I appear to be slipping into the habit of bi-weekly notes. This is where I got up to reflecting on last week.
I’m reminded this week of a technic used by scouts to cover long distances sprint, walk, sprint, walk etc and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. Still not got quite on top of chats with people stacking on top of one another but I’ll get there.
Hold onto your seat but on Wednesday my diary and energy combined well with lots of space and the desire to push forward so I finished the 1st draft of a report. I’m thankful that Charles had started and left comments on it as it’s not my kind of thing (I wouldn’t rush towards them).
I’ve very much enjoyed the OD teams discussions and progress on sliders stemming from our research. We had a slower meeting and considered carful you symbols, words and meaning and a more fast paced initial finessing, we have a bit more to-do next week but it definitely felt like a good mix of approaches.
On Tuesday at the Programme Update Janet explained more about the changes in FFCP it now feels like a dialogue across the whole programme has started and that’s a good feeling, though we’re still working through how we do the practicality of open dialogue at least the Information Hub is now live and can act as a central bouncing of point for everything else.
And this is why I never published them. I just didn’t have the headspace for it at the end of the week, partly because I’m finding a new rhythm now schools are back but mainly because I shut the door on the way to school and then checked to see if I had a house key…. I did not. On reflection I should have gone to the shopping centre with Eloise and had ice cream… we did not do that. Our lovely neighbour lifted the fence and then because the back door was locked took us on an hour round trip to pick up the spare set Szu had.
So on to this week.
As it draws to a close I’m rather tired, it’s a for filled kind of tired and a smug feeling of not locking my self out at any point.
Lots of things buzzing about and a trip into London and Birmingham which we’re both really nice, though I find I seem to have a habit of chasing things (a letter and some printing) that took up more energy than was needed but we got there in the end, with thanks to Beth. When I was in London on Tuesday I also sorted out the OD&D’s team rolling storage which reminds me I need to let facilities know that I still have some things which I need to keep, I also need to remind Diana to what is there, which now is a carry case and some brown paper for pinboarding. When popping things in the recycling I tried not to get to nostalgic. I also noticed a poster of Defra Group Values that I made for the chat with ExCo about the Appreciative Inquiry outputs that is still up. I wonder if it will last during the refubing.
I walked from Finchley Road to BakerStreet, something I’ve Never done before but it’s all down hill and was quite nice. While I was walking I chatted with Vicky, Ed and Clare in our last prep session for
Which felt really nice even though I also left the house to catch the train to Birmingham… more reflections on it later. Vicky has been absolutely wonderful in pulling it together.
I’m glad I went to Birmingham for the SLT Awayday the night before, not only because it meant I could get to the venue early and ease myself in but also it meant I could work on the train writing out reminders and thinking through questions. Though we didn’t get to it all because one exercise (Janet’s Balloon) opened up a very rich conversation, and we were later starting because remote venues take longer to get too. It was a nice blank box, which I think worked because it was sunny mostly.
I have lots of notes from my journey home to digest.
Other things this week that feel notable, Afia’s security checks bounced as I need to fill out a different form. I do we we could outsource the process. We sorted responses to the first set of questions on the change.
There were obviously lots of other lovely chats.
