Week 3
I’m a week into a spell of insomnia. I’m falling asleep mostly fine. I’m sleeping for a few hours solidly and then BING. I’m awake and I struggle to get back into any form of useful sleep. I have these phases. I don’t know what starts them so I don’t know how to stop them or fix them. And it wasn’t helped this week with a few early starts that required alarms, so of course I wake up even early panicking I’ve missed the alarm.
I’m hoping that now a few big things got resolved/happened this week, and I’m through the early starts, my brain can take it down a notch and let me get some useful sleep.
An anniversary
This week was a big milestone - Wednesday marked a year since I joined TPXimpact. It’s been a rollercoaster of a year as regular readers of this week note will know.
I started full of enthusiasm and so excited to finally be in the same place as Jukesie even if we weren’t working directly together. I got suck in with a client pretty quickly - Planning folk in MHCLG. Great teams, great people. But it became apparent to me pretty quickly that my skillset probably wasn’t quite right for what was needed at the time. I’m a digital person, I don’t have a background in planning and that bit was really what was needed.
External factors - perimenopause and an increasing feeling that I was probably some flavour of neurodiverse also started taking a toll on my mental health. And the stress of being a place that wasn’t quite right all took a toll and I sadly had to take some time out to look after myself. I was out pretty much all of April and a bit of May.
I have to say, on that front, TPX were incredible. So supporting and open to adjustments to help me come back when I was ready. There was no pressure at all. Though I probably did come back a bit too early, tried to be client facing again and went off again. In that time I got my ADHD diagnosis (I’m also pretty sure I’m autistic as well but don’t feel the need to go down the road of an official diagnosis.) which was an important part of starting to heal and feel stronger.
When I did go back in June, I phased back in and asked to be assigned to a new client. I picked up an internal project reviewing ways of working and delivery across a portfolio of projects that were having some difficulties with delivering.
The shift out of direct client facing work and having the opportunity to meet more colleagues across TPX was just what I needed and really helped to understand how the business works. I think I’m coming to realise that I actually enjoy the corporate work more than I do the heavy client facing things. I need levers I can move and direct access to make change. It’s so much harder when you aren’t IN the organisation.
I spent a few months investigating, unblocking things and reshaping teams and delivery approaches. I’ve loved it. And it resulted in me being able to carve out a new role across all of our Wales-based work. Which in hindsight is probably where I should have been all along, but hey ho, I’m there now.
I’m still dealing with a lot of organisations and projects where we’re delivering in more waterfall, not user centred ways and I do find those the hardest. But we’ve also picked up a couple of new bits of much more user-centred and agile bits of work and I’ve enjoyed the first 2 weeks of this year working on those.
I’m more client facing now, some of which I enjoy and some I still find really hard. A few more changes ahead over the next few months, shifting some clients around other senior partners and hopefully some more new bits of me-shaped work coming in.
But it has been a rollercoaster, I’ve been close to going on a number of occasions. And I’m grateful to my partner in crime in Wales for talking me off many ledges. And Jukesie, who continues to be ledge-talker-off-in-chief. I think I’m back inside the building for a while now.
I’m carving out a sweet spot of client facing and corporate facing, delivery and growth. I’ve learned that being totally immersed in client land is not for me, I need a connection back to the mothership.
And it’s the people that make an organisation. I’m continually blown away by how amazing our practitioner teams are and how much I love working with them all. We, as an organisation, sill have a lot of growing to do and the end of last year was painful for many. I hope we are coming out of that now and can move ahead with maturing how we run the business this year (and get rid of all the endless forms and heavy process.)
So, here’s to another year at TPX!
Renovations
Painfully slow - things that should have happened this week haven’t and I have no clue when they will. And each week drags by pushing our move in date further back.
Internal doors have gone in. We have handles on doors!
Arcitraving and skirting are done
Radiators have arrived
Still no 2nd fix electrics and no final external doors/window.
I had enough of the interruptions and noise part way through Monday and Dai and I have switched offices again. I can close a door and focus again. And hopefully it’s just for a month or so.
This week at work
Another week of my feet not touching the ground and feeling the impact of doing both delivery and growth.
I spent a lot of time again this week with our team doing a discovery for a fab health org in Wales (hopefully I can stop being cryptic next week!). There is nothing like an engaged client who is hungry for the work to be done and 100% bought into discovery and service design.
We kicked off another small bit of work with an other health client this week. We’re helping them to define the edges of a problem space so that they can take forward a product that will be deliverable and useful and expandable. And we got a taste for how much the product is needed as the organisation was impacted by (another) critical incident this week due to unprecedented patient demand.
I’ve also been deep in consultant slide deck land working up a pitch for a prospective client. Lovely to be back on something with Kate, we have a good working relationship from MHCLG days. And lovely to be in person with the client for the pitch yesterday.
Though it meant that we had to miss DTCamp - our kick off the year, all staff event. I managed to make it to the end, for drinks and nibbles. And I’m so glad I did despite how exhausted I was. So much squealing and hugging and meeting folks IRL for the first time (still!!). And I still missed seeing so many people I wanted to see. I made it to 7.30 before I lost the ability to speak and had to make a move for the exit and my hotel.
Now I’m off to Paris for a long weekend with Sharon. A great way to end an insanely busy 2 weeks back at work!