Invest in Valuable Moments

By Barry Tandy

Elevator Pitch

I was once entrusted to take on a role I was totally unfamiliar with.

During this talk, I will use my experiences to take you on a journey that will inspire and encourage you to examine and embrace each moment you’re faced with in your journey and prompt you to find the moments to invest in.

Description

Over many years of working in different roles in the financial services sector, the most life-changing of them was when I was entrusted to take on the role of Product Owner for one of the local big banks.

During this talk, I will use my experiences as a Product Owner in a bank to take attendees on a journey of what I discovered and how a lot of what I discovered wasn’t specific to the role I was in. Along the way, I got to experience some moments that I’ll share and that were, in my context, defining moments for me. I’ll take a shallow dive into some of those moments and what I was able to do to make things different, learn from or change.

Throughout to talk, we spend time interacting and understanding some of the contexts that exist in the room and how having some insight into the different contexts may shift the impact a moment may have to each person. We will also spend some time sharing some of the resources that have helped along the different journeys we discover in the room, no matter what roles they may be playing in their organisation.

A great outcome for me in preparing this talk has been the insights I’ve managed to gain by taking a deeper look at my journey and what moments were the valuable ones. Where this was especially valuable for me was when I was able to follow up the talk with conversations and it will be during this talk that there will be some really great interaction and sharing of stories and hopefully, new relationships and futures developing.

Some of the value I hope attendees will get from the talk are:

  • Empathy for the different contexts each person finds themselves in, no matter their role
  • Items to focus on to provide a perspective of where you fit in and what that can do to help you to be more effective in your context.
  • What were some of the things I was faced with and what I could do to understand it and do something about it?
  • Valuable resources that exist and are valuable to reference

Notes

There are no specific room requirements. As there is interaction with the audience, I may at times need them to move around to different pairs or groups so moving space will help to make this more energising and fun for attendees. A flipchart or whiteboard is required during parts of the talk to visualise and share from the pair and group discussions.

This is a rough outline of how I plan to use the time allocated during the slot and will include some time for interaction and questions at the end.

  • Intro [2 min]
  • Share the back-story of how I came to be where I am [4 min]
  • Audience discussion in pairs of feelings they’ve had leading up to a big change in their careers (or lives) and a shout-out of some of those feelings [4-6 mins]
  • Share my initial experiences and challenged in the role I was in and what was available to me [2 mins]
  • Audience discussion in different pairs or in groups of what’s available to them and a shout-out of some of the items discussed [4-6 mins]
  • Share what I could influence and/or change [2 mins]
  • Audience discussion in different pairs or in groups of what they can influence and/or change and a shout-out of some of the items discussed [4-6 mins]
  • Share what could I do better, personally [2 mins]
  • Share what could I learn? [2 mins]
  • Audience discussion in different pairs or in groups of what they can learn and a shout-out of some of the items discussed [4-6 mins]
  • What you SHOULDN’T do [2 min]
  • Q&A [~5 min]