Weeknote 02
Thanks to everyone for your lovely messages about my first weeknote — you caught me out by actually reading it…
What I’ve done this week
I’ve done a LOT of talking this week. I ran an induction session on Monday for four of our newest team members, caught up with all the site directors, met a couple of potential funders, some awesome collaborators, and had quite a few calls with people interested in the four new roles we advertised to kick the year off.
All these conversations were animated by two questions. One, how we are going to develop our advocacy work to tackle child poverty in a way that’s ambitious and collaborative; and two, how the hell we are going to find spaces across London that will enable us to fully realise our ambitions. We are at capacity in our current locations and have so many more plans.
What I’m learning
I’ve tried and (mostly) succeeded in the first week of my promise to ban the word ‘busy’ from my lingo. Telling ourselves we’re busy is really an excuse to avoid being present; telling others we’re busy is simply lazy. So I’m relegating ‘busy’ to the dustbin, along with ‘just’, which I decided to banish a little while ago.
Beyond that, it feels really good to be more mindful of all my coaching practice again. I’ve promised myself to integrate it more into how I manage and lead. And I’m learning that it’s really hard, but really effective, to make myself do the difficult stuff first, and leave emails till later in the day.
What I’m celebrating
I’m celebrating the calibre of the people who have chosen to work at Little Village. The induction session on Monday was a great moment as I looked around and thought that every single person has so much to bring. It’s a delight to have such a brilliant team.
Also — I played the piano!! Twice! My goal next week is to find a teacher who is right for me.
What I’m feeling
An excellent and very dear old friend took me to see Ruby Wax at the School of Life. She said something that really chimed:
‘We know how to deal with scarcity — it’s abundance that we find hard’.
As we re-opened our stock rooms this week and the donations started flowing in again, I’m feeling really uncomfortable about the sheer quantity of stuff we all buy for our little people. When you see so much of it all in one place, it makes you wonder what collective madness we’re part of. Bauman wrote about this so powerfully in Consuming Life, arguing that in a consumerist culture, transience trumps stability, and newness trumps longevity. I’m glad we are finding a way of re-using and recycling everything, but I’d much rather we didn’t buy it all in the first place.
Who I’m working with
It’s been a week of great people. The Site Directors and team at Little Village. It was a pleasure to see the lovely Phil from Crowdfunder again, to talk about our collaboration on a digital fundraising project. I also reconnected with Jude from Sound Delivery, who we worked with in 2018 on a big storytelling project supported by the Big Lottery Fund. And finally I’ve been working with John and Avis from Social Engine, who have just sent over their initial evaluation of Little Village. There are so many powerful insights from their work, and I’m pretty excited about the capacity building we’ll be doing with them as phase 2 of the work.
Photo of the week
