The 3Cs - Connection, Conversation & Community.

What a week!

Analogous to a great football match (apologies to all those who are not footie fans!) this week had it all: goals, penalties, controversial decisions, red cards... Okay, I'll stop now.

A week of great meetings, meet-ups, catch-ups, conversations, insights and learning; with a few setbacks and disappointments thrown in to spice things up, but allow me to select a few highlights:

• Monday started with an awesome coaching call discussing mindset, the need for focus, gaining clarity and sense of purpose. A very motivating commence.
• The opportunity to support valuable research and provide my insights and experiences in the challenges many of us face in the modern workplace and the "always-on" world we now live in. The effect this can have on us, as individuals, as well as on those close to us, and how we spot the signs that we may not be at our best. How should we handle that? Really important stuff and something I plan to write about in much more detail later.
• Mindset keeps coming up and rightly so. Attending a thought-provoking breakfast session to hear from Lauren Cahill on the agile mindset and the role it plays in enabling change. Very rewarding after a 6.08 am train on Tuesday morning to Glasgow.
• A super Lean Agile #Edinburgh meetup at Skyscanner on Tuesday evening hearing about an insightful case study of trialling a self-selecting teams approach. Well done to Serena Caruso for delivering such a great talk.
• Lastly, I opted to attend Workvisible's two-day training on using the #bikablo visual facilitation techniques. One of the best things I've done in many years from a training perspective. So much fun and with a wide scope for application. As a kid my greatest pass-time and passion was drawing. So for me this felt akin to a child on Christmas day! On the second day I had a go at using the visual vocabulary to depict the values of the original #Agile manifesto. You can see part of it in the header, but an image showing the full effort is visible at the foot of this article. Does it work for you? I'd love to hear your feedback! Many thanks to the awesome Andy and Marcus De Vale for their warm welcome and teaching this week.

I was glad for the opportunity to sit in Princes St gardens in the centre of #Edinburgh earlier on what has been a glorious sunny Friday afternoon when I'd carve out the time to write some of these notes and reflect on all of the above and more.

It's been an inspiring and motivating week, made all the richer by the many wonderful folk in my network who provided support, advice, ideas, suggestions and were very generous with their valuable time. There'll be shout-outs for them when this gets published. I'm grateful to know them and benefit from their experiences through meaningful conversations.

As I enjoyed the company of two friends yesterday evening, and reminded them of an old adage that I'm very fond off and have coined a few times in the past from someone wiser than I:

We are put on this planet not to see through one another, but to see one another through.

I sincerely hope the conversations will continue and we support each other within our various communities as they go from strength to strength, and that these communities have the mindset to uphold their values, whatever they may be.