Andrea Jensen: Welcome to Management - Tips and Tricks for Junior Leaders

In this talk, Andrea Jensen, a QA manager, shares her experiences and insights from her first year in a leadership role. She emphasizes the challenges faced by new managers, particularly in building trust and establishing a team dynamic. Andrea discusses real-life situations, such as overcoming hesitations from team members and handling complex interactions in a multicultural environment. She highlights the importance of setting boundaries, being prepared for doubts, and continuously seeking feedback from the team. Andrea encourages new leaders to communicate openly and adapt their management style to foster a supportive work culture. Her journey illustrates the significance of patience and relationship-building as essential elements of effective leadership.

[Music] welcome back to day number two of devops Dev day and cyber wise I don't know why I stroll that for a second Europe 2024 sorry a little bit too early in the morning I'm sure a few of you have filmed that as well that is the need for a caffeine booster so definitely get it injected in you because we've got a long day of very knowledgeable

sessions ahead of us in fact we've got six other stages going on right now at the exact same time but you don't want to go anywhere we've got team leads here in Hall number five uh I worked it out I done maths you know dangerous thing for me uh works out that we're looking at probably about 30 to 32 hours of content today alone and there's no

possible way any human being can consume that maybe or the the myth the legend that can do it all at once but if you're not don't worry those recordings will be available later on after the event is finished online so you'll be able to get your hands on that um is of course the final day of the online segment tomorrow as well as Thursday are going to

be taking place live from vnus so hopefully some of you have got tickets to that I'm sure it's going to be an absolute blessing place to be um but we're blessed to have so many sponsor this event without whom we could not be doing this so we're going to run through this quickly big shout out to our Platinum sponsor of course progress software we have a bunch

of Golden Soft sponsor golden sponsors today it's happening again we've got swedbank Cloud amqp Dev expert so cyber revolute and then a bron sponsor of the event is going to be spitler Europe we also have two in-kind sponsors which is going to be battery as well as tella now it's one thing to watch these back afterwards it's another thing to get the full value of them now

you have to remember this a working event in the moment in these talks when you can actually Q&A directly with our speakers at the end of each session but also do not forget to make sure that you are rating these sessions and also taking this opportunity when you see someone talking in chat and you got similar ideas reach out the whole point of these events to get

the value out of them you have to engage you have to network but now it's time to plug in and engage with our first Speaker of the day it's my pleasure to welcome Andrea Jensen uh she's a QA manager and she's here to provide tips and tricks for junior leaders hey Darren hello everyone so my slides are there okay so then let's kick this off um as

Darren said I'm a QA manager I'm fresh in this new leadership role and I just finished my first year of being into management into a leadership role and in that's time I learned a lot which I've never learned in any leadership course and yes I did courses before for but that they didn't provide me with the situations I had to deal with in reality so in case

there are some junior freshman managers here listening to that I hope they um my tips and tricks will find you well um they will support you and if you are an aspiring manager if you think well leadership could be something in my career which I could see myself in maybe take this talk as some heads up as some warning what you will face sooner or later in

your career and consider carefully if that is the thing you want to go I don't want to disencourage you but I just want to paint a true picture and not this wishy-washy version we see in leadership courses and with that said I'm getting my slides up and running so if you see okay for some reason they don't work um Darren could you give me a little hint

maybe how I can get them yeah do you want to try maybe uh you might be able to share screen sometimes we have this if you present instead it might work yeah I can maybe you I stop sharing and start again yeah try that okay so good this works out perfectly it gives everyone more time to filter in yes yes so let's see fingers crossed there's the

first time yeah there we go all right I'll let you get to it okay so sorry folks for that Interruption so testing and production I love it okay so um first of all not too many words about me I'm Andrea I'm into te books and traveling I'm working in the Merit home industry if you want to reach out to me you will find my contact details here

