Author: neil

I spent much time today learning how payments systems integrate with websites, how to set up a Square account, and crafting campaigns to persuade people to renew their membership at the community radio station.

In the midst of it all, I realise that David Epstein’s blog post from a few weeks “…the greatest CEO you’ve never heard of” was front and centre of mind. Not because I have any ambitions of being a CEO (I emphatically don’t!), but because Frances Hesselbein has done what I believe a good leader does – “I did not intend to become a leader. I just learned by doing what was needed at the time.”

I am not an expert on payment systems, or integration, or crafting marketing campaigns, or playing mediator. I probably spend far too much time even trying to understand what a reasonably competent person can do in minutes.  But thanks to the opportunity that this volunteering offers me, I am quickly gaining skills in areas I would have never done in my day job. I’m also playing to my strengths – doing in minutes what takes the other Board members hours or even days, and therefore finding plenty of time to learn about these new skills.

 

I get to see hundreds of examples of amazing and awful leadership at work, which is obviously not news to anyone who’s ever worked in any organisation.

I have been ruminating on the subject of leadership and engagement surveys for a while now.  I finally wrote this down in what I expected would be a short note but which took me the good part of the day. Unedited, it is at 2000+ words, which I think is about 1900 words too many.

Writing it  down was liberating. It’s out of my head and on a document. I can now have room for another 2000 words to form, on perhaps a subject also closely related to that same one: culture and its relationship to the office.

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The weekend is gloomy again, and with all the busy-ness of the last few days, the daily walk fell by the wayside.  A persistent cough (not COVID, checked), possibly by the pollen in the air whipped up by the strong storm winds, isn’t helping either.

Despite that, there are only 25 days of the 100 day challenge to go. I’ve learnt how little time it actually takes to do the four things I kept putting off every day, and therefore not doing at all. The walk needs to be re-examined, and reintroduced. There’s other things too I need to get a handle on, and another 100 day experiment will be handy to build some habit-muscle.

 

In the last 48 hours or so, I’ve been fascinated with the variety of decisions that have been made around me (and some that I myself have had to make). They range from the trivial (where the Christmas party is going to be – although some would not consider that a trivial decision at all, going by the arguments about it) to the transformative (restructure of an entire team leaving them headless for a while).

Then there is the corporate mantra of “we will streamline decision-making” or some such variation.  The dawning realisation that the way decisions are made around the place is no longer towards a strategy (which itself has been rendered meaningless in the context in which it operates) forces a wholesale communication barrage about “making better decisions”.

How are decisions really made in organisations? For that matter, how are decisions arrived at in the team in which I work in? How do I help make them? Keeping a log of these in the new year will be a useful way of learning. (Not this side of Christmas, I need to figure out how to organise this Christmas party :D)