Weeknotes 01
At the Satori Lab we encourage reflective practice and working in the open. Inevitably we are not as brilliant at doing this ourselves as we might be. Matt Jukes gave an excellent talk about working in the open at Service Design in Government and this has galvanised me, a bit.
I’m going to try to use the Satori Lab reflection questions (you can get these on a postcard). Let’s see what I learn.
What held me back?
It was not the most productive week. The easter holidays are slowing progress on some things and I became distracted by shiny things (specifically getting more fluent with network analysis and visualisation). I could be more mindful and more focused.
What did I let go of?
I think, as a company, we suffer from wanting to do everything which makes us reluctant to focus on doing fewer things better. This is eating the elephane really. We still want to do everything but we can’t do everything right now. I think I’m getting better at that. We’re focusing on developing our cultural assessment tools and I’m managing to let go of some of the other things I might also want to do right now.
What gave me a glimpse of the future?
A couple of calls actually.
A chat with a potential associate based in North Wales who would bring a set of skills and experiences we don’t currently have in the team. Early days but that was a glimpse of being able to offer new things to different clients.
A chat with Carl and David from the OpenStreetMap.Cymru project. We’re closing down work on phase one and looking to future projects. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll be publishing what we see as a route-map for the project. The possibilities are really exciting.
What will I do next week?
I will set aside time for meditation before I start work. I will also focus on some marketing. We could be much better at letting people who might benefit from our services know that we offer those services.
How will I behave differently?
I am really going to try to be a bit more mindful about how I choose and prioritise my tasks.
Also
Also Esko and I had a great call with the folks at the Center for Civic Design. We largely, I think, violently agreed on culture change in public institutions. I really loved comparing and contrasting the differences and similarities between UK and US government structures and cultures.
