Weeknotes 04

What surprised me?

When I look at my diary for last week I see a whole range of things in there which I thought, when I put them in would be exciting, positive moments. When it came down to it many of them turned out to be rather disappointing.

My trip to Telford for a day of emergency planning learning was not one of them. I really enjoyed that. It’s an area of work I am really passionate about, though I accept that many (possibly most people) find it bizarrely obscure and geeky.

What happened that gave me a glimpse of the future?

I had a number of conversations with people who recognise that to make change in their organisation needs more of a focus on the people in their organisations as individuals in networks, rather than as cogs in a machine. Whether this is because this is being more generally recognised, because I’m getting better at explaining what it is that we do or because we’re getting better at finding people who might need our services I cannot be sure (possibly all of the above).

But it does feel increasingly like we provide a focus and expertise in an area where people recognise they need support. Which is, you know, positive.

What will I do next week?

We are in that typical small business zone of trying to balance pitching for new work with making sure we deliver the work we’ve already got. Several tenders have rolled along at once. I find submitting tenders a bit of a slog. But that’s what I’ll be up to next week.

And we’re preparing to do a big chunky organisational network mapping project and some other fun things.