Yesterday marks my one year anniversary at CONNECTED BY DATA and I still feel lucky every day to be here and working alongside such a fab group of people (present and past) with a breadth (and incredible depth) of experience and knowledge, with a drive to have meaningful impact. I value being able to play my part in enabling them to do that (and doing a very small bit of it myself).
With that in mind I’ve decided to give my usual Weeknotes structure an annual retrospective focus.
What I’ve been doing
That’s a big question for the last twelve months! I think what I’ve most instinctively been doing - beyond learning my job (and new skills and software such as Github and FreeAgent and Google Suite) - is learning a new organisational culture. The culture was strong and established when I arrived, despite being such a new organisation. A lot of this comes from Jeni and her focus on culture, a commitment across the team to document their intentions, and also making the recruitment process a values focussed one.
I’ve been learning to embrace collaborative working. I’m used to blasting through organisational bureaucracy by just getting a job done on my own (perhaps with input along the way) but here everything is open / shared / iterated and collaborated on. The result is definitely stronger outputs, and its all done rapidly (it’s not about bureaucracy or control or managing outputs, it’s about making things better). But there’s definitely been times (and will still be I imagine) when I’ve had to remind myself that a suggested change isn’t a criticism of what I’ve done. Come to think of it, this way of working isn’t just making the outputs better, its making me better too (healing some baggage).
There’s also been the more practical adjustments too which I’ve already noted in previous weeknotes including working for a remote organisation, in a small team, for a new organisation.
What I need to take care of
I reflected in a 1:1 with Jeni earlier this week that I’m a little disappointed with my progress over the past twelve months and there’s some areas where I’m definitely still making avoidable mistakes. My biggest area of development still is strategic financial management - I am comfortable with the day to day and project management elements but as previously mentioned I need to expand that to understand VAT and also things like accrual and corporation tax that are new to me. It’s frustrating to still have to spend some much time working through issues like these and our supporting spreadsheet. As Jeni does so well though, she helped me work through how we can best unblock some of those challenges.
I need to improve around our fundraising management too. Giving clear leadership on its operationalisation and getting the balance right to ensure we get more funds coming in beyond the end of this financial year, without using all our capacity to write those bids.
What I’ve been inspired or challenged or moved by
Almost daily I am inspired and/or challenged by my team. Their knowledge and generosity of spirit and desire to see better democratisation of data and AI governance is compelling to be around. I enjoy sessions where we’re exploring political influencing too and learning more about the parliamentary and legislative process.
I’ve also enjoyed the humour (of many) around data and AI. I think humour can be trivialising but it can be also a mechanism for addressing issues in a wider reach media. I enjoyed this short sketch from Kerry Godliman - “Robots! AI! Data Harvesting!” (CW: swearing).
What I’ve been reading
Not enough is the general message here. I have been doing some social reading (mix of fiction and non-fiction) over the past twelve months, and I still enjoy it when I do. But the TV is an increasingly absorbing (perhaps distracting is a better word) choice of an evening. Work related reading ebbs and flows and I’ve been trying to read across delivery/operations topics (such as this on senior leader sabbaticals, this about how Chayn run their Team Retreats, and this on intentional grounding and check-ins) and data and AI issues (such as this report on the cyber attack at the British Library and an article on data relations).
The next twelve months
I’m looking forward to the next twelve months. There’ll be some cyclical stuff that I’ve already seen once (we’ve just received stuff about our insurance renewal which was the first task Jeni gave me when I arrived a year ago) and there’s still all the personal development I’ve noted above. But one of the many great things about CONNECTED BY DATA is we don’t know exactly what opportunities the next twelve months will bring or how we’ll respond, but I look forward to being part of it and continuing to enjoy my work with a fab group of people that I feel lucky to know and learn from.