Using Agile Principles to make fast paced decisions in a stressful personal situation
Over the last week, I was thrown headfirst into a situation requiring a lot of decisions. A few informal debates over the last few weeks about “what does agile mean to you?” have led me to the very rough definition: “It’s a set of principles for making decisions”. I’m a big believer of the agile manifesto, and I found myself semi-consciously applying this set of principles to the decisions I was making, so thought I’d share this tale from Friday afternoon til Wednesday morning.
My younger brother Luke lives in east London with one close friend David, and one other friend — the other friend intends to leave, Luke and David intend to stick together. Unbeknownst to me, 2 months ago, their landlord asked to increase the rent from £700pcm to £800. Taking a very quick look at their budgets and the local area, they decided not to accept this increase, and that they would find somewhere else. However, over the next 2 months, they had 3 different rental agreements fall through, and were not able to easily secure anywhere. The last date on their tenancy was Sunday, and from a combination of optimism about ability to find somewhere, naivety, and burying their heads in the sand, they didn’t ask for help from anyone, until Friday afternoon.
We’ve got the following constraints:
- renting in London is a sellers market
- they have the salary of a young professional and a bartender
- they have little credit or available funds
- they have only 2 days before they don’t have a roof over their heads, and need to vacate the premises.
- they have a large amount of bulky stuff in their house, plenty of which was donated by me and is valuable.
- we have one small hatchback for transport.
I can certainly foresee that this is going to be incredibly challenging. So here’s the story of solving short term and long term problems, and why I made certain decisions, with everyone under a significant amount of stress and high emotions.
Friday afternoon
“What the fuck do you mean you have to be out by Sunday?!”. Ok, first things first, I need to realise my whole weekend is a right-off. Quickly gather the constraints above, we need to spring into action. But having moved house before, I know how much effort is required, and we’re going to need more resources than we currently have.
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need
I call my mother Jean, explain the situation, and we make the decision to get her here as soon as possible. It’s not that I don’t trust Luke and David, but they’ve had a lot of rejection and don’t have a lot of hope for anything getting fixed — I need to draft a new teammate who can inject a sense of urgency and can do attitude, and Jean has that in spades. We agree the soonest she can be here is Saturday evening.
This is a major project, under a tight timeline, and everyone needs to communicate effectively.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a [development] team is face-to-face conversation.
We’re geographically split, and ideally we need to get together. Remote workers can claim they’re more efficient until the end of time, when you need to collaborate or negotiate with someone, the easiest way to do that is if they’re standing in front of you. I’m going to say that communications channel preference goes like:
Face to face > video call > voice call > voicemail > chat/text > email.
We’re going to have a lot of data and information exchange though. I set up an iMessage group since we’re all on iPhone and used to it. I set up a shared Numbers spreadsheet (it’s free and we’ve all got it), a shared todo list in iOS Notes, and a map guide of potential property locations.
Responding to change over following a plan.
While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
I feel like this is one of the more abused and misinterpretted lines of the agile manifesto. If we’re super agile, we don’t need a plan, we can just respond to change. Not according to Dwight D. Eisenhower:
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable
We should be responding to changes in our plan, but no planning at all is how we got into this mess. We’re now ready to start planning.
Friday Night
Get down to business, assign roles, don’t step on each other’s toes. Assign different geographic locations to our 4 other contributors, put links in the shared chat, one person can organise all the info coming in, and before we know it, our data is coming together. We’ve done as much homework as we can:
Saturday Morning
We’ve got all of our potential properties to action. I take myself over to meet up with David at his & Luke’s apartment, with the aim of getting some bookings in ASAP. We prioritise the list by ranking the attractiveness of properties, and calling them in that order. Being face to face made this collaboration a lot easier. We were offered 2 viewings for later that afternoon, one for Sunday morning 9am, one for Monday evening at 6pm, and one for Tuesday at 4:45pm. Plenty of leads, but nothing to celebrate yet. A lesson that was soon to come into force, adapted slightly for our situation:
̶W̶o̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶S̶o̶f̶t̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ [A signed Tenancy Agreement] is the primary measure of success
Steps in this direction are good, but we’re not safe until we have one, so assume we don’t have one until we’ve got one, and plan accordingly for how to make progress in that direction.
