A Quarter Ends

A few years ago, I moved to Switzerland to start a new role and build a team at a big FMCG company based there.?? I remember thinking that after the first 6 months, a sort of business-as-usual pace would emerge, my to do list would become predictable, and the fitting in of work and life, and living a long distance from my partner and managing the time to be in the same place together long enough to keep speaking to each other would just… happen.?? “Just to the end of the quarter, and then things will even out” I would say to my now husband.?? He would laugh.?? Mainly because I said that every quarter for years!??? 2024 is feeling a little that way.?? Just as it seems that the to do list could become predictable, I find a new something to give attention to – to the point that the husband asked me this time… “Is it just to the end of this quarter then?”?? I’d like to say that I laughed… but it was likely more an eye roll.?? This said, as I’ve always said, it’s much better to be busy than bored.

After the earnest speed that 2024 started with, March offered an opportunity to get into some content at work.?? Working with our Research and Events director, I have been focussed on some Insight222 research into the way that the operating model of the people analytics function has evolved since the field begun to accelerate and change in 2020.?? It’s been an excellent opportunity to spend time speaking with leaders across my domain, understanding how the work they do, and how they do it has changed across time – working across and around organisation structures to ensure that the outcomes they are driving are focussed on furthering employee and business outcomes.

I’ve also been able to lean into producing more content about organisation design and strategic workforce planning – an area of particular interest to me, and where my career in this domain really began.?? At its core, strategic workforce planning has followed much the same methodology for decades, but like other areas of people analytics, the sophistication with which that methodology is approached has evolved, the data sets become more complex, the business challenges answered more nuanced and with greater forecast horizons.?? As well as creating content product for myHRfuture , I wrote a little blog, with my views on how the planning processes in businesses who’ve really embraced integrated strategy development have matured and coalesced into a cohesive, multi-disciplinary ecosystem.??? If that sort of content floats your boat – you can read more here: How to Accelerate the Impact of SWP through the Organisation Strategy Ecosystem.

At school, the end of winter term passed much as before, with a focus on working with coaching clients as they navigate the decisions in their current work and personal lives.??? I also took the opportunity to extend my learning by attending a tools day with Career Counselling Services which immediately helped with my client work.?? Something interesting I’ve learned about myself as a “mature” learner – is that for learning to stick, I do need to be able to apply it pretty directly to something happening in my life.?? It’s almost like Kirkpatrick was onto something (https://www.kirkpatrickpartners.com/the-kirkpatrick-model/ )!?? By using some of the coaching tools and processes learned academically with clients, I’m able to shape both my practice and my clients’ experience – not just by deploying rote learned processes and methodologies, but taking the core of their intent, and weaving things from my own career into them – like understanding ones own skills and their adjacencies, the ways to understand company culture from the outside in, the way to approach discussions with leadership, or colleagues or direct reports, and blend a coaching experience together that supports their career decision making in ways that are bother valuable and unique.

On the personal front – March also took on an accelerated focus in our home life.?? We completed phase one of the formal adoption process with our agency and social worker and were approved to move into phase two, where focus is on learning and assessment of our readiness to be parents to children of adoption.??? This has meant lots of deep and meaningfuls at home, together and with our social worker.?? Lots of research into schools in our area and those that have the best access to programs for children who may have additional educational needs, talking with friends and family about what parenting and family life looks like for an adopted family, and being endlessly teased by our closest friends, who’ve been asked for references of both of us and our suitability as parents, about how much their references are worth to us.???

So – will it be to the end of the first quarter, and our diaries level out? (on the basis that this is being shared 9 days into the new quarter – I think you can answer that question for yourself, dear reader).? Will it be the end of the next one??? Likely not either.?? But – I’m excited for April.?? Lots of advisory work with our clients, many hours of delivering people data and analytics literacy and competency development sessions with them and their broader teams, a new term at university focussed on the design of coaching programs, and many more hours with our social worker as we prepare for parenthood, will definitely mean a busy, and never boring life!