Week 23
Some of you know me professionally. Some of you know me personally. Some of you know me from these interwebs. And some of you know me IRL. Each of those Audrees is different. Professional Audree is confident and opinionated. Personal Audree is less confident, struggles with connection, and is still working through issues from her childhood and adolescence. Online Audree is passionate, balanced, and trying to put out only good into the world. IRL Audree is quieter, loves being around other people (until she doesn’t), and is quicker to take the risk on telling uncomfortable truths when she thinks it matters because she knows she can handle the IRL fallout if she misjudges it. All these Audrees are deeply reflective (perhaps excessively so) and trying their hardest to be authentic, to behave in a way that feels true to herself.
Ok, enough weird talking in third person. I’m sharing this with you because a few of you who only knew me online have recently met me in real life and were surprised with the Audree they encountered. I’ve mentioned this before - I write to think. I write these weeknotes for me, to process what happened and how I feel about it, what I can learn from it. I think through writing. I share more of my inner life in these weeknotes than I do with the people around me IRL because I’m talking to me, not to you. I’m happy to talk about this stuff with any of you IRL but I don’t need to because this is me processing it. The stuff that isn’t in here - that’s the stuff I need IRL conversations about.
An engagement that should already have ended still hasn’t really, truly ended. Ending things is hard. (There are books about it, I know). Reflection: I’m finding this hard because it’s supporting a discovery that is quite naturally sliding into continuous discovery mode to support the design of the service through alpha, beta and beyond. So my arbitrary finish date on it that makes it tough - there’s always one more thing that they’ve never done before and would be good to coach them through for the first time.
I’m committed to one large engagement, and contributing a small amount of nerdy stuff to two or three small ones on a more ad hoc basis. In previous situations where I’ve been allocated to multiple engagements, I found the context switching really tough. Right now, it’s easy. Reflection: I think that’s because this is an intense project taking up most of my time - it’s immersive. And I’ve been using the other engagements to lift myself up out of the weeds. It’s working really well - switching things up by this small degree means I have something else to focus on, taking my mind off the big engagement. As a result, when I do return to the big engagement work, my brain has reset, I’m having more eureka moments because my thinking is both more lateral and more strategic. And I’m able to sleep at night without everything running through my brain. So: can I engineer a future Audree-deployment model consisting of one big rock, a couple of small pebbles, plus the usual cupful of internal/corporate sand (for the Covey fans)?
Working on a dynamic operating model at the moment and it just wasn’t landing with the client - I couldn’t figure out why. The content is good, proven stuff, and the client tends to get most other aspects of PD ways of working. So what was wrong? Turns out I wasn’t speaking their language visually: they’re used to consultancies presenting them with operating model diagrams, and so it looked like I hadn’t come up with the goods. Reflection: I’m a visual thinker but I when it comes to org design and operating model design I have an aversion to high-level diagrams. I reckon it’s because the diagrams typically chosen either (a) oversimplify so much that they at best hide the good stuff, and at worst unwittingly design it out; or (b) reinforce new public management and “old power” thinking. But I also know that familiarity creates trust in design - and if creating a visual to sit alongside solid written content is what is needed (here it was), then I need to stop being so dogmatic.
I caught up with a colleague who was asking about some behaviour patterns they’d seen in the senior civil service over the last 20 years. I’ve spent a lot of time studying them quite closely, and trying different strategies for engaging and adjusting them. The trick is to remember they’re just humans, with all the foibles that everyone else has. And that, the more senior you get, the better at internal politics your peers are likely to be (they’ve had to be, to get there, usually). Reflection: turns out this was a powerful conversation for the colleague. I was able to shed light on quite a few things they hadn’t been able to predict or explain, because I’m a people-watcher. It’s this dark matter in organisations that I’m good at navigating - weird interpersonal dynamics, dysfunctional teams, toxic leadership behaviours. I ought to do a lot more coaching than I do, I reckon.