Orienting, Understanding, Playing, Thriving: Debugging your Organisation

QCon London London, UK

Debugging is both an art and a science. But more than that, it’s an activity undertaken with deep intention: to understand and improve your systems. In the purely technical realm, we have an extraordinary range of tooling and techniques that can help us tackle this problem. People problems are much harder, but we still have tried and true methods and expert networks of experienced leaders to go to when advice is needed. However, when it comes to blending the two? That’s when the trouble seems to start. In this talk, Hazel Weakly shares how she has developed a toolkit for debugging organisations and learning how to address the sociotechnical challenges that arise.

This session looks at the overwhelming complexity of a modern organisation and how to approach solving the seemingly impossible problems that one encounters. Hazel will discuss the uncomfortable truths, say the quiet part out loud, and walk through the methods she’s used to go from surviving to thriving.

Along the way, attendees will learn how to first build their own toolkit in a way that fits them, and then use that toolkit to understand their organisations, debug and execute strategy, and deliver in even the most challenging of conditions.

Main Takeaways