Saturday Afternoon
We scored a viewing at 3pm, north of Leyton. However, it comes with some negatives:
- 2 year commitment
- not super close to anything of interest
It’s not a completely terrible option (ignoring the police car patrolling the car park), and the estate agent gave vibes that they could be flexible on price. Somewhat average, but we can put that in our back pocket. Nevertheless, since we’re well planned now, we have another viewing at 3:30pm and it’s only 15 minutes down the road. Seems to be in very high demand for viewings, primarily because it’s cheap. We get there, and let’s just say you get what you pay for. Although we had worked out a top end budget before we started, it seems we now also have a bottom end that we’re not willing to go below, for the sake of quality. Only one picture on the ad, of the outside of the house, crumbling walls, one bathroom between 6 people, and a shower that I wouldn’t wash my dog in.
No more viewings or major results for the day, we go and collect Jean from the airport, quick trip to B&Q for boxes, collect Luke from work on the way back. Luke and David are feeling quite dejected that the are soon facing homelessness (or at least a lot of uncertainty), and their pride is hurt as they’ve had to ask for help. Fortunately I can read the room, and I know Luke quite well, so I play “Fit But You Know It” by The Streets in the car, and sing along as loud as I can til we get to Nando’s. There’s finally a smile edging in. Eat food, and dash back to Luke & David’s apartment for 9:30pm.
Saturday Evening
Quickly evaluate what needs done — a lot of packing, a lot of cleaning, a lot of organising!
Where should we start?!
My first thought is that we need to update our plan, we don’t know what we’re going to be doing tomorrow, and if we plan nothing, that’s close to what we’ll achieve. But we need everyone to be effective as much as possible, so give some meaningful tasks to Luke and David to keep them useful for 30 minutes while Jean and I plan.
We need a van. Nothing’s going to change that, we’ve got less than 24 hours to get the house emptied, and all this stuff has to go somewhere. We don’t know where it’s going yet, but we’re going to need the van for at least 5 hours I guess. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is only open 12pm-3pm on a Sunday, so get a big van booked for collection at 12pm tomorrow.
Next: where will we be sleeping tomorrow? Jean probably needs to be back in Northern Ireland for work on Monday morning — if we’re certain we’ll be finished by Monday evening, she could possibly stay one extra day, but can’t stay indefinitely, and should only stay if we have something meaningful to be doing. She doesn’t have a flight booked or a hotel booked.
Do we book the flight now? For when? From which airport? What hotel?
We do need to get this booked, but using the principle of making decisions at the last responsible moment, we don’t know what the situation will be this time tomorrow. We can plan, but we decide not to commit to booking anything. Better to assume the status quo remains and plan accordingly, but also be prepared for change.
Given that we’ll have a large van for one night, and presumably nowhere to go, we decide that a few bulky items will need to stay at my house, and the rest of the items will likely stay in the van overnight, that should stay somewhere reasonably safe, so outside my house will have to do. That being the case, we’ll have 2 vehicles, so Luke will take the hatchback with Jean to the airport. They can get a hotel overnight, and Luke can drive back to my house in the morning, we can consider next steps with the van, but it needs to be returned by 5pm on Monday. That’s the plan, but it’s not a commitment yet, which allows us to be flexible.
Saturday night wrap up, we clean as best we can, and get ready go on Sunday, first viewing at 9am. I text my bass teacher, cancel my lesson for tomorrow, that’s not going to be able to happen. I agree to pick them up in the morning for the next viewing, finally leaving just before midnight, driving 40 minutes to get home, with a few electronic valuables in the back. Everyone is tired and feeling a little down, so just need to be wary of that tomorrow. I crawl into bed, tell my girlfriend of the plans, and she says “You’re tired, why not just meet them at the place tomorrow, and they get an Uber there?” — “Because… I didn’t think of that”.
Responding to change, over following a plan.
Quick text back to Mum, change of plans, and I’ll get a little more sleep, which will be essential for morale.
