First week back after a very different but restful festive period. I finished English Pastoral while I was off and wrote up some thoughts — it still has me thinking in systems and cycles.
It has been an odd week. We are back into National Lockdown in England. As a family we had already locked down a week or so before. My approach this time round is to laugh — rather than cry, and though the generally state of everything would want to make me cry — I am in a buoyant mood. I am fortunate in many many ways and I am blessed with being generally optimistic. I am also choosing to absorb as much information about the context as I can handle.
Things that stuck out for me thinking about the last week
I read the summary and skimmed the download
It made me think that if we have (and I presume we do, but someone else is checking) any Bangladeshi men in the programme that we will need to help them cope as they are likely to be carrying a lot of weight. I’m not sure where I picked up but women in general are more likely to be adversely effected by this lockdown.
The organising team made more preparations for UK Gov Camp — #UKGC21 https://www.ukgovcamp.com/2020/11/15/announcing-ukgc21/ we met in between Christmas and New Year to get ready for pitching which is live till end of Monday next week. I’m glad were still doing it, at many points we nearly haven't as we just try and cope.
I had quite a big chunk of time free earlier in the week (in part due to IT thinking I didn't exist and removing my Microsoft Licences) so I stared to dive into the People Survey reports for each of the teams — what I found isn’t quite what I expected but the there seems to be no link between workload and bulling harassment — or at least not one that that stats which I was looking at show, there also doesn't seem to be a link between a team keeping up informal connections in a team and engagement — the biggest influence on engagement seems to be the size of a team. The latter is unsurprising but something I should defiantly flag to the Organisation Dynamics team. It reminds me of Emily’s Team Onion.
The Survey that I developed seems to be going well — there have been 75 responses and I am itching to make a start on some of the suggestions — I looked up how straight forward it would be to do a radio station this am — I’ll raise this with the comms team.
I also had a chat with Ellen and then Fred — they had organised a wellbeing survey, that hadn't quite seen the light of day — so I’m helping it see the light of day. In a previous week notes I think I talked about magic sauce. I think my job is maybe to list the lids of all the jars of ingredients. When I’ve got this lid off I’ll lift of the next one — I wonder what it could be.
We has a lovely All Hands chat on Thursday with Andy Cato and team about https://www.wildfarmedgrain.com/ you can read more and soon by bread at http://bigjobakery.com/wild-farmed-grain. I think working in the Future Farming and Countryside Programme really was the right decision — I do feel like I’m getting back my fairy dust. I had another cathartic chat with Nour and Clare about our times in and working with Cabinet Office, reflecting really helps.
Lorna, Anna and I came together to talk all things people. Anna and I have a slot on the 25th Jan to talk about people survey with the Senior Management Group. I wonder if I should attempt a Miro exercise. I think I will — I’ll prep for it next week, best check with Anna or Debbie first how long the slot is.
I'm reading
The Promise That Changes Everything by Nancy Kline — I’m on page 58 great so far though on page 28 Nancy mentioned amongst other things that belonging was a wrath of life. Given that belonging is how I do what I do, this is a hard one for me to comprehend. But comprehend I must, still more to read first.
Things for my memory jar
We had our second batch of logs delivered. All three of us moved them, doing it together was very nice, very nice indeed.
