Week notes 9–13th January

Blurred futurespective template

Wow, this week has been a rollercoaster, there have been some really great moments but I’ve also experienced a healthy dose of imposter syndrome. I’m realizing I was probably in my comfort zone for far too long in my old job and so I’m just acclimatizing to being out of it and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I’m my own worst critic and I need to focus more on the ‘wins’ of which there have been many, some small, some bigger leaps forward and I have to keep reminding myself I’m only a few weeks in. So indulge me whilst I share some good things that have happened this week with my new effort to focus more on the positives

1. I had a lovely chat on Monday with Luke who has been following my journey over the year (sounds creepier than it is) and has since also become a fan of DSDM (not culty at all), so we nerded out over the framework and challenges with embedding it. I always love chatting with new people and sharing experiences, so thanks Luke for reaching out
2. I facilitated my first internal Delivery Manager's community of practice at Torchbox. I didn’t have much time to prepare, so rolled out a quick futurespective and we came up with a backlog of topics we’d like to cover this year and things we’d like to do more of which included meeting more in-person and organizing a social! It was great to spend some time with the team and hear more about their aspirations and wishes for the year ahead
3. If you’ve been following my week notes you’ll remember pre-Christmas, I’d been tasked with running a workshop to kick off starting to think about co-designing a more defined rigorous delivery process/framework. I’d built this into a massive thing in my head, I had loads of ideas of how to run it but was completely overwhelmed with getting my head around miro and it all became a bit all-encompassing. Anyway, thankfully for me my lovely talented friend Mike came to my rescue (both with some miro support and validating my approach). The session worked really well and I got some really valuable insights from it which has given me a good starting point to build on
4. On the same day, myself, Andy, and Rachael hosted the first external delivery leadership meetup. There were about ~15 people that attended and it was a real team effort in terms of preparation and facilitation. It was really well received and was great to be in the virtual room with so many people I admire and love spending time with but don’t get to see that much. We’ve got some excellent topics lined up and I’m really excited to see where this goes
5. I ended the week with some positive feedback from my manager and my partner surprised me with this wonderful gift!

A mug with the positive affirmation ‘the way you speak to yourself matters’

In other news, we’ve just put a new job live for a Senior Delivery Manager to join the team https://torchbox.com/careers/jobs/senior-delivery-manager. If you’d like an off-the-record chat about the role, do get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.