Inside the Messy Middle of a Value Stream Network

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another segment here on Techstrong TV. I've got a lady who's never been on our show before, and I'm really happy to bring her to you.

Her name is Jamesia Dixon. Jamesia is a senior delivery stream lead at a company called the Zayo Group. Zayo Group.

We'll get that straight in a second. Let's welcome Jamesia to Techstrong TV. Jamesia, it's great to have you on here.

Hi. Happy to be here. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. Did I get the name of the company right? How do you pronounce it?

It's Zayo Group. Zayo. All right.

Jamesia, we're going to jump in. You're one of the speakers at Flowtopia, and we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But before we do, I wanted to spend just a little bit of time talking about you.

Give our audience a sense of kind of beyond the title, who you are, what you do, maybe even a little bit about Zayo Group. Okay. So hi, everyone out there who's watching this.

I'm Jamesia Dixon. I was born, raised, and reside in Dallas, Texas, and so I have an interesting journey into tech. I'm one of those people that you would consider nontraditional, meaning I don't have a computer science degree or certification or anything like that.

I'm a big non-tech person who values engineering, collaboration, systems, and those things. And so I won't bore you with the details because that's not what we're here for. However, I have been in a delivery-focused role, whether officially or unofficially, for a little over five years now.

And so, I currently work at Zayo Group, which is a telecommunications company around middle market. And so if you know it, in telecoms, like the biggest, smallest world, so many people know it, many people don't. So look us up.

Very interesting and fascinating thing to see. And a lot of the values at that company come aligned with the things that we'll probably talk about today. I love it.

So, Jamesia, I'm old enough where we didn't have a lot of computer science programs and stuff in school. And so most of my friends who my age, my generation, who got into tech were more like you. They got in because either they loved doing it or somehow fell into it and just stayed in it, but they really didn't have the academic background that a lot of kids coming out of school today do.

I have my son's friends, they have cybersecurity degrees and all of this stuff. There was no cyber. Well, we didn't even call it cyber back then.

We called it InfoSec. But you didn't have programs in schools. People were self-taught for the most part.

And so I appreciate where you're coming from and where you've been, and more importantly, where you're going. So you are very involved, obviously, in value streams and flow and stuff like that. How did you first become aware of the Flowtopia community?

It was a coach of mine, so shout out to Coach Taz Brown, who will also be a speaker at Flowtopia. Very cool. And they had invited me to this virtual conference.

And I believe it was Flowtopia Live maybe 2023. Mm-hmm. " And at the time, I was at an organization, again, I said I was doing it officially and unofficially, so this is during the unofficial time.

And I was also learning Lean, and so I was fascinated about how some of the concepts and some of the topics were kind of aligning to what I learned and went a little bit beyond what I was learning. " And so, at that point, I wanted to go beyond agility as just a core focus and what are the derivations of agility? And value stream networks is one of those things.

And so that's kind of how I learned about it. Love it. Excellent.

And this year, Flowtopia Live, it's a virtual event, is June 24th, so just a few weeks. io, and there's a whole circle community built around that. But Jamesia, you're one of the speakers.

Give us an idea. What's your session on? So this is my first speaking engagement, so I'm very excited, very honored to be asked to speak.

And so my talk is around being in the midst of creating value stream networks. Okay. So I believe that I had-- First, I was nervous.

" I'm in that messy middle, what people call. And when you go to most conferences, people are telling you something conceptual, something are telling you a win. But I haven't really heard people talk about being in the muddy.

They might brush on it a little bit. But my topic is about being in that messy middle, what it means to help an organization move away from one way of functioning to building out these value stream networks, and how imperfect it is, how you have setbacks, and how you have to constantly learn and adjust. So that's what my topic is about, and I hope you all find value in it, and I hope to connect with people for those who attend the session or watch the record.

Info will be out there. I love to collect and I love to learn from other practitioners or non-practitioners alike, soYeah. So it's a little bit, a little teaser.

I love it. So this is your first time presenting at a conference like this. Yes.

Well, congratulations. Thank you. It won't be your last.

Carefully noted. Because once you start doing it... Yeah.

Once you start, that door is open. The genie's out of the bottle. Yeah.

So I love the topic too, right? Because you know what they say, there are those who do do and those who can't teach, right? And being right in the middle of it, as you say, in the messy middle, is where a lot of people get lost, right?

Where a lot of people find themselves. " Everyone thinks they're bringing order to chaos, right? But we find ourselves, if the whole world is, like I've said before, if only the world were all green fields and not brown fields, right?

Exactly. Life would be easy, but life- Exactly ... doesn't work like that.

Exactly. And so we find ourselves in a lot of brown, muddy fields, and we've got to make sense out of them. Who would you say your talk is aimed at?

I would say those who are like me, maybe their organizations are going through some form of transformation because value stream networks, yes, are around people, but it's also around architecture, it's also around these other things, right? All these things matter. " So it's to target a broad audience.

So it's for those who are in a similar position and those who maybe want to reflect who have been on that side and are on the other side of it. Talk to me about, well, I understand, I think, where you came up with your topic. What's it been like developing the talk itself, the slides, the agenda?

So I'm still doing it. Hello. You're going to be doing it right up to the last minute- Yeah ...

I guarantee you. So just getting my thoughts out, just talking them out and getting them on paper is one thing. That's where I am.

I actually knew what I wanted to show visually first, but I didn't have the words. And I was like- Sure ... "Let me stop there and get the words," so then that the words and the visuals, and reminding myself, "Keep it as simple as possible.

" So those are the things I'll be working on for the next, what? Woo. Week and a half.

Two weeks. Two weeks. Yeah.

A week and a half. Not even two weeks. Yeah.

So, I've presented a lot over the years. What I find is talk to my audience. Right?

Talk to my audience. What does my audience want to hear? What are they interested in?

What do they know? How do they like to consume this, right? Because that's an important part of it.

Now I didn't have AI when I was just starting to prepare speech sessions and talking slides. Have you used AI at all? I use it for my abstracts.

I had an idea, I said, "This is my idea," make it abstracty. Mm-hmm. You know?

Like your expert speaker, coach, whatever. Yeah, no, that- Do this. Yeah ...

that's the perfect role for it. And so, again, the AI, I want to combine the human intelligence and the artificial intelligence. So, I will be using it to help, because it's only going to accelerate and help me get to the practice part, because AI can't present the thing for me, right?

No. And it has to be authentic to me and authentic to the audience I want to talk to. So I will be using it as a collaborative tool, but it'll still be me, the authenticity is possible.

I'm sure it will be. Yeah. io.

Jamesha, I may have to come check, no pressure, but I may have to come check you out too, because I'd like to see how you do on your first one. But, look, this is virtual, so it's a little easier. You know the old story, right?

Just pretend everyone in the audience doesn't have clothes. If you get frozen or watch the clock all the way in the back. Yeah.

You don't got to really worry about any of that stuff when you're doing virtual. But I'm sure you're going to do great. I want to thank you for coming on Techstrong TV, but more importantly, I want to thank you for throwing your hat in the ring and saying, "Hey, you know what?

" Well- And that's an important thing. That's what makes this whole industry go round and round. Absolutely.

All righty. Again, it's my honor and privilege, and thank you again- I love it ... to Techstrong TV and the whole Techstrong family for- Our pleasure, man.

Our pleasure. Value stream, the whole flow community is important. All right.

Jamesha Dixon, Senior Delivery Stream Lead at Zayo Group, making her debut at Flowtopia. io. We're going to take a break.

We'll be back in a minute.