Sunday Morning
Get to the place in time. It’s only available from Wednesday, and only for 2 months — the landlord is selling the flat, previous tenant moved out, and he’s letting it short term only while the legal process completes. It would give us 2 months to find something more affordable, (as this place is £1750pcm for 2), and make more concrete plans. Place looks promising from the ad, and it’s right next to Arsenal stadium. We spot someone who looks like a cleaner coming out, and give her a bit of chat, Lisa says we are indeed in the right place, and we can get in early, super.
Place looks fine after a quick inspection (it had just been cleaned in fairness). We give Lisa a bit of background on our tricky situation, and ask, since it’s empty, if she thinks there’s any way in the world we could expedite this whole situation, forward to today. She says it’s perfectly plausible, get on the phone to the landlord, and she can stick around, and could all be done in under and hour, pending the right paperwork. Result!
We get outside. There’s a noticeable bouyance in the group’s atmosphere. We try to call the landlord. He is not fast to answer. Finally get through after calling a few times, give him the details, he’s largely happy to accept, only there’s one other person travelling from quite a distance this morning, and he feels obliged to show them. We’re waiting outside this new place, keeping a keen eye on the front door of who’s coming and going. Nobody comes nor goes, but we get a call back from the landlord.
Mysterious other party has offered £1850pcm + deposit + 2 month rent up front. “I don’t like to be a greedy landlord, but it’s a lot of money to turn down.” — think that’s the definition of a greedy landlord, but you sleep easy mate. And from what we can tell, mystery bidder hasn’t even seen it! He’s giving us one last chance, to come up with almost £5k on the spot. We say “give us one minute”, and quickly discuss. On the one hand, this is out of budget, overpriced, and I don’t like being price gouged! On the other hand, it’s only £200 difference, and we’ll be spending that on hotels if we’re not spending it on this rent, and we could be in tonight and some of our van questions are solved. Straight back on the phone, “We’ll accept, send us whatever forms you need signed, and we’ll work on quickly getting £5k all into one place to send you”.
He’s taking a while to get us the details. Lisa is still here. I’ve chatted to her again, after building a little rapport, she’s put in a good word for us, we’re feeling very positive. We get a call back from the landlord. Mystery bidder has gone up to £2000. I don’t like being gouged. “Fuck you then, greedy prick”.
Just kidding. I only said that bit in my head.
Sunday Afternoon
Morale is at an all time low. We still have plans that should be followed as best we can. We still have the major problem of nowhere to live, and a house full of stuff that needs to be completely emptied within 12 hours. I start driving us to collect the van, we’ll be an hour early, but there’s nothing else we can do, we’ll just have to get breakfast .I tell everyone to get on their iPads, and get back to the drawing board with options, ASAP. I will admit with the mood at such a low, and Luke and David being dejected to the point of not wanting to participate any more, I did raise my voice once. Not proud, but retrospectively, it didn’t do any harm. David finds contact details for another property who says they can’t view it today, but they can send a video. Whatever, I’m not really paying attention right now.
I get a call from enterprise rent-a-car at 11:30am — the van I’ve booked for 12pm won’t be ready til at least 2pm, and they close at 3pm. I’m picturing this guy just laughing at me:
I explain that I really, really need a van, and can’t afford to be let down today — I can collect from another office if one is open and has a van now, or wait, but I want to get a contingency plan in place, a I’m in big trouble if I can’t get a van. “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensible”. The plan I just had turned out to be wrong and we’ve adapted to change, but I want an unhappy path plan as well. Says he’ll call me back as soon as we have more info. In the meantime, off to the cafe.
Order a pain-au-chocolate and tea. Head to the small toilet. Meet Jean as she’s paying, she says “Did you get to the loo?”. I pull a sad face and say “No, some prick offered £5 up front to skip the queue”, and we have a rare laugh together.
Luke and David seem to be getting some traction on their new find from the car, while I’m eating my pain-au-chocolate (it was large). They go outside for better signal and to discuss and research.
