Happy New Year everyone! ✨

I've been back at work for a week and I think my braincells are slowly coming out of holiday mode. 

Two very different holidays

I divided my holidays into two very different parts. 

Part one was spent at home working on Jimmy. On the to-do list was making significant progress on website refresh, thinking, and doing some longer term planning. I wanted to be as productive as possible so that I could completely down tools for ...

Part two! A week on my big sister's sail boat (Bess) in the Marlborough Sounds with her and her family, along with my dad's boat (Kaien), my sister and her family, and my mum!

Boat life was pretty great! Look! Boats! 👇

If you're interested, I've risked using LinkedIn as instagram and added few more choice snaps and a good story about my brother in law's thumb here! 🛫🌳🚣🏝️🐟✨🏊‍♀️🐬🛬

Before boat time, was think-time.

Boat life was great, but that is not to say the week at home wasn't also excellent. I made good progress on website content, concept, and approach. And you know how before the holidays I was excited to tell you about how I had distilled my entire working approach down to some key points?

Well, I nerded out a lot on these, revisited lots of older work (I had basically forgotten I had written this for example) and as a result the five grew to nine!

I know it's a bit insane to be this excited about a list but it's hard to overstate: This is what I've been talking about this entire time!  So it's extremely exciting to have these "methods" in a list!

But enough preamble, here's the refined and expanded list:

1. 💦 Flow, not force: Work with the system to keep things moving.

2. 🧩 Think big, move small: Understand the context; take manageable steps.

3. 📐 Right-size the rigour: Match your process to the risk and the stakes.

4. 🕳️ Dig until done: Pursue details when they're needed and not before.

5. 🤝 Collaboration beats clever: Share the thinking, the load, and the credit.*

6. 🍽️ Make it easy. Keep things simple and meet everyone half-way or more.*

7. 🌳 Work in the open: Default to transparency and expose your process.*

8. 👣 Mind the humans: People complicate everything; be caring (but also wary).

9. 🔥 Nothing is sacred: Sometimes it's the system itself that needs to change.

I have already drafted explainers for six, including advice on how and when to use them and the content for the remainder (marked with an asterisk above) is in progress.

I'm so very excited to share these with you when the new website goes live (in the next month or so).

Outcomes engineer!

Lastly, I think I've found a title that I like now that I've consciously uncoupled from the business analyst title: Outcomes Engineer.

I like it because that is what I have been doing this whole time (engineering outcomes) and it sort of oozes get-sh!t-done don't you think? Time will tell if I'll ever be able to get it on a contract, but at least it means I don't get caught up in the current (shrinking) expectations of business analysts in the market.

Hi I'm Hannah, I'm an outcomes engineer, how can I help?

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this (or anything else), so do reply to this email, DM me on LinkedIn, or send me a letter via pigeon. 

I cannot tell you how much I like hearing from y'all!

And until next time, stay excellent! 💖
Hannah