How we went from having nothing to do, to being surprisingly busy

Our Covid19 Diary: Week 5

Well, what can I say? After last week's reframing of our situation, we made ourselves busy. Extremely busy.

There were three highlights, all of which began as little ideas that someone suggested during a team meeting, on Zoom, with no agenda. I make this point because I suspect that if we were in "business as usual" territory, our meetings would have been diarised properly (rather than shifted around to accommodate when and where people thought they could get broadband, hide from children, finish off the housework etc) and would have had an agenda.

Don't get me wrong, I'm big on agendas, in fact I tend to be the one writing them and making people stick to them (Melinda, Steph I'm looking at you ....) but the problem with that is that you do exactly that. Get stuck. Stuck with the old ideas, the business as usual, the day to day. And perhaps miss out on those little nuggets of ideas and creativity that generate something special.

Anyway, here are my three highlights:

1. We finally got round to completing and delivering our LinkedIn for Personal Branding and Business Development training. And in doing so I came across this lovely little diagram which I think helps you think about what you're trying to do when you're building your personal brand - it's about both reputation and reach.

We had twenty eight people join us via Zoom and despite a technical hitch in the middle (when I was trying to be clever, attempted to switch from powerpoint to LinkedIn and ended up quitting the Zoom session for a good two minutes) I think it went pretty well.

As part of my planning I reread A Brand Called You by John Purkiss and came across this little diagram, which I think is a good, simple way of thinking about what your'e trying to achieve when you're building your personal brand.

I'm repeating the session with 2to3Days on Monday evening at 8 if anyone's interested. Hopefully minus the technical glitch.

2. We ran our inaugural Reignite Book club, discussing "Surrounded by Idiots". Well, as with all book clubs, part of the time was spent discussing the book, the rest talking about lockdown, work, children, disappearing exams, disappearing work, families, parks, the chance of anything ever returning to anything approaching normal ....I think we had around 14 people. Lovely to see some old and new faces.

Our next book is How Women Rise which rather scarily has its own website. Why did I never think of that for She's Back?

3. Alice, one of our team members, alerted us to an article by Caren Ulrich Stacey published in Law.Com, talking about how, during the last recession, the US legal sector went backwards on their performance on Diversity. Twenty years of steady progress was wiped out and it has taken until the last couple of years to get the numbers back to where they were before 2009. Pretty scary.

Caren was running a Zoom webinar for anyone interested in discussing how not to let that happen again on Friday afternoon. Sharon and I dialled in & were able to contribute to the discussion with some practical suggestions.

That, along with our book club discussions, made me realise that many younger women - and men - going through what could be a very severe downturn - will probably have never experienced anything like it. Which is making me think about how those of use who have can be more supportive. What could we do to share our own experience and lessons learnt? Of course we don't know how this is going to pan out but I'm sure there will be some ways in which we could be helpful.

My initial reaction, naturally, was to write about it ...Play your cards right: how to ensure your career survives a downturn, but I can't help but think there is something a lot more practical to be done. All I need now is more white space and an empty head to figure out what.

Since I ended last week with a philosophical quote from an author I have to confess I've never read, I thought I'd leave with one from an author whose book I have read. Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh:

“You can't save time. You can only spend it, but you can spend it wisely or foolishly.”

Off to spend mine sitting in the sun.