Finish up my food and ready to leave. By the time I’m outside, they say “we’ve paid a holding deposit”. Wow! That was quick, they’re finally getting the gist of this, if you’re not quick, you’re out. We start down the path of some mental plans on the drive back to Luke & David’s apartment. We’ve not even seen their new find, but apparently it’s spacious, 30 minutes away from my house, with 2 other existing flatmates. Sounds fine, let’s tackle the more immediate problems at hand, namely getting out of this apartment and arranging plans for somewhere to sleep this evening, but it’s clear you won’t be moving in tonight. Under the potential assumption we might be able to move in tomorrow if we’re very quick and everything goes smoothly, things with the van could go fine.
We go back to the Luke & David’s apartment, get to packing. Van man calls at 2pm, van is ready. Luke drives me back to enterprise rent-a-car in Bow to collect the van, which is being returned by a customer, finalising van return. Customer complains about brakes being a bit soft, while I sign whatever the check-in guy wants. Mechanic reverses the van 50 yards, drives it towards us at full speed, slams on the brakes, hops out, and says “yeah, they are quite soft”. I say to my customer support friend, “I don’t care, I absolutely need a van and this is all you’ve got, I’ll go easy on the brakes, just get me out of here ASAP.” Fine, we check for any other damage, the mechanic reverses it out to park on the street ready for me to leave, while we stand by the exit waiting for anything else to be singed. Luke points out “there’s a break disc on the ground”. What? I pick it up, it’s quite warm. Customer service man notices and says “hmmm… not sure we can really let that go like that…” — “Don’t care, need a van, I’ll be careful” as teh mechanic hands me the keys, and I dash off.
400 yards down the road, I realise my mistake — this van makes a very unpleasant screeching sound when I use the brake pedal, and does not stop. It’s handbrake and engine breaking only.
What do I do?
No point moving all this stuff if I’m dead. Call enterprise, “I need to return this van, it’s properly dangerous”. Put the hazard lights on, safely u-turn when possible. Get back to the depo, thank the lord, he has another smaller van ready to go. It’ll do.
We prefer Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
My customer service representative understood my sense of urgency because I’d taken the time to explain what the situation was, and what my success criteria was. I don’t have time to request the difference in cost because it’s a smaller van than what I book, just get me out of here! All told, between parking the danger wagon and leaving with a new one, I was less than 3 minutes. As I pulled off, I slammed on the brakes. Customer service guy says “everything alright?”. I say “just checking”, with a smile and a wink. He has a good laugh. All part of building a relationship. If I need something from him later, that might come in handy.
Arrive back at Luke and David’s apartment. We’ve got a ton of stuff to do: can we get rid of any bulky items, get them sold? We need to provide guarantors for each of Luke and David, and references, do we do that? There’s still more packing and furniture dissembling to do. Luke and Jean descend into an argument about whether to do the paperwork first, or advertise items for sale: each task requires the table, admin requires a table to gather around, selling the table requires everyone not to be around it while taking pictures.
What do we do?
The boys are finally getting somewhere with a sense of urgency and traction, the table and chairs are worth maybe £40, and there’s a small chance we’ll get them sold in the timeframe we need to get this problem off our hands. If we really can’t transport the table, we’ll come up with the creative East London solution of leaving it outside, looking the other way for 2 minutes, and returning to find it gone. I decide that we use the table for admin first: get everything done that we can do (in the rental game, if you’re not fast, you don’t win!), so we can clear that problem out of our heads, before moving on. Jean’s not happy, reasoning that the sooner we get it on, the more likely it is we can sell it, but you can’t always keep everyone happy.
We swiftly get into action, packing a very large fridge, very large sofa, a single seater sofa, table and chairs, and anything else bulky, into the van. Dash back to my house, get a nearby family friend to give me a hand for 20 minutes unloading a ton of stuff into my house, and swiftly u-turn back to Luke and David’s flat.
Sunday Evening
Luke and David have made some email progress. Jean still has to go to work tomorrow, Luke and David need somewhere to stay. It’s possible they might have keys tomorrow, but I doubt it’ll be in the morning. After Jean and I looking into this flat a little more, we have a few misgivings. It’s in a council estate, and they’re going to live with 2 people they haven’t met, and it’s a little bit expensive for a council estate. So we’re less keen to sign anything as guarantors until we know more.
