To&Phro 6
I can’t believe I’ve actually written 6 of these now.
While there are only a couple of people reading them — hello, you two! — the pause for reflection has been pretty grounding these last few weeks.
So, onwards.

I just popped up to the laundry to put my washing in the dryer.
Many apartment buildings in Sweden have a communal laundry, you see.
They also have a booking system for said laundry, with residents able to reserve 2-hour slots.
The thing is, in my building the system appears to be run by an iPad, which I’ve never seen work.
Accordingly, I pop up in the evening, check if the machines are free and just go for it.
Tonight, someone had other plans.
I headed up knowing that my washes would be finished, only to find one load dumped – unrinsed and soaking wet – in a basket.
There was also a note on the machine from which the load was taken, which while in Swedish is pretty self-explanatory:

When they decided to remove my washing, there couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes left, but I guess your slot is your slot and nobody’s gonna get in the way of it.
I’ve been doing a lot of listening to folk talk about management and teams and communication and leadership this past week. Stakeholder interviews can be like that.
There’s a belief that our team should be self-organising and self-managing. The exhortation “you just need to work it out among yourselves” is still ringing in my ears.
It’s not that I don’t believe in self-managed teams. Hell, I’ve even worked in them before, and successfully. But I do believe that teams can only self-manage in service of a defined, commonly-understood vision, and with sufficient autonomy over processes, tools and paths of communication and permission.
Until those things are in place, a team will constantly find itself at the mercy of externalities over which it has no control.
We have much work to do.

On the weekend, a couple of my team mates and I sailed to the island of Hyppeln for what became the inagural Curtain Twitchers rave.
Rave perhaps oversells it: along with friends from Volvo, we barbequed, drank all togehter too much and danced to some very fine house music played on the stereo of a Volvo XC90 until the small hours.
My god it was fun.
Before really kicking off, we took the team boat — a 20' day sailer called Alpha— out for a twilight sail and watched the sun set over the horizon. It’s the first time I’ve sailed in a long time, and the team wont have a hard time convincing me to contribute to the planned 40' upgrade next year.
While everyone else slept at the camp site, I headed back to the harbour and little Alpha. I had the best sleep I’ve had in ages, and this is what I woke up to:

Chris arrives tomorrow, so I’ve taken the day off to welcome him. I can’t say I’m not feeling a little anxious. I know I can make a home here, and happily. I wonder if he’ll feel the same.
To (move towards):
- Using my experience in selling projects to clients to sell our mission and plan to potential sponsors
- Help our potential sponsors sell on our behalf
- Buying a car to make the most of the region
& (keep going)
- Experiencing the Swedish outdoors. They really are phenomenal
- My gym sessions, using workouts from my favourite gym in Sydney as aguidance
Phro (move away from)
- There’s nothing I feel a strong need to move away from this week. Life’s pretty peachy.
The week ahead:
- Welcoming Chris to his new home!
- Proposal writing (again)
- In-depth planning for what may end up being the longest project I’ve ever worked on. This industry operates on *really* different time scales.
