Week notes 23–27th January

I’m mixing things up this week and writing my week notes i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶a̶y̶.̶ ̶I̶’̶v̶e̶ ̶g̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶5̶p̶m̶ ̶m̶e̶e̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶H̶o̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶g̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶k̶f̶u̶l̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶H̶o̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶i̶t̶i̶a̶t̶i̶v̶e̶.̶ Scrap that, it’s 3.30pm now. I got side-tracked which is a good summary of my week.

It’s reassuring that my breakthrough last week wasn’t just a flash in a pan, this week I’ve felt good. It’s been a slower week in terms of meetings which I was looking forward to but then felt some of the gaps in the diary a bit daunting — up until now I’ve had things largely laid out in front of me and little time in between onboarding calls and project calls to really get stuck into any deep work so I’ve needed to adopt a bit of a different mindset and start thinking more strategically about my role and some of my objectives.

5 things from this week

1. A recruitment drive for a new Senior DM is underway and I’ve had several calls this week with people in my network who have shown an interest. It’s been really lovely to reconnect and see if Torchbox would be a good match for them now or in the future. The deadline is a week today so if you’re considering applying, do feel free to get in touch if you’d like to chat.
2. On Wednesday I took part in a virtual Veganuay cook-along over lunch, the ingredients arrived the day before and we all joined a Zoom call to make roasted Mediterranean aubergine and quinoa, rocket tabbouleh. It was great fun and very educational.

1. I had a great call with Emma Ainsworth, we talked agile, user manuals, psychological safety amongst other things. It was great to finally chat after being twitter pals for a little while now. It prompted me to actually publish and share my own user manual which I’ve been putting off sharing.
2. I’ve been thinking a bit about the part accountability has to play in Agile and have a call with the wonderful Simon Wakeman next week to unpack this a bit more. I’ve also got some interesting reading to do, thanks to some responses to my tweet
3. I’m looking forward to visiting our Bristol office next week for the first time. It’ll be great to meet some of the team in person and we’re going to go out for a Curry which will be really nice.

In other news, we’ve been planning our Scottish adventure for September (Edinburgh, Inverness, Isle of Skye, Oban) — all hotels now booked, I’m particularly excited about staying in this bothy.

If you’re looking for a good documentary to watch over the weekend, I’d recommend Wild Cat on Amazon Prime — I really enjoyed it.