To&Phro 6

Drew P A Smith
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read

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.


This iPad could be the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey for all the good it does me.

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.


Curtain Twitchers.

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:

The harbour on Hyppeln.

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.

Drew P A Smith

Written by

Researcher, strategist and designer. Founder of Studiophro*. Co-founder of Rising Minds and the Automobility Group.

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