below you can also reach out later after the talkg and ask me questions if you want to um so don't be shy please um and with that getting started um so as I said I'm in New in leadership I just finished my first year I was promoted last May 2023 and when I started my new job in the same company I'm working for years I was a

bit nervous how everything would go and I will walk you through one of my typical days I encounter throughout the last year um give you experiences give you a little stories what happening share my learnings and my tips and tricks for you so imagine it's early Monday morning I'm about getting started I'm in the office at 8:00 a.m. yes I'm an early bird and I start to

turn on my computer I have a fresh cup of tea next to me it's the best way for me to start my mornings and I'm going through numerous emails notifications and also I'm checking what is on my calendar for the day to see what is what the day has to bring for me um was that getting started let's move on to the first message I received on

that day it's one of my favorite people in the office so I start with reading that Ma set mail first oh congratulations that's really nice to see um as I said I was a tad nervous in the beginning when I started my move from a product team tester into a QA manager forming a team of testers we never had a test team before in the company and

the organization area I'm working in so that was quite interesting how to build everything up from scratch and I was also a bit nervous to see how my colleagues how my old team how my old boss but also last but not least how my new team will react upon on the changes um to come how do they like to work with me together how how how much

do they like to join a new test team so it was really nice to see those kind of messages because I know that were are people out there in the company in the office who have who who are having my back and that sometimes just helps you to to start new Journeys if if you know there is someone who is there for you then um let's move

on with the next message um that one is not so cheerful it's in fact from one of my new team members um earlier the week or the week before I sent out one1 sessions scheduled for everyone to check in to get to know each other better to work closer together to see how everyone is standing and how we can get this test started so that was the

idea um Turned out one of the team member wasn't really fan of chatting with me having a call checking in what's going on um the explanation was well the old manager had never did that so if you just could skip the meeting because they don't feel like um that was my first very interesting situation I had to go through it happened in my very early days and

initially I had no idea how to react it took me a couple of minutes looking at the screen breathing breathing is always a good tip I can uh share with you um personally I have always this instant reply um idea in myself that is not always for the bad for the best so sometimes breathe think a bit and then take your time to reply that is also

super helpful um I'm trying to apply that whenever possible um so I was thinking what shall I do shall I do what the old manager did and just don't have a meeting because the person does not feel it or shall I say well I'm the new manager right so if I tell you we meet then we meet well that doesn't sound really right to me I don't

want to have manager like that myself and personally that also does not reflect how who I am as a human being so um my third option was then to start a conversation why is that so and that was no that was ultimately also the the thing I did I'm asking questions why the person doesn't feel to have a chat with um and ultimately we got disorted that

was more like a bad time rather than they don't want to chat chat with me but it took me a bit of time bit of questions bit of asking around what is going on initially and um after I got sort of this um little message at the next one is already waiting for me so we are here in our product channel in our product chat and there

is the dev who has a question they created the implement the asked changes they implemented everything now they waiting for the code review because we do code review we want to have a super good quality software and play along the rules and but they were're not really sure how that can be tested and when I hear the question hey how can that be tested i i in

instantly feel that's my call because firstly I'm a tester as a profession I'm around in testing since 2011 I'm in this I'm part of this product and I joined the role of a QA lead just very recently so I thought well the question is for me right um but while I was sorting the um request with the meeting um I was a bit too slow and the

death lead had my bag so I didn't didn't need to do anything so they tell told the de well that's not a problem I do the C riew which is really nice which I really appreciate but the second half of this message is where my problem starts there's no UI change so it does not need any testing at all that's when my problem start because also testers

test non UI things um we test all sorts of performance security things also apis which don't have any UI at all um so I thought well that doesn't sound right with me and maybe that's my call um to start a conversation with the death lead because that is also not the picture or the idea I want to share with my test team that it's okay to be

overruled by a DEA lead if they don't think if they think testing is not important enough so um what I learned from the two things um in the early days I need to be prepared to be doubted and tested in my new R because it can happen that people don't want to work with me don't want to have a check with me or think they are smarter

