The week when things seemed to become all open and all over the place all at once.
It’s been a real pleasure working with Nour Sidawi and CP Moran discussing and sharing our reflections and learning from the work we have done and chatting to people along the way who have helped shape the craft. Nour has just hit publish on the third blogpost. Learning from the places where informal and formal change activity meet — Part Three | by Nour Sidawi | May, 2021 | Medium
We found out this week that Eloise’s doesn't have Covid-19 which wasn’t something I thought I was going to do. I was reflecting in one of my lovely chats that I had almost forgotten we were in a global pandemic. There’s something deeply dark about death being just something that we acknowledge and move on from. I wonder if this is a survival mechanism that we have inherited form the distant past or if it’s something which I have learned and continually adapts and shifts. It almost makes me think we should put up monuments or memorial gardens for those people that have died, for a multitude of reasons — so we don’t forget to give people a place in which to hold their unfinished business.
This week stated very busy with lots of meetings and being remined that I’m running an All Hands session on the 9th June — something which I had forgotten while I was unwell and put all lose ends down suddenly. I was slightly panicked — but the next day I remembered I had all ready prepped for it. So I sent the words to the Comms Team. I still need to do write out some things — a rough flow and some notes of what to say, but I’m much more relaxed about it.
This is a great example of the general pattern of how I work. Feel the need to prep ages in advance: do some things. Put them down. Pick up again when the panic starts. It’s a strange system it means I both plan but there are such lightweight plans that I’m flexible, it also means that there I nugatory work, but that is a process which I’m refining and also the knowledge that if I share it it’s part done. I realised a few years ago that I love just working in the panic, but I can’t sustain it.
The week then quietened down it gave me a change to write up the User Research interviews I’d carried out on Empowerment. I had to postpone the last interview yesterday as I walked with Eloise to her PCR test. Writing up chats form earlier in the week, things like the objectives and outlines for Together Day. This is one of the basic questions I always have when design a session — what are the outcomes — I love that in my getting excited and doing all sorts of planning that I hadn't written them down.
On Wednesday we had the may FFCP Induction event. It seemed to go ok — but I really do get self-conscious when speaking. I had made some changes to the pack, we had a new minister/lord and also I added the roles described as the ‘velvet drainpipe’ in our planning we decided to call it the velvet staircase.
The very last thing I’m going to do is tidy up and sort out my Kanban — I went back to the whiteboard this week as on Sunday I had a thought about all the things I wanted to get done this week before going on leave. Done. Well that was cathartic — I have left lots of things for me to read there when I come back — will I? Who knows.
Lots of other things happened this week one in particular that I have no comment on (unless your a fellow Civil Servant). As ever I had lots of other chat with lots of other lovely people.
Memory Jar
Walking with Eloise in a 3mile round trip to the walk in test sight for the PCR test. I carried her for bits, we held hands a lot— hers was very warm. We sat on a wall on the Watford Industrial Park and had water and snacks. She brought Toffee (a toy dog who is the colour of Toffee). Eloise recounted the story of how she lots his Dad, I reframed it that he was on his own adventure in a taxi in Taiwan.
