This last week has been a busy and productive week.  Both at work, and at home.  I think it’s important to reflect sometimes and just appreciate what you have done.

On the home front, we’re having some work done on our driveway.  The builders have been digging up the old drive, and preparing it to lay the new one.   Just to put it into perspective, we live in a typical semi so the driveway is right in front of the house.  And it’s noisy.  Really really noisy.  Not their fault, it’s the machinery they’re using mostly.  Oh, and smelly too – I have forgotten how bad tarmac smells.

So, in a bid to ensure that I could get some work done, I decamped from my home office to the local co-working space – The Exchange, Tewkesbury https://tewkesburycoworking.co.uk.  It’s right in the town and a brilliant space to work from.  All the comforts of the home office, and none of the noise.  Plus there are meeting rooms that you can rent as well (great for when you’re meeting on line).

So, I used the time wisely -  I went out and bought chocolate 😉 – cos a girl needs chocolate to deal with the trauma of moving offices, even for a short period.  

Seriously though, this was all about work, so I worked on a capability matrix I am building for a client.  I've learned some new VBA coding for excel and am busy applying that in every spreadsheet I open. Even better excel has some interesting new functinality that makes lists and lookups etc so much easier (yep geek hat on!!).  So I've been using my new skills while I spend some concentrated time to work through the links from their job descriptions to the capability measures.   I hardly noticed people coming and going while I was working and it was nice to look out the window and gaze at the slowly passing traffic.  I feel like I've done some really productive work - and that I need to learn more VBA.

I also worked with a client to discuss the outcomes of their structures review.  This wasn’t solely a pay piece.  Finding out what your staff are doing is fundamental to understanding what gaps you need to fill in your business.  Getting all the job descriptions drafted and meeting with the jobholders is always my favourite bit.  I learn as much about the culture as I do about the work being done.  When you map it out and show the client what’s missing it can be great to see the lightbulb moment.  And the best bit – he’d already been thinking about it and started work on filling the more obvious gaps.  He’s got some work ahead of him too, but at the end of it, he will have a really sound business, and I will have the satisfaction of knowing I helped.  

And finally, I did a presentation for the Association of Financial Mutuals.  I was really looking forward to this one.  It was fairly short, but I loved the challenge of getting over some really useful information in 30 minutes flat.  To say nothing of dealing with a frozen presentation screen.  I gave them some key things they need to think about with any pay changes they could be making, and my top tips on getting your GPG process right.  And I got to meet some very interesting people in the process.

So I have to say a clear thank you this week to:
Gill Downes@Tewkesbury co-working for providing the space to keep me sane
Tamasin Larocque-Fathers @ AFM, for her hard work keeping us presenters in line and on line.
Billy Smith @ Action Coach – for finding me the best clients – thank you Billy for the recommendation.
Tina Jennings @ Crosan Croga – for getting me involved with her clients – it’s a pleasure to be working on this.

Have I ever told you, I love my job!
Note to self, say it more often – I love my job!