than me or a lot of ton of other opinion options are also available here but that is really something I really learned early on so be prepared to be dted and tested and my tip for you is if you are in this situation set your limits and set your boundaries you can do this in a friendly and kind and firm manner at the time sometimes it's not

clear that there's a limit or a value crust because no one crusted this before so I did not know that I had this limit but that was happening in the last 12 month and whenever I have this situation someone is crossing a limit someone is crossing a value that matters to me and I believe in I start having a folks explaining why this matters how why I

think that's important and so limit and boundaries are super important and never ever please when you take one thing away than this don't say oh for the first time it's fine I on the second time I will say that's not okay people won't understand be firm at the first time so let's move on um we got the requests um sorted and now it's time for the first

meeting of the day the first meeting of today is my team meeting we have this once in a week where we connect where we chat um we are a remote team we are spread around continent so and I'd just like to introduce you the team first before we jump into the meeting so we are a test team out of six we are located in two different continents

and two different time zones and we are from two absolutely different cultural background which make things very interesting we learn a lot but also we have interesting conversations um in total we have three different Native languages we were brought up with in general we speak English in the team so that everyone has the chance to participate in the communication and as I said in the beginning that

was the first ever test team we have in this organizational area in this in our business unit and we never had that before so it needed a bit of groundwork to set everything up and I thought well a test team meeting would be a great connection for all of the testers from the different product teams to share their ideas to share their obstacles to sh to exchange

on what is new and cool that was my initial idea in reality it didn't turn out like that my very meetings are almost like on the slide everyone was muted some turning on the cam some not I was talking into a void and very seldom I had to reply I was feeling like I run a podcast show not knowing if anyone out there is really listening to

me if there's someone and Laing the feedback and as a new BM management really feedback is super important because we need also feedback if we are new in this role to see how we doing the weeks were going on and on the meeting didn't change really when I asked team members directly yes they would and and act or interact and exchange but only if I asked them

there was very little of spontaneous conversation I got a bit desperate because I was not sure is it the connection because we're on two different continents do I need to give it bit more time that everything will be transmitted is it maybe a cultural aspect of working together is it's maybe unusual or and that was the thing I was fearing the most or I was like most

tensed about is it me about the manager that I'm not able to create the trust and the safe space in the team they need to open up and share their opinions so in the natural relationships are really hard as a team we have never met in person still today um we had the idea of meeting next week together in one location so we planned to bring half

of the team who is located in India to our German office to meet the developers the product managers the other testers and also the management team sadly the Visa office had different ideas on that so we are not going to meet we hopefully meet end of this year but building trust in the team can be really really tough and hard so I did a bit of research

and asking my friends in the community and they were coming up with some ideas like asking random questions not so super personal and let everyone decide what they want to answer we did that a couple of times in our meetings um by that we we learned each other to know on the personal level we learned who are the Pokémon go players in the team who is the

one who needs to start the Monday morning a bit slower who's The Bookworm or who would like to travel the bird that really helped us to know each other as a team better to get some idea who's the other little rectangle we're talking to regularly beyond the testing work from that on it started to get easier also team members volunteered doing little personal interactive sessions which really

relieved me because I started to get desperate so I really needed this little success that I'm not totally a total fail as a team League our latest little experiment is that we started a snack exchange so one of my colleagues was going to the Indian location and I was um packing some bags with some typical sweets from around here and sharing this sharing it with them in

return I received this super pink plushy fluffy plush cat um that that is now living on my desk in the office and I really love it um given the feedback from the team our snake exchange seems to be a success and it really helped us to connect on the light-hearted side beyond the testing work so that was a nice uh thing that was my little nice success

but still relationships are hard and require continuous work so my tip if it doesn't work on the first try don't get desperate just try with a different attempt and don't be shy to ask for help now our meeting is over and it's time to head on meanwhile while I was at the hour in the meeting a lot of new requests pile up I received new emails people

