Ten Years at Slalom: Ten Lessons to Carry Forward
A team member asked me to look back on my ten years at Slalom and share the ten lessons or insights I would want to pass on to the team and carry forward. I posted a list in Teams, and the question deserves a little more space here.
Ten years is a lot to fit into ten points. These are the ideas I want to keep coming back to, including a couple borrowed from others. They're also reminders for myself. Knowing something and consistently putting it into practice are two different challenges.
1. People first. Always.
That's what ultimately drives our business. We can talk about platforms, capabilities, and delivery models all day, but somebody has to trust us enough to work with us. Somebody has to do the work. And somebody has to live with what we deliver.
For me, putting people first means paying attention to what our decisions ask of them. Before committing a team to another deadline, give them a voice in the room so everyone understands the impact on their existing workload and can work toward a solution together. When someone needs feedback, give it while they can still use it. When a client asks for a solution, spend enough time with the problem to understand whether that solution will actually help. This takes time, and it's easy to skip when we're busy. It deserves a place in the work anyway.
2. We're all trying to figure this out. Be kind to yourself and others.
There's always going to be something you're doing for the first time. A new role, a different client, a problem you haven't seen before. You can have years of experience and still feel out of your depth.
Give yourself some room. Ask for help. And remember that the person next to you may be going through the same thing, even if they look completely comfortable. We don't get much benefit from making it harder for each other to say, "I don't know yet."
3. Don't be afraid of the tough conversations. That's where it's at.
It's easy to put off a conversation when you know the feedback will be hard to hear. But if we keep avoiding it, we shouldn't be surprised when the same issue comes up again. In the meantime, the other person may have no idea what's bothering us, while we're getting increasingly frustrated about something we haven't explained.
Have the conversation. Prepare enough to be specific, and leave room to hear something you weren't expecting. You may need to change your own understanding of the situation. There's a lot of growth available there, for both people, if you're willing to work through the discomfort.
4. This is a high-trust business.
I borrowed this one from Christian: you need to trust that your team and peers are doing their best.
I like that as a starting point, especially when something goes wrong. Before deciding somebody doesn't care, find out what happened. They may have had information you didn't, understood the commitment differently, or needed help they didn't know how to ask for.
Of course, I have a responsibility to make it easier for others to trust me, too. Follow through. Be clear about what I can commit to. Raise a problem while there's still time to address it. That last one can be uncomfortable, but I would much rather hear early that something is in trouble than get a reassuring update that turns out to be wishful thinking.
5. ABC: Always be curious.
Especially when you think you already know the answer. That's when it's easiest to stop listening and start fitting the situation into something familiar. Stay interested in why a client does things a certain way, or why a colleague disagrees with you. There may be a constraint or a perspective you haven't considered. Experience should give us better questions to ask.
6. Never, ever, ever stop learning.
New technology, new paradigms, new ideas. There is so much to learn, and I find that exciting.
Give yourself opportunities to get your hands dirty. Read about something, then try it. Build a small version. See where it breaks. Explain what you understood to somebody else; that can expose gaps pretty quickly.
Choosing where to spend that effort matters. You won't learn everything, and chasing every new release can keep you busy without making you much better at your work. Go deep enough to understand why an idea matters and what its limitations are. Be willing to revisit what you already know, too. Sometimes the thing you need to learn is that an approach you've relied on no longer fits.
7. Stop. Pause. Reflect.
This comes from the Slalom Leadership Training program. That space is what opens us up to find opportunities.
I wrote about this in my 2020 reflection: getting too close to the tasks and losing the strategic perspective my team needed from me. Being involved can feel useful, and there's always another thing to do. But if all my attention goes into the task in front of me, who's looking at where we're going?
Making time to reflect helps me ask whether the work needs a different contribution from me. It could be a decision, a question, or giving somebody room to work something out themselves. I want to make that choice deliberately. It's hard to do while rushing from one thing to the next.
8. Fake it—for a while, it's OK. You will make it.
Take the opportunity even if you don't quite feel ready. Prepare, ask for help, and let yourself be uncomfortable for a while. You can be honest about what you're still learning and still step up to do the job.
I mean "fake it" in that sense: borrow enough confidence to get started. A lot of the confidence you're waiting for will come from doing the work. Give yourself the chance to build it.
9. Extreme ownership eats talent for lunch.
Give me someone who follows through, raises problems, and cares about the outcome. Talent is valuable, but it's hard to build a team around someone whose commitment ends at the edge of their assigned task.
Suppose you've finished your part and the handoff is stuck. You may not be able to fix the whole problem, but you can find out what's missing, get the right person involved, and help move it forward. That's ownership. So is saying early that you've made a mistake and explaining what you're doing about it.
There will be times when taking responsibility means asking for help or changing a commitment. Use your judgment. The result needs your attention, and sometimes the most useful thing you can do is bring other people into the problem.
10. Tiny gains.
I included the math in the Teams message because I like how clearly it shows the effect of compounding:
1% better every day: 1.01³⁶⁵ ≈ 37.78
1% worse every day: 0.99³⁶⁵ ≈ 0.026
Obviously, nobody becomes 37.78 times better at their job in a year. But small improvements are easy to dismiss because any one of them looks insignificant. Give them time. Getting a little better at listening, following through, or preparing for a difficult conversation is worth the effort, even when you can't see much difference that day.
That's also what makes this list manageable for me. I don't have to become excellent at all ten things tomorrow. I can pay attention to one and work on it, then notice where I need to adjust.
I'm glad my team member asked the question. Looking back at ten years is a good excuse to pause, and putting these ideas into words makes it harder to leave them as things I simply agree with. I want to keep learning, and I want to help the people around me do the same. There's plenty here for me to keep practicing over the next ten years.