My main reflection is that I can’t believe its time to write weeknotes already again. This week has gone quickly, and its been a mind-expanding one.

• I’ve been supporting designers moving from one piece of work that we’re having to pause because of funding not being confirmed to another piece of work – that to be honest also still doesn’t have full funding confirmed. It been my first time in a leadership role going through this cycle of trying to put the right teams on the right work at the right time, and its hard. So far, what I’ve mostly learned is that in a big org the number of ways a piece of work can be funded, as well as the number of different levels of confirmation required is kind of mind boggling.
• In general I’ve found myself trying to strike the balance between being in the detail and supporting multiple teams. Quickly remembering its just not possible to do both, but maybe more sensible is guaging which piece of work most requires guidance/leadership at any point. So much of acquiring knowledge is being in the right place at the right time when someone says something and feel like I thrive in that environment when I’m only involved in one ‘project’, being the sponge that soaks it all up and makes sense of the mess. A lot harder when you’re not there to soak it all up.
• I volunteered to facilitate a ‘vision and objectives’ session as part of the Engineering leadership team day. Its the kind of session I’ve done a lot before and was using a template Miro board, so there wasn’t loads of prep thankfully. I found it really interesting stepping out of the design leadership and hearing similar challenges, as well as some very different ones. Whilst I don’t think I could ever solely be a professional facilitator, there is something about playing a completely objective role (and not having to do any of the actions that come out of the session too!). More than anything, my aim with the session was to expand the number of people I knew at Co-op and build some level of trust with those in engineering who I’ve not been able to work closely woth so far because of the roles/projects I’ve had since joining Co-op.
• I always try and keep some of my time dedicated to neither project stuff or 1:1s. I have no hard and fast rule, but with annual reviews and feedback for others in January I’ve struggled to maintain that time. This time has now passed, and probably not coincidentally Its there’s now more defined tasks being shared within design leadership. I’m hoping to pick those up and take some actions that are contibuting to our overall objectives for the next few months rather than purely focusing on the team in colleague products.
• A related reflection is that I’ve often had conversations with people who assume I know what’s going on in other design teams, and it makes me realise how focused I can be on the ‘colleague products’ space, rather than feeling and acting like part of a broader design leadership team that supports all our designers. I’m wondering what, if anything I can do about this.
  
  Long read for this week is the case against ‘democratising research’ that effectively summarises to ‘more research isn’t necessarily better’. Which interestingly is also a conversation I briefly wandered into with someone via email whilst they tried to pitch a well know online database tool for use as a research repository. Apparently other teams were able to double their research output per quarter…and I’m not sure that’s the right measure.