Week 38
A bit of a head-down week.
Work
challenges around scaling - in three months this has gone from being a tight team of people who could all fit in a single room for a kick-off workshop (felt quite start-uppish) to many, many times more people working across delivery, comms, engagement, policy, operations, legal, finance etc. Reflections: culture change inevitable with such an increase in interactions, relationships and lines of communication - but how do we make people still feel connected and part of one team pulling in the same direction now that they can’t all be in the meeting? And a wave of people from traditional departments’ enabling functions have arrived - so how do we avoid them simply importing the culture, ways of working and organising principles from the places they’ve been, and encourage them to try and adopt our new ones? It’s disorienting arriving somewhere new, and people naturally cling to what they know - it’s a big ask of them, and usually only the people comfortable with change and confident in their own professional capability give it a try (that’s not everyone).
I’ve been focused intensely on narrow aspects of the project for a few weeks now. It has left me feeling untethered and I don’t like it. Reflection: I’m feeling untethered from the team, the wider project, and from PD. The team: when I’m focused so narrowly, I can’t easily see overwhelmed colleagues needing my help. That’s a problem on intensive projects - because it’s the camaraderie and mutual support that helps us get through it. The wider project: colleagues have said that the thing they value most from me is my holistic and integrative thinking - something I can’t easily contribute when my focus is a particular task or silo and I can’t see the whole. And PD: I haven’t had the time available to be the enthusiastic participant I usually am in community and corporate activities. I haven’t been at show and tells, community events; I haven’t buddied any new starters. We are changing and growing and improving and I’m missing it.
I’m adding a new “invisible matter” tool to my strategic design toolkit this week - I’m calling it Al Capone-ing. Al Capone was a Chicago kingpin in the 1920s. The FBI spent years trying to pin him with racketeering charges, and failing. Then they realised they could still get what they want - Capone behind bars - if they went about it a different way. They charged him with federal tax evasion - and he was sentenced to 11 years in Alcatraz and handed a fine of around $6m in today’s money. Applied in the world of organisational invisible matter: if you hit a brick wall with your direct approach (perhaps you’re arguing a point of principle, or perhaps you’re making an evidence-based argument for your desired option), see if you can find an indirect approach or a back door. Instead of focusing on your preferred option - can you perhaps render the other options irrelevant, taking them off the table? Perhaps you can’t land the argument from a service design perspective - but could a more influential ally from another professional function (comms, data) make a compelling case for your option for different reasons? Stay focused on the outcome you’re trying to achieve and think laterally about how you might achieve it.
Home
I’m loving the transition from summer to Autumn. Leaves starting to fall, squirrels digging up my lawn to find the nuts they buried earlier in the year (well, loving that less). Hot chocolate. Bed socks. Blankets back. Cosy lighting in the early evenings. I spent the weekend having the Autumn equivalent of a Spring Clean. I swapped out my summer clothes for my winter wardrobe. Dug out clothes that need repaired, sewed some buttons back on, binned the holey socks I’ve been ignoring for months, aired out the winter duvet.
Less lovely: hearing the hostel E was staying at in Valencia was shot at while she was there. At 3am she heard gunshots incredibly close by - when the schoolgirls in her room eventually got brave enough to look outside, they saw the outside wall had been hit a metre from where E had been sleeping. She messaged me saying she was scared and wanted to come home - and I’ve never felt more helpless and incompetent as a mother than I did at that moment. She came home later that day. And she is fine. Not sure I am though.
I want to lean into my interests more. One of my biggest interests is learning: I have learning on the job at work; and I have learning about optimism as a side project; but what I love most is breadth of learning and being able to go wherever my curiosity takes me. So I’ve noted down a load of different London-based lectures, tours and talks over Autumn. I won’t be able to attend them all, but I’m looking forward to doing at least some of them - and now I can’t use not knowing what’s on as an excuse. I’ve already booked this one: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/health-gap
On the train back from Edinburgh (SDinGov) I found myself feeling envious. I was at a table of three older women - all widows - on their way back from a short break. They told me of the things they’d done that week, then they told me about their lives, how they’d all met, and what they have planned next. I saw the platonic love between them - and I realised that I don’t have that type of friendship as a part of my every day life, feeling a little sad. Reflection: some of it is down to the stage of life I’m in, some of it is the product of past choices, and some of it is bad luck. I moved away from my home town and haven’t really looked back - not having many friends there to begin with. At university, I build a small and lovely group of friends - but most of them scattered, and though a couple of them live close enough to possibly see once or twice a month, they’ve got smaller kids and tougher household logistics. When I left university I was adopted by Steve’s friends and for a few years my social life was full enough that I didn’t really have room to build additional friendships - they, of course, all got married and had kids and I now see them once a year maybe (and, now that we’re separating, I likely won’t even have that). Early in my career I had a social life after work - but colleagues move on, after-work drinking culture isn’t good for my liver, and COVID meant London-based people scattered around the country. The colleagues and ex-colleagues who do still live near enough to London to occasionally socialise after work now all work different days - so scheduling time to meet is more complicated. And, of course, lots of them have families, other types of responsibility, or chronic health problems, that mean they don’t have much time/energy for socialising with people who aren’t already their close friends. I’m also not a natural organiser, much preferring spontaneity over diary scheduling. But few of the people in my life have space for social spontaneity. So yeah. I’m lonely. I need to find a way to build and deepen social relationships with like-minded people. I want to find the other old women who’ll sit round the train table with me when I’m in my early 70s, sharing funny stories.