Weeknotes 20th Feb to 3rd March: Retros, Reviewing and Reflections
I read a medium article on how to write weeknotes in 30 minutes. I’m convinced I’m not going to manage it but I’m going to give it a shot! Technically I’m covering two weeks, so maybe that gives me an hour grace?
Interesting things that happened over the last two weeks:
We’ve begun reviewing the 300 applications
We are undergoing a three-stage reviewing process.
Stage one involves categorising applications, carefully reading through each application, making sure we allocate applications to the appropriate goal teams to shortlist. Each proposal was reviewed by at least 3 people to ensure we allocated correctly. From here, we created a longlist of applications that meet the criteria, skills and experience we are looking for.
Next we will move to Stage 2, where each team will score the longlist of applications, and then taking part in a decision-making meeting to select a shortlist of applications for Stage 3, where informal discussions with the shortlisted applicants will take place, before we select our 20 Associates.
Early reflections so far..
- There are so many people working to create more equitable, diverse and inclusive organisations. It’s heart-warming.
- There’s a real spread of individuals working at the awareness raising stage of driving change, to those working directly with leadership, to those developing and implementing interventions at different part of the workplace system.
- Selecting a final 20 Associates from the 300 applications is going to be tough. We are going to have to be strict on selecting those that are most closely aligned to our activities over the next year, as well as looking at the critical skills, expertise and experience that compliment what we have in house. If you applied, I hope you can bear with us!
I’m so impressed with the team we’ve brought together to thoughtfully review these applications, given the overwhelming interest we’ve had, that we very much didn’t anticipate.
We ran our bimonthly project retro
We ran a retrospective on our advisory function work covering the last two months — our plan is to continue with this rhythm so we ensure we capture lessons learnt as well as highlight our successes and achievements. It always feels like an extra job, needing at least 90 minutes in the diary with the project team but it’s so worth it. Particularly on complex projects, providing time to air things, celebrate, let go and move on.
I also do my own monthly reflection diary… and I must say, February was crazy busy and not really sustainable going forward — I’ll be making a conscious effort to make my last three months of work more manageable, prioritising what’s most important to get done, so my time counts, along with my health! I’ve enjoyed having my energy back during trimester two but I hear that’s likley to change over the next few weeks….
Risk around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion work is a continued thing that comes up in project meetings, personal reflections and team retros— and we’re getting used to it as risk planning will continue to be an integral part of our programme planning and delivery. As a team we had a conversation about how we reframe risk so it’s more of an active process that we lean into, helping us (and the organisation) shift towards thinking ‘yes, and’ and less ‘no, because’ when looking at challenges and opportunities that feel risky.
The importance of taking holiday time
I mentioned in my last post that I was going away on a short trip as I’m in that perfect window before I hit the third trimester of pregnancy. Also, February has been so so cold and grey, it’s been lovely to go to Spain’s sunny little town!
Sadly it did take me a little while to decompress before I could really lean into exploring the city openly…. this is obviously not the right way round and not something I want to role model — holidays shouldn’t be about recovery but instead be exciting times to engage the senses and learn something new. More personal work to do on myself there, where I get better at not cramming too much in to get done before I go away.
One reflection I’ve had is maybe it’s better to take a full Monday to Friday off, rather than take half-week holidays on both sides (I went away on Thursday and came back to work the following Wednesday). This works out well if you want to spend the weekend in your holiday destination but not great if you want to feel like you have had a proper break
That took me 45 minutes to write
I’m pretty pleased with that! There’s probably loads of grammatical mistakes in here but oh well! See you next week.
