Pillars…
Monday — I started my second week as Student Liaison and Marketing Officer at Greenbank with a long list of “to do” tasks. I was eager to impress and to deliver…to hit the ground running, but I was also mindful of the need to prioritise and set realistic expectations.
Tuesday — I explored the internal architecture of the Charity’s website to post some new job vacancies. There is always a moment of panic before you hit the ‘publish’ button. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and all of the links and attachments were intact and unbroken. Praise the lord for the WordPress dashboard!
Wednesday — I started working on updating and editing some existing posters for events, internal posters and reports. My predecessor created some beautiful designs and artwork for these documents, mainly using Adobe InDesign which was installed on an Apple Mac computer. I had used neither. A wrestle ensued. The winner has not yet been announced. Feeling frustrated, I turned my attention to our social media channels and met up with my good old friend hootsuite. Life was easy again: we wrote content, we laughed and we smiled and the channels started flowing once more.
And then, I took a deep breath…I re-focused my energy on people and not programmes and applications. I put our learners, our users, our partners and our staff at the centre of my working universe. I took the opportunity to meet with colleagues across different departments to gain a better understanding of what we do best, what we need to do better, and how we can achieve these shared objectives. The Charity, the College and the Sports Academy are not separate pillars or “silos” as my CEO said, which support a symbolic superstructure. Rather, we are the superstructure, and our strength comes from our interconnections, our synergies, and from sharing and debating ideas. Working together for the greater good. It’s cliché, I know, but that was my week.
