person, I still needed Pete’s helpful nudges to make it happen.
Pete was paying attention enough to play that role. He never made a big deal about it but at key moments he stepped in and told me I could do it. He would say - does say - that I would have got here anyway. But I'm not so sure. I think that sometimes people - not just me - need a little helpful nudge to take the next step.
So another way I’m going to pay it forward is to try and spot when the talented people I work with need one of those helpful nudges.
Reading
I’m reading Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi after Sonia recommended it. It’s a captivating read - a coming of age story mixed with unusual gods and spirits.
Watching
The pandemic will be synonymous with Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy for me. I read the final book and then instantly re-read the whole trilogy last year. And now I’m re-watching the BBC TV adaptation with Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell with my mum. Such a lovely, slow, considered pacing to it.
Listening
Spotify has added genre filters (mobile only?) to my list of favourite songs and me and Esther have been united in our love of the “electronic” filter. Especially when it threw up You're Not Alone by Olive which is (a) a classic and (b) end-of-lockdown approps.
Eating
Dumplings and dipping sauce! My freezer is full of bags of frozen Korean dumplings or frozen Itsu gyoza which only take a few minutes to make and serve with any random dipping sauce (I like 2 parts soy, 1 part vinegar, 1 part mirin, plus chilli and sesame oil).
I’m going to write fortnightly at most from now on. Work is intense and I need to switch off completely at least every other weekend. Plus it gives me a bit more time to amass some thoughts that are actually worth sharing now I’ve got through the backlog.
Oh, and pubs are open again, so - you know - priorities :)
Stay safe.
Will