Week notes 30th-3rd Feb

I’ve started writing this week note three times now and keep starting it again. I’ve been surprised and flattered by how many people are following along my journey and have remarked on my week notes, I even got a mention in Torchbox’ first internal email which was rather lovely. Despite people saying nice things, I still sometimes question the value of what I’m sharing but then remember that I started this for me so everything else should be considered a bonus

1. I had a call this week with Simon Wakeman to talk about accountability, this is something Deeson (my old company) did a really good job of and I wanted to dig into it a bit more. We talked about pro-active and reactive accountability, how important it is for people to have the competency for accountability e.g. it’s something they can be held accountable for (they have the skill and understanding), and the difference between accountability and taking responsibility. All in all, a good chat and I’m left thinking that an accountability map might be a useful exercise to run at some point
2. I took part in a few screening calls for the Senior Delivery Manager role and having come from a place that only in the latter part differentiated seniority — I’ve been thinking a lot about the behaviors, mindset, and attributes I’m looking for in a Senior Delivery Manager
3. On Thursday I visited our Bristol office for the first time, it was lovely to see people in person and to meet some new faces. I was pleased to see the office was next to a rather nice coffee shop, in the evening we had a team Curry night — all but three of the DM team were able to make it and we had a really enjoyable evening together. I couldn’t have asked for a better team to have joined.

The Bristol Torchbox office

4. I traveled back on Friday afternoon in time to join an evening call with a US client I’m working with — the UX designer on the project took them through a branding presentation that communicated what he had learned so far, the direction he was heading in, and next steps. I haven’t seen something quite this comprehensive and well-grounded / presented before and loved how he incorporated the user research into his presentation. It was great to understand a bit more about the design process.

5. A bit off-topic perhaps but I was pleased to see an agency called Nice and Simple launch a period policy and hope this becomes more of a norm.

I ended the week feeling a cocktail of buzziness and exhaustion, next week is the penultimate week of a discovery project — so we’ll be starting to pull together learnings for our playback session and it’s the second delivery leadership meetup on Wednesday.

I’ve got the following week booked off and we’re heading to the Isle of Wight which I’m very much looking forward to.