The end of my streak of four-day weeks at work. After last weekend’s giant bike ride, Sunday was spent in an overtired stupor and Monday was restful, ahead of going back to work on Tuesday. All week I’ve had mild pain in my left knee, which I think was caused by trying to keep up with the rest of my group on the cycling climbs. They are better riders than me, so I found myself standing up and grinding out a higher gear than usual to keep up. I got on my indoor bike trainer on Friday and found that it irritated my knee; by the end of Saturday morning’s club ride I was in a lot of pain. I’m going to try and get it looked at next week so that I can minimise the time away from exercising.
This was a week in which I:
- Got a Teams message on my way into work on Tuesday from one of our senior execs about an issue in the office. We’d had some work done over the weekend but it hadn’t been left in an acceptable state. I spent my morning trying to get things to a place where the immediate issues were fixed as well as working with the team to ensure the next batch of work would be done to a higher standard.
- Caught up with colleagues who had been out on holiday. A late Easter and public holidays meant that quite a few people had taken advantage of booking an extended break.
- Had a sprint progress review meeting with our development team.
- Reviewed the latest iteration of a master services agreement with our heads of Procurement, Legal, and Governance and Control.
- Stepped in for my boss to represent our department at the Governance Committee meeting for one of our legal entities.
- Had further conversations with senior client-facing staff about the process of producing newsletters and insights.
- Reviewed the output and insights from one of my colleague’s recent business trips as we look to refurbish one of our offices.
- Joined the weekly project meeting for the refurbishment of our sister company’s space, as well as our shared areas. Reviewed the latest financial forecast for the shared works. We have a busy few weeks ahead.
- Met with colleagues who wanted advice on the next steps on a project, expanding the scope of a new tool or bolstering what has been put in place already.
- Attended our fortnightly Microsoft Copilot working group.
- Agreed our approach to purchasing more Microsoft Copilot licences as requests to use the tools come in.
- Had an update meeting on our document management project.
- Met with colleagues in our Learning and Development team to see how they can assist us with our Copilot journey as well as with some of our other projects that require substantial change management.
- Joined the first part of the monthly Teams Fireside Chat meeting.
- Attended an excellent Learning Hour, with Gartner’s Rob O’Donohue as a guest speaker. He gave a presentation on The Neurodiversity Advantage, the same one that I saw at the Gartner IT Symposium in 2023. It was just as fascinating the second time around, and sparked a lot of conversation within our team.
- Met a colleague in our Operations team to talk through his approach to measuring and tracking ongoing process improvements. It’s been a while since I thought about Six Sigma, which was once very much the flavour of the month.
- Was a little shocked when our car insurance renewal premium came through at £1,600. This is apparently only £100 more expensive than last year, but it doesn’t feel like it. In the past twelve months we gradually changed the scope of our insurance as my eldest son worked his way through his provisional licence and then passed his test. We’ve got used to paying a few hundred pounds just for my wife and I for one car, where we each have 30 years of driving history. Trying to find comparative quotes is difficult and time-consuming as you need to look at all cars and drivers on one policy versus different policies. It seems as though there isn’t much of a better deal around at the moment.
- Dropped our Mini in for a service and MOT, expecting it to be expensive as it is 15 years old and we know it has a few issues. And so it proved.
- Saw both of our boys finish school, our eldest for the final time. Our youngest one also had his first GCSE exam and is quickly in the thick of it. In a few weeks, the exams will be done and they can hopefully enjoy their summer.
- Enjoyed a beautifully sunny club bike ride on Saturday morning, but by the end of 70km I was struggling with pain in my left knee, which persisted throughout the weekend. I’m going to look at getting some help with it next week as I don’t want to be off my bike for any length of time.
- Signed up for The National 400 Audax ride on 28 June. It sets off at the civilised time of 10am, with a time limit of 1pm the next day. I’ve never ridden those roads before. I’m hoping I can get the logistics in place and my knee problem resolved so that I can ride it.
- Went with Matt to the National Film Theatre to see The Extraordinary Miss Flower (2024). Matt had played Emiliana Torrini’s Miss Flower album at our latest Album Club night and I was captivated. The film is a beautiful, hard to describe thing. After the passing of Torrini’s friend’s mum, Geraldine Flower, they discovered a suitcase full of letters that were written to her by various men throughout her life. Torrini used these as inspiration for her album as well as this film. We don’t really get to know much about Miss Flower, as there are very few letters from her, so you end up with an impression of what she was like. The film includes all of the wonderful songs from the album. The event finished with a live Q&A with Torrini, Caroline Catz (who plays Miss Flower in the film), and the directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, followed by a couple of live songs from Torrini. Sophie Ellis-Bextor sat a couple of rows behind us in the theatre. A lovely way to start the weekend.
Media
Podcasts
- Superb episode of WB-40 this week with Dr Nancy Doyle talking about neurodiversity and leadership. I thought that the things she raised are generally applicable and not just relevant to neurodiverse people. She says that popular models, such as being a ‘servant leader’, are targeted at the ‘historically bullying leader’ to make them “calm down and be a bit nicer”. I’m much more comfortable being in the ‘nice’ leader role, so having advice on how to hold boundaries and standing my ground would be much more useful than ‘servant leadership’ training. She also argues against the idea that neurodivergent characteristics are fixed “foibles” that others have “just got to accept” and that individuals shouldn’t be expected to change them.
Articles
…considering the urgency felt by the LGBTQ+ community, Apple releasing Pride bands and wallpapers is simply not enough to compensate for its decision not to speak out against President Trump’s attacks on trans people. There are certainly risks to Apple if it were to do more to stand up for the LGBTQ+ community, but those risks pale in comparison to the increasing threats trans and other people in the LGBTQ+ community face in the U.S. and around the world every day.
- I’m sad to read that Ton Zijlstra’s weeknotes have come to an end, but understand the reasons why. The format he used was inspirational in that it meant that the whole weekend wasn’t taken up with writing something. I wonder how long mine will last for?
- Rob Skinner’s reflections on London-Wales-London from both this and last year are excellent. I read his 2024 notes before I set off on my own adventure and they were very worthwhile.
Video
- Subscribed to Paramount+ in order to watch Mobland but abandoned it after half an episode. It is so incredibly dreadful, almost like a parody of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Ridiculous London slang that the actors sometimes explain in the next sentence. Completely unwatchable.
- Reflections on Audax rides versus sportives through the eyes of someone who just finished their first 200km Audax.
Audio
- Alicia Clara has announced her new album, Nothing Dazzled, which for me was an instant buy.
- Bought a copy of Plum by Widowspeak. My friend Mat introduced me to them via a playlist he made for me last year. It’s not their latest and may not even be their greatest — I haven’t yet explored enough of their work — but it’s full of lush songs like this one:
- T’Pau’s Heart and Soul popped up on a random playlist at the weekend. I think this is an underrated masterpiece of songwriting, which I’ve loved since it came out in 1987. It’s so clever how the backing vocals take the lead for the verses before colliding with the lead vocal. This lyric video that someone put together illustrates the point; it’s almost impossible to read all of the lyrics in real time.
Books
- Continued reading Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia. Superb writing so far.
Next week: The Interesting conference, and the WB-40 Album Club crew go to a gig.
Parakeets..
I’ll take your word for it. 😊