Weeknotes S12 Ep1
Inadvertent splits.
So here I am. Back again and it feels like an eternity since I’ve written anything. I’m feeling anxious about writing in a way that I haven’t for a long time. I guess that comes, in part, with the fact that I haven’t written anything at all since March, and now we are in almost the middle of May.
Two months with not a word, and two months without much being on Twitter and two months feeling a bit disconnected and aside from myself and wondering how to come back again.
I should explain that it’s been pre-election period, so it’s also been a kind of enforced quietness, but previously I’ve written despite being unable to publish. I’ve saved up all the thoughts and words and ramblings and me-ness (not messiness but similar) and published those things later.
This time I just stopped. Stopped and nothing.
And I’ve felt the absence much more than I thought I would. This writing helps give me a clarity, it’s like a mental tidy up, a sweep up. Clearing away the mental dust. And I’ve felt the dust accumulating these past months. It dulls things and adds weight. I’ve accumulated a fine layer of dust over my confidence and presence. Things throw me more easily, things confuse me more and I second guess myself. Time to clear off the dust, work out what is worth worrying about and what isn’t.
Anyway, whats been happening?
- I finished up my time with the sponsorship review team at the end of March.
- I had two weeks of annual leave, the first of which was easter holiday so looking after little one, and the second was moving house. It all went well but it was pretty exhausting.
- Then I came back to my team in the LDCU, just at the point where pre-election period restrictions had kicked in.
- And our team has changed a bit and is changing some more. New people who have joined, some people are changing role and people who will be moving on soon. So it feels a bit like there are some tectonic plates moving and shifting under the surface.
- I currently feel like I have one foot on one of the plates and one on another. An inadvertent splits situation, like a cartoon animal standing on a piece of ice that’s broken away from the main ice sheet.
- My friend had a gorgeous baby girl and I am full of love them both but mostly for my friend for her amazingness
- I booked my vaccine, and so, there is light at the end of the tunnel now I guess. A return into the world. But I am scared about that too.
And then what? Well I don’t know. Work continues to happen, work will continue to happen, but people change and grow. I don’t know what else to say on that right now.
The things that have kept me going have been the things that link me to activities and people beyond my main work. Catch ups with people (friends) whose opinions I value, sharing the work and learning from LDCU with people outside of the department who are interested in similar ways of working. I went to a One Team Gov breakfast, felt connected again, caught up with James and David and Nour, and felt connected, attended a few conversations about “innovation” (the buzzword that wont die) and had connected conversations, but those moments have been sporadic.
Let’s talk about innovation for a second because if I hear the word much more I may scream. Let’s stop saying we need to be innovative and talk about what that actually means. You can’t just tell a team or a department they they are innovative or that they need to be innovative and expect it to be true. I’m fed up of this language and how it means nothing, why is it that we can’t use language with impact, that we have to temper everything? Set conservative goals, dull ambition. I read something for a team who work on government modernisation and I was underwhelmed, disappointed. I felt it lacked ambition, it lacked direction. I gave my feedback, and it was constructive, I heard nothing.
I increasingly feel disappointed. Maybe I’m just impatient.
I’ve been seeking refuge in synthesis, burrowing through free-text responses from real people. Reading their thoughts; sifting through. Taking them apart and putting them back together again in different ways to try and make sense of things. To illuminate something. A way forward. That’s been helpful.
As I think more in systems I’m having lots of interesting conversations about how we move things (slowly) how we ceed and receive power and privilege and how we need to give it up (and what personal impact that can have). I’ve been thinking about how we choose to play, or not, the games which the system wants us to play, because it makes things easier, it makes things categorised and tidy.
I’m meeting and speaking to people who feel like the system over and over again is trying to spit them out, like it becomes just too hard to be who you are as it tries to turn you into what it wants you to be. I’m struggling with this. I’m struggling with hierarchy, and paternalism, and power and inequality and complicity.
Anyway, let’s not dwell on all that right now.
I decided to take module 2 of my Systems Thinking course and I’ve been hating it which is a pretty strong thing for me to say and I’m not at all happy with the negativity that it’s brought to this, but there you go — that’s how I’ve been feeling.
It’s moved on from ideas and models and stories into quantitative things, numbers and equations and stocks and flows. It’s not that those things are bad, just that it takes more brain power to learn them. I get where we are moving to, and it’s exciting, but the learning is hard. There have been gaps in the teaching that have made me feel a bit stupid at times, like I’ve missed something, but I didn’t miss it, it wasn’t explained. Then I get frustrated.
I don’t know.
I did a quick lightning talk at DeliverCon about causal loops using the Tiger Who Came to Tea, and that was fun. I was thinking that I should maybe write it up or record it and put it somewhere. I’ve also been asked to facilitate a systems mapping workshop for a really interesting area and I’d love to do that — it will be so interesting if it happens. I also really really enjoyed creating my final piece of work for Module 1 and I felt happy with the outcome — which I couldn’t share because pre-election. So maybe I should write that up too.
Stefan, who I admire greatly, when I showed him said that it was
“…provocation lightly disguised in beguiling simplicity”
Which feels right, and feels like where I want to be.
Ok, well I feel like I’ve moaned enough. But some of the dust has lifted, fingers crossed it doesn’t all settle again before this time next week, eh?
Much love xx