Jean needs a hotel and flight, now is the last responsible moment to do that. We book hotel rooms and a flight out for Monday morning, Luke will drive Mum to the hotel this evening, stay there with her, and return tomorrow to collect the van from my house, and hopefully keys to his new home.
We pack everything, take a video tour of his flat which is now completely empty and spotless (thanks to Jean). We part ways and say our goodbyes. David has a cousin living in 5 minutes from my house who has agreed to put him up for a night, so I’ll take David and drive the keys to this old apartment to drop them off at the letting agent.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Keys dropped off. Now that David’s less stressed about that, I think now might be a good time to reflect — “Any lessons we could learn from the last couple of days?”, and we discuss some personal failures and things to avoid in the imediate and long term future. We’re getting better at making decisions and talking more openly with everyone, which is good. We could still improve our communication over the phone under time-sensitive situations with external people. Our lack of planning before Friday presented a challenge. We have a little pre-mortem of what could potentially go wrong over the coming days, and if there’s anything we could do to avoid any major failures.
Atlassian has a great guide on running pre-mortems. Atlassian actually has tons of great guides on agile principles, and regardless of how confusing you might find the Jira UI, I’d recommend giving them a read, especially if you’re a Jira user, the reasoning for the existence of some features might make a lot more sense.
I have a last minute idea, “Hey, why don’t we go and see the new place on the way to your cousin’s house, it’s on the way?” — “yeah sure, that would be great!”
Bear in mind it’s 10pm in late September, it’s pitch black (for London). I’ve just watched season 5 of Top Boy, which was the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw more than one Bully XL outside, and a variety of people who would not have looked out of place in the TV show. Jean will likely not be impressed when I relay this information. David get’s dropped off at his cousins, I go home and sleep.
Monday Morning
Luke says his goodbyes, dashes to pick up David, and they head to the new letting agent for their council estate flat. I tell Jean the tale of what the new environment looks like. She’s not impressed, and is threatening to not guarantor. I’m fully behind that decision, on the basis that they haven’t actually seen this flat, or met their flatmates. We advise them — get a viewing, ASAP. The van was due to go back at 12pm, I need to do something about that. Give enterprise a call, same guy from yesterday answers. I tell him I need to extend til closing time. “I can’t really do that normally, but we did mess you about yesterday, and you were decent about it, so lemme just fix it with my manager”. Friendly demeanour from yesterday paid off!
They can’t get a viewing til tomorrow. They’re reasonably happy (however, I have the feeling they’re becoming victims of sunk cost fallacy, as they’re very tight on money and don’t want to lose the £400 they’ve paid for a holding deposit). David’s guarantor needs to sign, and Jean needs to sign. They head back to the new letting agent. I tell them in no uncertain terms, the van needs to be back by 5pm, and it will take time to unpack. Extending the van another day will be extremely costly compared with storage, and we don’t know how long it will take to have somewhere permanent. If they don’t have keys in hand by 2pm, they need to change plans and get everything into storage, to get the van back, and that will be cutting it fine.
Monday Afternoon
No keys by 2pm, they haven’t got everything signed and sealed yet. I make the call to change plans, haul themselves to my area in Haringey to get everything into storage. My absolute saint of a girlfriend does the legwork of finding and securing storage space nearby, and making me some lunch to go, so I can quickly take the van to them at the storage facility. They arrive at 3pm, we unload the van onto the pavement at the storage facility at lightning speed. David gets the task of moving everything from pavement into the unit while Luke returns the van to East London where it came from, just in time for 5pm, while I go back to work. We agree to meet at mine before 6, for another viewing.
Monday evening
David gets a call at 5pm that the keys are ready, so long as they get the guarantor on the phone when they pick them up. FML. Well there’s nothing we can do right now, let’s stall until tomorrow until we have more information, we’ve paid a holding deposit anyway. There’s a brief moment when Luke and David are tempted to point the finger at me and assign some blame. A quick warning glance and reminder that I’m helping them, and being quite generous with the credit card, and that we agreed the 2pm decision in advance, and we had limited information to act on, I made them do what appeared at the time, to be the most sensible decision. A general good rule for retrospectively looking at situations, is the prime directive — we believe everyone had the best intentions and tried to make the best decisions they could, with the information that they had at the time.
