This is how I work, give or take

Jukesie kicked this series off, and this feels like a good time for self-reflection... so here’s how I got to where I am, and how I get stuff done.

Location: South-west London, or on the road

Current Gig: Co-founder at Lithos Partners

Current mobile device: iPhone XS

Current computer: Mac desktop with two screens for heavy lifting, MacBook for when I’m out and about.

One word that best describes how you work: Variably

First of all, tell us a little about your background and how you got to where you are today.

I grew up in Notting Hill, west London. But before it was gentrified and it was just another rough-round-the-edges bit of inner London.

After seeing Kate Adie report from Tiananmen Square in 1989 I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I peaked early on this via a youth journalism programme - a bit like Press Gang - which got me my first story in the Guardian when I was 14. It’s been downhill from there tbh.

The same year I went on a school trip to Cyberia, the UK’s first internet cafe. There I went on the internet for the very first time, and was absolutely fascinated by the opportunities it presented. Still am.

But I mostly coasted through school. When you can get a B in exams without really putting in any effort, and you go to an extremely average school where most people didn’t even get five GCSE C-grades, there’s little incentive to push yourself. So I didn’t. I left with a crop of decent-but-not-spectacular GCSEs. After that I royally cocked up my A-levels, didn’t get into uni, and took a gap year.

I ended up surfing the tide of underwhelming employment for six years. At the time geekiness and writing were two diametrically opposed lines of work, so I put the journalism training to use as editorial assistant on a car magazine, then at the Guardian, with some temping in-between. It was fun at times but the work was tedious and I resented being patronised because my name’s Sharon and I didn’t have a degree.

In 2002 I left my job at the Guardian and went to Bolivia on a whim. I worked on the Bolivian Times - an English-language paper that hardly anyone read. I had an amazing time, but it also served as a bit of a kick up the arse to do something with my life.

So I finally went to university when I was 24. I adored my time at Goldsmiths, and it was here I discovered - belatedly - the concept of applying myself . I worked out exactly what I needed to do to get a first, and had a laser focus on doing just that. This left me plenty of time to read around on the stuff I was interested in. I graduated top of my year.

I’d started doing comms work over the uni summer holidays, and - loaded with student debt - this seemed a sensible thing to do on graduating.

After a couple of short contracts I ended up with a job doing internal comms in local government, which is where I started working on intranets. My two loves - writing and the web - converged around about this time, as social media hit the public consciousness.

In 2010 I got a job as Intranet Manager for the Houses of Parliament - my first 100% digital role. This was when digital workplace tech became my niche. I started blogging about it, and quickly joined the crew at Intranetizen (which is how I met my now-business partner Jonathan). I launched some good stuff, won some awards, learned a huge amount, and met some incredible people.

Two years later I broadened my horizons by getting a job doing digital comms at a global bank. After a couple of years in London they shipped me out to Singapore to lead a programme rolling out an enterprise collaboration platform.

Not long after I got back to London I quit the big corporate job because reasons. I started contracting as a product manager in an innovation lab. That shifted into more project-based freelancing, doing a mix of comms and product, and advising companies looking to do digital workplace products and projects.

I joined forces with Jonathan to become Lithos Partners so we could take on bigger projects. It’s been three years since I left corporate life now, and it’s going pretty well.

Typically we get involved with research, strategy, advisory and planning work. That is, helping communications and IT teams to review their existing ecosystem/platforms, develop their strategy and proposition and develop a business case for investment in tools and people. But a lot of the time it’s people I’ve worked with previously saying “I have this problem… I’m not really sure what I need”. Those are the kind of problems I like.

I still don’t have a career plan. I just focus on working hard, learning as I go, and never staying still.

Take us through a recent work day

My days vary hugely depending what I have on. I don’t have a ‘work day’ as such. Because I run my own business I work when I need to. That means doing a lot of evenings and weekends, but also taking afternoons out to learn something new when I have the time.

Generally I wake up early, but if I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere I’ll catch up on Twitter and emails on my phone before getting up.

When working at home I tend to jump on my computer about 8.30. First and last thing in the day are my most productive focus times. Often I’ll start working and next thing I know three hours have passed.

If Jon and I are working on a project together we’ll usually get on Facetime around 9 to divvy up who’s doing what. We’ll review our project Trello and close off tasks from the day before, then move a bunch of new cards to ‘to do’. We blogged about how we collaborate here.

I try to go to the gym most days, usually early afternoon. Just getting out of the house helps me to reset and refocus. Then I’ll eat, shower and get back to work until 8 or so.

If I’m travelling - which is reasonably often - this schedule goes entirely to pot and you’ll find me working in an airport at 6am or a hotel bar at midnight.

What apps, gadgets, or tools can’t you live without?

Because I’m on the road a lot I do most things in Google Docs. I organise my entire life with Trello. I even have a Trello board for holidays, because there’s no fun like organised fun. I use Calendly to schedule meetings as my diary is a hellscape. I use Slack to talk to colleagues, because I’m terrible at email. And I can’t live without Spotify.

I rarely leave the house without a bag of Sharpies and Post-it notes (if you’re a consultant I cannot recommend the Post-It Plus app enough).

What’s your best shortcut or life hack?

Get more sleep. Everything else is easier when you’re not knackered. I learned this the hard way.

Take us through an interesting, unusual, or finicky process you have in place at work

Most of my projects involve both discovery and stakeholder engagement work, often in large and complex organisations. So to keep track of conversations and how they converge and diverge I keep a spreadsheet for each project with five columns:

• My hypotheses (points I’ve assumed based on background reading)
• Emerging (points someone else has made which need to be backed up by data or further conversations)
• Partially validated (where a hypothesis has been validated by at least one stakeholder)
• Validated (where a hypothesis has been validated by >5 stakeholders)
• WTF (things I thought were true which have been disproven by later discussion)

I can then play around with this and sort into themes as I need to. This helps me to understand the big picture of who said what and where the friction lies.

How do you keep track of what you have to do?

I use Trello for everything, plus a wall of post-its in my office.

What’s your favourite side project?

300 Seconds, the diversity-in-tech event series I co-founded with Ann Kempster and Hadley Beeman back in 2013. After attending yet another event with a manel talking we decided we should do something about that. We realised that under-representation of women happens because event organisers ask people who have spoken at things before, so we see the same people over and over. But also, for all sorts of socio-historical reasons women are less likely to put themselves forward to speak.

So we decided to put on our own event, to give women the opportunity to try it, and in turn help build a track record. Our speakers talk for five minutes (300 seconds). That helps build confidence to do it for ten minutes, half an hour, and so on. And that way we build a pipeline of speakers event organisers can go to in future.

I love hearing stories from our alumni who have gone on to keynote across the globe, or had the confidence to go for that promotion. One even started doing stand-up recently.

After a work/life-related hiatus Mary McKenna kicked us back into business in Ireland this year. We’ve recently rebranded and will be running some more events in 2019.

What are you currently reading, or what do you recommend?

I’ve got two books on my bedside table at the moment: James O’Brien’s How To Be Right, and Sherry Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation: The power of talk in a digital age.

Who else would you like to see answer these questions?

Everyone. I’m nosy.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

You can always make money; you can never make time.