were texting me on slack and because I was in the office people saw me and walked by my desk and wanted to me so there's a lot of things piling up and while I'm used to have a busy schedule since I joined the company well when I moved into this new leadership role it felt like everyone wanted to have a piece of me everyone requested me into

meetings sent me for your information emails even though I didn't need the information at all or just wanted to have a chat about certain smaller Tropics out of the blue which I was not really prepared for so in the first weeks I really felt that I lost absolutely control over my calendar because I was like 50 to 70 t% of my time in meetings every single thing

and I couldn't get anything done um so in order to get control back about over my calendar um I needed to do something and still also today there is this constant stretch between fear of missing out maybe I should go to that meeting to get really important information and then when I was in this meeting I leave it by thinking well this meeting could have been an

email that should never been written so there's this constant stretch um to understand where is it really needed to go and where can you just Stitch it so my lesson learned from that is decide what not to do is equally important as to decide what to do I had to learn say no because I was clearly in the road of overwhelming and overw work and I was

sure I I knew after the first weeks that's a pays and that's also a workload I will not continue for a long time in a healthy manner so as much as I like to join into meetings getting new informations watching outside my little tester box what is going on in our company world I needed also to limit myself in order to not overwork myself so my my

learnings and my tips and tricks are um allow yourself the rule of if you're not familiar with that if you are in a meeting where you cannot contribute or when where you cannot anything be a self responsible human being and get out of this meeting I know it does not work for every meeting and yes I have meetings where I wish I could get out of what

I attend but the more you apply that the easier will be say no and it free sometime in the calendar the other thing is is the Eisenhower Matrix where you have four quadrants to decide what is the most important or most urgent things you want to do and on the lower left side you have this little quadrant if you put anything in there just ditch it and

don't do it at at all if you want to learn more Google it there's ton of resources out there who explains you how it to apply that and lately I'm learning about stakeholder management to to know who other people I need to very keep very close to me and continuously informed and who are the people I maybe like to have a chat with but they don't need

so much attention they don't need so much of my time and they they are fine with being just occasionally informed what is going on that also helps to limit balance the work I have to do so that was a full morning right now it's time for a break and yes in my office we are very punctual we always have our lunch break at 12 and yes I

also have a calendar entry for that because otherwise I will probably forget it I'm just wondering about the second reminder that is popping up on my screen because I was pretty sure that our product meeting about the testing process was scheduled for the afternoon after the lunch break and not on the same time because I try as I said just a minute ago I try to get

control back over my calendar and blocking my time and not allowing to have a booking in the lunch break whenever I can avoid that so I was sitting at my screen wondering what is going on here that doesn't look right a moment later it hit me I said it's early Monday morning and my beginning of this uh talk right so on a Monday morning yes I'm entering

in the office but the weekend before we had this Daylight Saving Time change that is the concept of moving from summertime to wintertime twice a year which we do here in Europe also Americans do that what I was not aware of until last year India doesn't do do that they only have one time zone for the entire country for the entire year year in and year out

they don't move between they like Saving Time summertime winter time so since our calendars are not SN there are in different time zones that screwed up a little bit our calendars and everyone was a little bit confused I'm trying to explain what a winter time what a summer time is and they are trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about so it took us a

little while to wiggle around the calendars and I was absolutely not prepared for that because I did not know the context of India that they don't have this kind of that they don't have this time shift which is so used to me because I was growing up with this all my life so I was just not aware that there might be areas in the world they don't

have the they they are not doing that and yes it's embarrassing if I say it like that but that's the way it is but I'm sure but since then we are always safe on Daylight Saving Times because I still remember my embarrassment that I didn't understood that and I'm now making three times ahead sure that we are all safe and know that and that was really a

story I had to learn that the context matters and here's just another example for you that the context which your team is in which you are in and what the company is in you so you see this number it's 1 million but the number doesn't say much I mean for me it's a big number but that's it if I add a little information to that it says

