Weeknotes 003

Two weeks left at TPXimpact I find myself not quite wrapping up, but definitely on the home stretch.

On my project we’re coming to the end of a set of milestones, which involves buttoning up a few work streams and making plans for what’s next. This is always interesting as from a client services point of view you want the client to make decisions, but when you’ve been embedded in the work for a while it’s very difficult not to have opinions yourself. You need to be careful though, as more often than not you don’t have the context the client has.

A colleague this week asked me a tricky question, which I’ll paraphrase: how do you keep coming into work every day when it’s not clear the impact you’re having? This was a great question and not something I’d thought too critically about. My answer was that I try to see the longer view, and judge impact more strategically. And day-to-day if I’m struggling I try to find other routes to get satisfaction, such as line management, mentoring, or participating in communities of practice.

What followed was a few days of overthinking and not being sure I’d given the most helpful answer to this person at the time. I realised this is what I struggle with most in the more strategic work I do - trying to make big change and achieve complex outcomes means progress can be extremely slow, you often fail, and its not always obvious you’re doing the right things.

Finding satisfaction in other ways could just be procrastination or distraction, it might help you show up day after day in the short term, but you aren’t going to move any of the trickier needles if you don’t face them squarely.

Watch now as I distract myself from thinking about this anymore by talking about stickers…

I got a couple of sticker designs printed to celebrate going freelance, and to give me something to leave with people I meet. So should we bump into each other in the near future, rather than a business card, I’ll give you a sticker.

Watching

I’ve become addicted to Bunch of Amateurs, a YouTube channel that documents the non-league football team Dorking Wanderers through weekly mini-documentaries. It’s beautifully made, and does a great job of making you care through the various personalities and storylines.

Listening

I’ve fallen down a deep Dinosaur Jr. rabbit hole. They were always a band I was aware of but I’d never really engaged with directly, I started with 1987’s ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ and haven’t been able to stop.

Doing

I’ve been doing a remote course for my football coaching, a level one, which is the first coaching qualification, once you’ve done First Aid and Safeguarding. I’ll write something about being a football coach soon I think because learning the FA’s approach to leadership and the various challenges you need to deal with has been eye opening. Also, as someone who has delivered a fair bit of training myself remotely, seeing how a big organisation like the FA handles the process has been interesting.