How did I get here?

I recently spoke with Andrew Armitage, founder of A Digital, as a guest on The Clientside Podcast. We talked about my career so far, the roles and organisations that have shaped my thinking about technology, culture and change. These seem fundamental to why I write this blog, and why you might find it interesting or useful, so it seemed like a bit of a gap to have not included this before.

This post is an extract from the transcript of the recording made on 27th April 2022, with some minor edits to improve readability. You can listen to the podcast here.

"I'm currently Director of IT and Digital Services for Hospice UK. Hospice UK is the national charity for hospice and end-of-life care and we work to ensure that everyone affected by death, dying and bereavement gets the care and support they need when they need it. I've been working with Hospice UK for about three months, so I'm relatively new to that job. I've moved around different sectors, which I think has been brilliant. It's meant that I could take ideas that can work in one sector and repurpose them and reuse them in another.

I started my career in manufacturing. I was on a graduate programme which was probably taking me down a commercial route into sales. The company at the time was putting in some new systems in response to Year 2000 challenges – so that gives you a bit of an idea of how old I am. They needed somebody to look after all the computers. I'd been building PCs as a bit of a summer job whilst at university, just doing assembly type work. I asked if I could give it a try, and I think I was the only person who'd seen a computer before, so I was in. That's how I got into IT. I was the only person for a while doing IT 'stuff' so I did various different roles. I ended up managing IT across multiple sites as that company grew through acquisition.

I left manufacturing after about ten years, and went to work in a secondary school in Sheffield, where I transformed the IT function there. I contributed to some wider improvements within the group of schools in that particular area of Sheffield. And then I was lured back to the private sector to work for a small software startup. We had a group of software developers, I was managing projects and overseeing most of the operational delivery side of things, which was good. I couldn't get very technically hands on because I'm not a developer at all. It was a really small business, which was challenging. It can be really tough being in a small business because every penny counts. Everyone needs to be delivering and everybody needs to be selling. I think it was at that point really that I realised what I'd been missing.

I missed that sense of having done a 'good thing' for other people. There's nothing wrong with making money – I'm quite happy to do that – but I found that what motivated me more was social good. An opportunity came along and I started working for charities.

I was with Relate for five years – Relate is a national counselling charity. Initially, I was a project manager on tech and digital projects and then moved up into a senior management role. Overseeing the national contact centre and digital services, including counselling via live chat and webcam, email and telephone. We won awards for innovation and for partnership working, for some work that we did with BT and an organisation which was part of Coventry University called the Serious Games Institute. That was really good, fun times. They were really interesting, really innovative digital services in the charity space.

I then moved to Family Fund as Director of IT. Again, I had a remit to update and transform the IT function. I really love what Family Fund does and the team there are absolutely fantastic. Personally at the time I had a long commute, a young family, I recently moved house, I was doing my MBA. So it's fair to say I had a lot on. I left Family Fund a little bit sooner than I originally intended. I try hard to keep in touch with what they're doing. They're doing some fantastic things for families raising disabled and severely ill children. A really powerful purpose.

From there I took a bit of a deliberate side step away from IT, into a more focused change and improvement role with St Leger Homes, a social housing organisation based in Doncaster. I had the fantastic job title of Head of Business Excellence, so there's only one way you can go from there, isn't there? I led on corporate planning, learning and OD (organisational development), business transformation, some IT programs, and I even had internal comms and external comms for a little while. I did lots and lots of work around organisational culture, which is a bit of a passion of mine. It's a very formal, quite a hierarchical organisation, closely linked with the local council. It could be quite slow to make decisions, had a strong status quo bias, and little room for experimentation. I think that's probably a feature of that kind of nonprofit.

I moved to Yorkshire Housing where I had nearly three years as Head of IT. Before I moved to Yorkshire Housing I always said I wouldn't do another IT role, below Director level anyway, but the opportunity to work with the incoming Chief Execcwas a real draw. He was someone who I'd noticed in the social housing sector, who really spoke my language around innovation and change and tech and particularly how that influenced ways of working and culture. I rebuilt the IT team there, grew it massively, adding skills and capacity where we had gaps. I also took on data. We had two people in data when I joined, and about 12 when I left. So that tells you a bit about how that sector is going in terms of data. I also did business change and oversaw a large Microsoft Dynamics project when the Transformation Director left. It was a great challenge, loads of variety, lots going on, which I like. When those pieces of work were kind of coming to an end, we had a bit of a restructure and it looked to me like there was going to be more of the same kinds of projects to come in the future. So, I decided it was probably time for me to look for another exec role, perhaps with a smaller organisation and ideally a charity – and Hospice UK cropped up.

I've been there about three months (at time of recording) and it's quite a different proposition to my last role. It's quite a different challenge, which is an exciting thing. I've got a really tiny team around me now, just a couple of people. I had nearly 70 at Yorkshire Housing at one point.

I think I've always enjoyed the management side more than the technical side, always enjoyed transformational change and innovation. I've been fortunate in my career that a lot of the roles I've had have been quite new. Nobody's been in the job before, and that's meant that I could shape those roles, make them what I wanted them to be to some extent. I've always enjoyed that sense of autonomy. That challenge to transform is really where I prefer to be spending my time. I have to admit that I am less excited about the day to day operations but I know it's a big and important part of any IT function."

The Clientside Podcast

https://adigital.agency/podcast/why-people-culture-data-and-every-penny-counts-in-the-nonprofit-sector-with-stephen-thorlby-coy

As a qualified coach, I can help you to be more self-aware and confident in your abilities and address work challenges. Reach out if you'd like to discuss coaching with me. I offer career/work coaching for people in any role. I am able to offer a blend of coaching and mentoring for people in IT and change roles, particularly managers or aspiring managers.

I am currently able to offer sessions free of charge - contact me via LinkedIn or Twitter

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