annual salary of 1 million to me in my German context bad adding my currency the euro in it oh well that sounds a really good salary so if you're in Germany working in Tech and you're earning 1 million you're probably a happy person at least I would be a very happy person um but I said half of my team is in Germany the other half is located

in India so I'm also involved in salary increases negotiations Merit increases Pro promotion Cycles in the Indian and I have to understand how how much one million Indian rup is here to me this number feels still big but I have no idea about Indian rupee how much can I cost can I buy for 1 million rupee I don't know I've never been to India yet hope I

can change that but I also have only very limited understanding about the cost of living about the value of the currency there so I thought well I can translate I can convert this Google Google can help me with a lot of online converters so converted it into EUR it's 11,000 and hundreds this as an annual salary in Germany would not create any excitement for any work Tech

but I still don't know is this a High salary is this a moderate salary or is it a bad salary for my colleagues in India I absolutely don't understand the context so I had to learn a lot about that gladly I have colleagues in India who can help me to understand that and we have some instruments in place to understand the cost of living there and also

the general level of the currency so that we know if so that I can as a team lead understand if my team members have a good salary but I only learned that in the First Merit cycle I was um part of beginning of this year so also here the context matress it's not only about the number it's also about the currency and also about the the location

where you use it so the context really really matters and there are tons of unknown unknowns we don't know as a Junior leader and there there are probably a tons of unknown unknowns out there um some managers who are in management still don't know even though even though they're in the role for a couple of years so as a tester from a profession I I grew up

as a tester in M Tech um we are so familiar to unknown we are always aware that there is an aspect in the application we probably don't know about or the requirement so we learned to ask a lot of questions and I'm trying to transfer this into my day-to-day job and also as as developers as tag people if you're reviewing requirements if you see a new application

for the first time there are tons of unknown unknowns out there for you and you will go through them ask questions and Digest from what you can learn from that and I feel when we're moving into the management role we need to be aware that this still applies also in the team lead role so because you really don't know what you don't know until one day it

hits you and you learn more about it so my tip for you be aware that there's maybe there's maybe there's probably something you don't know about the context so but now finally it's time to have a lunch break and I personally I said in our location we take the break seriously so on Sharp 12 o'clock at lunch we will meet for the lunch time um who whoever

is in the office and grab something breaks are super important especially if you're new in a role because you have tons to digest new informations to process and you really need to Brea in time to get everything sink in so take breaks seriously otherwise you will break and my my tip for you you can't pour from an empty cup so take the breaks to refresh and to

reset yourself and relax and if it requires to set a calendar entry that you have a lunch break that reminds you like I do then do it now fast forward lunch break was nice but let's hop into the afternoon so I'm back from the lunch break back on the desk checking my mails and hey there is another request from my boss so apparently there is tomorrow a

board meeting I was not aware of and he's asking for some numbers about a project telling me you know what by the end of the day would be fine for me the thing is he's located in a time zone who it's just this morning he's in the US and for me half of my day already passed so I probably better get started to make it until the

end of my day because I don't want to work on in the evening so I'm getting to pull out the numbers and my lesson from that is um that initially when I started in my new role I had maybe for the first 10 minutes only but I had this idea of having Freedom once I always thought once I'm a team lead well then I will have freedom

I won't have checkin course every mon every morning my boss asking me what are you going to do today I mean I don't have them anymore luckily but I thought well that would be freedom very soon I learned that's a bit of an illusion of autonomy yes it is true and my role building a new test team from from the base on I have a lot of

freedom in my business unit how we want to organize ourselves how we want to collaborate as a team how we split the work Among Us the team and I we can decide very um independent on the other side there are activities or task where I even have less freedom than I had before like pulling out just quickly some numbers for the sake of a so my tip

