LATE! For a very important date!

Okay, so I know that the 13th of the month is more like the middle of the month, but it’s nearer the beginning than the end – and so I’ll claim this posting as a win.

When last we spoke, it was very early January, and I was coming to you live from a place of relaxed zen, having had a wonderful time out with family of the festive season. Suffice it to say that my zen lasted about a week, and 2024 then launched itself with gusto.?

?In my world of people analytics, I was really fortunate to start a range of activities in January.

·????? Working with Insight222 ’s research director, Naomi Verghese , we started some research into how the operating model for people analytics teams inside leading organisations has evolved and has impact on the outcomes they’re targeted at. ???

·????? I was fortunate to be able to finally work with Dawn Klinghoffer , an industry colleague of many years, and someone with whom we’ve been trying to find a joint project for a couple of years, to prepare a fantastic morning of content and co-creation, identifying ways and means to measure the impact of people analytics projects at the Insight222 Peer Meeting in London in February (more on this next month).???

·????? For the first time in many years, I was able to flex some learning muscle, as I created the first of a series of masterclasses in Organisation Design and Strategic Workforce Planning that create impact in their organisations, and have started working with a global network of expert practitioners as they prepare to share their masterclasses with the Insight222 world.

·????? And I was able to work with several client organisations on something that I’m super passionate about, improving the evidence lead HR capabilities of the Function at large, via Insight222’s immersive learning experiences.??? It’s such a rewarding thing to work on, sharing my experience, and helping skilled HR practitioners discover new talents that they are able to apply directly to the work they do day to day, with success and differentiated outcomes.?? AND one of those clients happened to be in Mexico – so this Australian was extra grateful for a few 24 degree days in January!

?At university, attention this term has pivoted to a focus on developing hands on coaching skills through supervised practice with clients.??? That’s been an excellent learning experience, looking at the way that in person and digital coaching is different, and the different ways, I’m able to help my clients access their own resources to solve for career challenges and make career decisions, big and small.?? I’m also collecting a great selection of tools from across my career and new ones through study that serve to help folks with things like prioritisation and decision making. A favourite of mine recently is the Eisenhower Matrix.?? You can learn more here, in a Forbes article published earlier this year.? https://www.forbes.com/sites/hillennevins/2023/01/05/how-to-get-stuff-done-the-eisenhower-matrix-aka-the-urgent-vs-the-important/

I have found myself using this prioritisation tool myself, as the elements of my third stream of life multiplied in January as well.

?For anyone playing along at home, you’ll have noticed some breadcrumbs in this series of an externalisation of my consciousness that point to my husband and I hoping to start a family.??? January was a month of concerted effort working with our social worker to provide all kinds of insight about ourselves, the things we’ve learned about attachment and therapeutic parenting and how we are preparing to be parents.?? I recall early in our discussions with our adoption agency, being advised to not be doing anything else, like buying a house or getting married, and so on, while the process was underway, and I completely understand why now.?? The level of both introspection personally, and together with my husband has been high, and the time and effort needed to consider the rest of our lives, in the context of the one we hope to build together has pulled other streams of activity into a need to understand the important and the urgent, and work towards that ultimate aim, of having a family together.

?That, paired with the not unexpected, but unenjoyed admin that is coupled with creating a coaching business (watch this space for updates on this one) and the inevitable “new year, new me/ summer bodies are made in winter” efforts made January, and early February an uncomfortably squeezed, if very rewarding period of time.??? One of the joys of my learning about coaching at the moment is that my fellow students and I are able to coach each other as we try and test new approaches to coaching conversations, and I experienced first hand the sort of excellent connections a coach can help you make, when one of my colleagues asked me “what are the tools you have access to, that might help you to prioritise your to do list, to make sure you’re getting the important things done?”?? With thanks to both my coaching colleague, and President Dwight Eisenhower….. I do!?? 10/10 would recommend checking it out, if you, like me, are already running 2 weeks late for your own life deadlines.

?More from me in 2 weeks!