Achievement unlocked: Engineering team receives my first full team presentation
04 Sep 2026
In this moment:
Gary Hawkes
So after weeks of discussions with the Exec Team and my leads, today I finally presented a full team restructure to the team.
I've been at Ito 8 years, so the team know me well and I've always been a presence and voice at any point of engineering when I was a QA Lead. My only interaction with the wider team since I was promoted has been in stand ups and project meetings. So this was the first time I was taking the lead in a meeting to all engineers. After my several meetings with the exec team, I was actually really looking forward to it.
So over the weeks, lots of back and forths to execs and lead engineers, I had my structure presentation ready. Just 5 slides, no notes. The most important thing to me when talking to teams is authenticity. I want what I say to be natural, instinctive and vulnerable. I don't want it to be perfect or slick, they know me as a passionate supportive person who is not always great with his words, who can lose his thread at times etc. My strongest asset is the belief and positivity in my delivery and that I clearly have the teams best interests in mind.
So as I start, I say "You have no idea how thrilled I am after 2 months to finally have a meeting with the cool kids!"...it was true. I'm learning to converse with execs, but nowhere near comfortable with it yet. This was my comfort zone. So went through the presentation on the new teams, the products and where people sit in the structure. Next I went through the transition, and likely scenarios of discomfort or frustration, the shifting sands as we adjust etc., making sure they knew they were going to be supported through this process. Finally I reiterated the support they will get from me and their leads, leaving the the people slide up for questions.
The questions, were all centred around "how do we make this happen". Exploring the numerous transitions that we need to walk through where there was confusion. No dissenting voices. For meeting no 1, I'll definitely take that 😁
(Image supplied by Gemini)
I've been at Ito 8 years, so the team know me well and I've always been a presence and voice at any point of engineering when I was a QA Lead. My only interaction with the wider team since I was promoted has been in stand ups and project meetings. So this was the first time I was taking the lead in a meeting to all engineers. After my several meetings with the exec team, I was actually really looking forward to it.
So over the weeks, lots of back and forths to execs and lead engineers, I had my structure presentation ready. Just 5 slides, no notes. The most important thing to me when talking to teams is authenticity. I want what I say to be natural, instinctive and vulnerable. I don't want it to be perfect or slick, they know me as a passionate supportive person who is not always great with his words, who can lose his thread at times etc. My strongest asset is the belief and positivity in my delivery and that I clearly have the teams best interests in mind.
So as I start, I say "You have no idea how thrilled I am after 2 months to finally have a meeting with the cool kids!"...it was true. I'm learning to converse with execs, but nowhere near comfortable with it yet. This was my comfort zone. So went through the presentation on the new teams, the products and where people sit in the structure. Next I went through the transition, and likely scenarios of discomfort or frustration, the shifting sands as we adjust etc., making sure they knew they were going to be supported through this process. Finally I reiterated the support they will get from me and their leads, leaving the the people slide up for questions.
The questions, were all centred around "how do we make this happen". Exploring the numerous transitions that we need to walk through where there was confusion. No dissenting voices. For meeting no 1, I'll definitely take that 😁
(Image supplied by Gemini)
Gary Hawkes
Head of Engineering
He/Him
Software QA Lead and tester who loves to see people grow, processes continuously improve and help organisations understand and support Quality Engineering. Recently promoted to Head of Engineering (Jul 2026).
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