and trick for you don't forget there will always be someone you have to report to even if you're in the team lead role um there will be another manager level you have to report to most likely if you're in the lower or medium management there is another level of management you have to report to there might be a CEO you have to report to and even if

you are one day a CEO a CTO or who whatever ow you would like to see yourself in there would probably a supervisory board an Advisory board or legal authorities you have to report to so yes there is autonomy but it's not Limitless and while I'm now talking about the benefits of being in management especially in lower level management um I always want I also want to

include the Frontline management perks so if you're not familiar with the word Frontline management I just briefly that Frontline management is used by some companies they're like to use it for the lower level of management so if you're a team lead like myself you may be called Frontline manager this is understood as building the bridges between the executive leadership team you see here the three people that

is the board the executive leadership team they have those visions and strategies and idea how they want to develop the company and then on the other side there team there are the peoples who are working in the daily operations and as a Frontline manager you're somehow the messenger in between or you you're building the bridges from the vision from the strategy align it with the daily operations

split it up and dice it up in smaller task and share the message with the team which do then the daily operations the other side you are also The Advocates of your own team if they have issues to deal with cannot um sort themselves it's also the job of a Frontline manager to convey this message back to the leadership team so we're building bridges that sounds like

a nice picture right but while I said we are the managers between the two parties that also sometimes can this that does not look so much fun more like the building bridges right sometimes you also tiptoeing through Minefield while conveying the messages um for instance I just give a random example that doesn't happen in reality but I cannot share real cases so when you leadership team or

the board sends you an email hey Frontline managers good news we decided that every team member will wear a pink shirt on every Wednesday then you have to convey this message does maybe doesn't sound like a bad one right but what if you don't agree like for instance for myself I don't like pink as a color I don't have a pink shirt and I even don't want

to buy one and personally I like to decide what I'm wearing on the day myself but still you have to convey those messages with some of the messages you might not be aligned with with some of the messages you even don't like so what do I want to say you need to be prepared dilemma I'm personally not a very diplomatic person I'm very straightforward that's inra in

my personality but also in my culture so for me that's sometimes a really tough call um there's no server bullet how you want to do that you need to find your own way my personal way is that I'm not really Wonker I cannot sugarcoat thing bad things but that's about me so but let's move to some more happy things um as a Frontline manager still handson working

in the operations that's some something I really enjoy so here is a request from earlier the day to test something so I started to get testing while I'm in the testing I received call from one of my team members inviting me into a call with a developer to get my opinion that's really nice but I'm also switching context quite frequently so also throughout the day you know

you have seen that emails meetings short notice request jumping into testing there's a lot of context switching personally that is something that really brings me a lot of joy in my work I really like the diversity of my activities of my task and I really enjoyed that no day is is equal to the other it's never getting boring but also contact switching come can come with some

cost so that the mental load is really high and you have exhaustion and feel tired so the best tip I can give you plan for it plan your calendar b t things and if you need some time to un work uninterrupted without any uh one pitching in mute your notifications book yourself a room or work a couple of hours from so the next thing I bump into

a colleague in the afternoon and he's one of my netwk people in the office so we are going for her drink it's we haven't chatted in a while so it's really nice to see to catch up with each other and see how we are doing when I started to get into this new role I deliberately look was looking for a mentor in my company someone I could

share my thoughts my learnings and also my obstacles was I also have folks who are also quite new in the leadership role in the same company that I so we can catch up regularly with each other and also I have now some alleys in the Indian location to explain me and help me with the Indian office culture so that is really useful so build yourself network and

don't be shy ask for help you will need it sooner or later trust me and that's it that was my day that was it was one right um was a lot of interactive um lot of interesting interactions a lot of good stuff happening but also very challenging stuff happening and that's that's one of the basic days um I just have one little small thought I want to

share with you before I call it ultimately the day um there is the idea of leadership that and that is also ingrained in the wording we are climbing up the fruit chain we are climbing up the career ladder that this is a oneway road and I just want to emphasize is it not it is not um let me go back sorry so it is not one way