We get to the viewing. It’s an amazing 2 bedroom flat, currently empty, nice chatty letting agent, big rooms, unfurnished so they can bring their stuff rather than sell, just came on the market, doing viewings for one day only, landlord will make the final decision tomorrow. The boys think it’s a little outside their budget — but it has one huge selling point — it’s a 10 minute walk from my house.
Hop to the pub, discuss options. Morale is still low, and they’re disappointed that they are not moving into their new house tonight. I ask, “Luke, why don’t we go and see where you’re intending to go and live?”. So we drive to the council estate. Luke isn’t hugely impressed, but he now has more information. We head back to my house to regroup. Morale still low, I put on the weekend highlights of the Formula 1 qualifying, which should cheer Luke right up, as Max Verstappen doesn’t even make it to Q3, after 10 race wins in a row. Morale slightly prepped, we jump on a group facetime with Jean.
There are some hard hitting truths discussed, some tears shed, some critiquing of their monetary policy, career progression, the unknowns of council estates, and the feasibility of sticking together as a twosome, vs. splitting up, vs. Luke giving up London life and returning back to his parents. Meanwhile my girlfriend, who regrets not leaving the room 20 minutes earlier, is feeling like so:
We’ve discussed some pros and cons, we need some time to take a break and consider. I tell Luke and David that we’re taking the dog for a walk in the park for 20 minutes and it’s not optional, we need some fresh air.
I return a missed call from my dad who wants to know what’s going on, and eventually contributes, “Why didn’t they just stay where they were?”. I’m sure that would have been easier and financially not as bad as they imagined, but that option is off the table now, so not a useful thing to say to 2 dejected people. There’s giving them some hard hitting truths, and there’s rubbing mistakes in their face, that hopefully they’ve already learned from. I politely ask that he doesn’t ask Luke the same question directly.
We get back to the house. Focus now needs to be on, where do we go from here. Back on a group FaceTime, Jean and I are advocating for at least trying for the flat we’ve just seen within walking distance of me. They’re convinced it will go for way above asking price and be completely unaffordable. Secretly, I’m inclined to agree, but I see no harm in asking, and reverting to their fallback option if all else fails. They at least conceed to putting in an offer, even if it doesn’t materialise. We agree that in the short term, David stays another night at his cousins and this is the last night there, Luke stays at my house for the evening which will be his only night here, and we’ll get a decision from the landlord of the new nearby place tomorrow, and then we’ll have more certainty about what we’re doing.
Luke drops David off at his cousin’s nearby. Morale is still shit, so my girlfriend orders pizza for the 3 of us for when Luke returns, and we put on Gavin and Stacey. Despite being in a bad mood, he can’t help but laugh at Gavin and Stacey being described by Smithy as “perfect for each other! Like 2 peas in a bag!”.
We need a nicely worded email to the landlord. Fortunately, David works in PR, so he should be good at emails. More fortunately, I’ve been a landlord in the past, have a sense of what they want, and I’ve spent years of my career trying to convince people to do things that are not their idea. On the principle that it’s not just more money that a landlord wants, but peace of mind — the quieter the better, they just want the money to reliably land in their bank account and not deal with any issues ever. So I offer to draft the email. It reads something along the lines of:
- Thanks, loved the place, we’d like to make an offer
- We’ve had a hard time being pip’d to the post, we’d like to offer above asking price, and a few other things
- £50 a month above asking price in rent (ie. more money than you’ve asked for)
- 2 months rent in advance, if the landlord wants it (ie. money in your pocket now)
- family guarantors ready to go, and we’ve recently completed several credit checks, we’re sure that will be fine. (ie. there won’t be anymoney problems and we can move swiftly)
- We’ve got family nearby who own their property (ie. aren’t going anywhere soon), who could help out with anything, or check on the property if we’re ever away (ie. we can deal with any problems that arise)
- We’ve had difficult neighbours in the past, so we’d be extremely respectful and quiet for everyone else in the building (ie. no problems for you to hear about)
- All being well, we’d like to stay here for a significant number of years, and can guarantee a long term lease (ie. you won’t have to do this song and dance again next year, no break in rental income).
