Week 20: work with your friends
I’ve been working on GovTech Barbados, where we’re helping them develop their remit, organisational structure and strategic priorities.
This week, we completed the first part of the engagement, which involved helping the CEO understand where all the answers to his questions can be found. It feels like there was a realisation in the middle of the week that we won’t be around after this week, at least for a while.
So it’s reflection time.
It’s been a crazy couple of months. Occasionally, it’s felt like we were starting all over again, and it’s been a struggle to keep on track and do the things we’ve been asked to do. But I think we’ve got to a good place in the end.
There have been times when it’s been frustrating, when what we were saying hadn’t landed, even though everyone was nodding in all the right places. But to be honest, that’s our problem, not theirs. We’ve needed to spell things out really clearly.
There was the time, during the first trip, when we bumped into the Prime Minister in the parliament building and hastily arranged a 15-minute meeting that lasted 45 minutes.
There was the time we met the Minister’s chief of staff by the pool, and he brought his sister to the meeting. Both lovely people.
There was the Saturday evening a colleague and I spent with the CEO on sun loungers at the beach, watching the sun set and talking about what he should do the following week.
And many more experiences like that.
The highlight, though, has been working with a client who feels more like a mate we want to see succeed than someone who’s paying the bills. This week, he said:
“You’ve created an environment where I’ve been able to be vulnerable and open and take my mask off.”
In my book, that’s a big win.
They say you shouldn’t work with your friends. That’s rubbish. You absolutely must work with your friends, because treating everyone like a friend you want to succeed is the best way to do business.
None of this would have been possible without my Public Digital colleagues on the team. Thank you all for teaching, challenging, caring for and supporting me and the rest of the team. And thanks to everyone else who’s been helping from the sidelines.
Now I’m off up a mountain for a week or two.
Peace and love, Gav