road because if you if you feel if you're own leadership and you feel that's not your job you don't want to do that you have the opportunity to step away I deliberately don't say step back because step back does always sound so bad it's a really good decision if you feel I'm in leadership but this is really not the job I should do I want to be

a deaf I want to be a devops I want to be a tester then do that then step away find yourself another place um because if you're unhappy with where you are move because you're not a tree I mean unless you can be grooed then be Gro so thanks folks that's it if you want to connect feel free to hook me up all right thank you Andrea

uh folks if you do have any questions Andrea use the Q&A section now click across the tab and then type them in and I'll relay them um really cool way of opening the day uh you know first thing that kind of got me chuckling was when you were going on about the the time zones and discovering they didn't have time zones it reminded me of uh the

time that I discovered that Beijing Standard time is something China considers real which is BST that totally made me turn up for an event very late um but you know out of all the tips and tricks you were giving there I'm kind of curious like what is the the most important one in your opinion if you had to choose one that you that taught you the most

that help you the most um it's all about the people ultimately so build trust with try if if you have to pick one thing where you put your energy in work with the team build relation build relationships build trust among the team if they have you and you have them they know you will have their back they will also have your back and I think that's the

most important thing I I think something that leads on from that is quite nice is the for of you know when you were climbing into the leadership role I think you know there's a lot of kind of feelings going around about like how do I approach this role what what kind of Route do I want to take CU I think there's usually two types right there's kind

of molding to the environment or being um sorry molding the environment or being molded by it right like is that kind of do you integrate yourself into what already exists or did you try to establish your own methods and enforce them on the environment yes that that's an interesting aspect I think that really also depends when you move into leadership so I am with my company for

oh gosh nine years now that's a long time right so I I just breathe the culture generally so I I more I was more of the attempt like well if I now move into this role I can really shape and I have B bigger influence and I really wanted to shape the things that really matters to me but I could not really put them into practice when

I was in the product team because I was working only with my product team devs and they were like I don't like that no I don't do that now I can say well here we have a team if we decide we want to do that we can do that so but if you are new in a company and you are hired as the team lead I would

recommend start firstly was observing what is going on because you need to really get an idea um I mean I said I'm German I'm straightforward I usually tip on other people's toes quite frequently but if you're very new in a position that could be also risky thing you want don't want to do so try to sort out firstly what what is the general culture that's an an

interesting thought right cuz like you know you're saying you've been with the company for nine years I feel like we live in an age where you don't really really stay with a company for a long time right you hop around your career a lot and it it's almost like you know because people seek out that type of perspective right they want to bring in someone fresh from

the outside it's almost like they expect this immediate result to come out I guess like for a lot of people who are in that situation imagine they're experienced that right now have you got any advice you could think of because obviously it's a different uh a different approach to what you're experiencing where there's this pressure on them to deliver and immediately upon arrival how would you how

would you say they need to go about um negotiating shall we say with the higher ups that look this is going to take time and Rome wasn't built in a day um I would recommend keep a good record of what you already achieved as small as they are um have yourself a little photo in your email inbox called R folder so whenever the higher apps asking oh

what did you do I pull this out so you have something to show um but also usually if you have common sense people in the higher ups they will understand if you change something it will not change immediately an entire organization because they are in the board so they know if they just pull some numbers up they won't see an immediate result in the next two days

so um try to spread the word try to emphasize have conversations and be transparent with what you are do doing and what you were aiming for and show the little successes yeah I like that as well you know like everyone's focused on the bigs it's the steps to get you there um I think we did have a question coming through from Simon but admittedly s we're cutting

it very close in the next session so um definitely reach out to Andrea she seems very receptive so I'm sure she'll engage with you but Andrea absolute pleasure to have you opening day number two and I'm sure we'll hear from you again very soon thanks Darren and Simon Just reach out please thanks folks all right next talk in a second folks so stay tuned