- Let us know, Regards, ̶M̶a̶r̶k̶ David (close call, thanks Jean!)
Quickly confer with Jean, we’re all happy. Send it to David, he sends it to the letting agent. Let’s find out tomorrow. Sleep.
Tuesday Morning
I’m in the office, and I’ve never been happier to be at work, so they don’t pester me. Still getting a steady stream of texts, just ignoring them to read at less frequent intervals. They got a viewing for the council estate and have been to it, let’s meet for lunch near my work. Obviously this means Fatto a Mano in Pancras Square. They met one of the tenants of the council estate flat that they’d be sharing with, he’s a chef, and the other tenant wasn't there, but was studying at university nearby. All fine, this backup option is looking better.
Tuesday Afternoon/Evening
Still no word back from the flat near me, although I’ve told them to keep calling for updates. I head to the pub with some colleagues, tell the story of my weekend, and one of them has a friend with a boat, in Central London for cheaps! Let’s see if we can make it happen! They tell me they’ll hear from their friend first thing in the morning.
Meanwhile, the letting agent for the council estate is throwing requirements out the window in order to get this over the line, and putting pressure on both Luke and David to get it done. Giving me bad vibes. Apparently, they’re happy to give Luke and David the keys, without the guarantor forms being signed. Actually, if that’s a mistake they’re willing to make, maybe we can capitalise on it! But let’s hold that thought one more day to hear back about the 10-minute-walk away from me place. Jean organises an AirBnB for the night for them.
Wednesday Morning
(Almost done, I swear). I get up early, there’s a major product launch at work I need to be on hand for, in case anything goes wrong. All goes smoothly, which is a stress off my plate. Colleague with the boat friend text me, it’s not gonna work out sadly. I call David, and ask, “Well, did you hear anything from that place round the corner from me?”, ready to be let down.
“He’s just called. He said the landlord is happy to accept us as the tenants, and not only that, but they won’t accept above asking price, said we’ll pay asking price! Asked us to send a bunch of details, and we’re working on it now.”
Oh my god. What a total result! Get the forms signed asap, but the letting agent did advise that it might take up to 2 weeks for all checks to complete. I’m ambitious we can do it sooner, but we get everything filled out, and organise another AirBnB for Luke and David to last until at least Monday, to see where we’ve got to by then.
We get everything signed and sealed, a guarantor form done, everything submitted by Friday. I tell David that the previous letting agent for the council estate didn’t send clear terms and conditions, he should ask for their holding deposit back. Miraculously, it actually works!
Luke and David are happy with that result, and happy that it won’t be snatched away. Jean is happy that it looks like things will all go to plan, and there’s some more certainty about where they’ll be living. My girlfriend is happy that our kitchen won’t be filled to the brim with bulky things in the near future. I’m happy I’ll be able to help Luke with his career development without having to go far to do it.
Conclusions
Jean thanked me a lot, and said to Luke and David, “this wouldn’t have happened without Mark!”. I don’t like to toot my own horn unless absolutely necessary to convince someone that I can achieve a result, and the primary measure of success here is a signed tenancy agreement, which technically they don’t have yet, but I’m quietly optimistic about everything falling nicely into place within a matter of days.
All told, I must have made a hundred different decisions a day, but always guided by principles that we need a signed tenancy agreement, and there are a few constraints we can’t break, and a few others we can perhaps bend. Fortunately, I think my daily work and a loose version of the agile principles prevented me from making any major mistakes, and any I did make were mostly due to tiredness.
So what can we learn in retrospect? Moving house is stressful. Have a plan. It’s a lot easier if you’ve got plenty of money and time, so try to have those ready. Make sure you’re really mean it, when you think you’re ready to reject an offer you don’t like.
An enormous thank you to my mum Jean McCracken, a true role model, hard grafter, and one of the finest nurse leaders the NHS has to offer.
Let me know if you preferred this more personal than usual tale.
