Where have I been?

Two weeks into January and I expect I'm not the only person struggling to get my head around the fact that it is somehow actually 2025. Today however, as I tried to book in a day's training for a customer this coming May I found myself in the calendar for last year. After initially panicking that I didn't seem to have any spare days that week and wondering who had kindly packed my diary for me I realised my mistake, readjusted and then the waves of nostalgia kicked in!

Looking both back and forward from that week in mid-May 2024 I felt a curious mixture of pride, disbelief and exhaustion at the work the Professional Development Team was involved in across that 12 months. Despite me preaching to anyone who will listen just how important review and reflection exercises are, when you are on the hamster wheel you tend to miss some of the most important things that you are doing - the brilliant partners we are working with across the North East and wider UK, the fun yet meaningful activities we design for different groups of learners, the feelings invested in trying to make every single bit of delivery enjoyable and memorable - so it was really nice (if a little indulgent!) to have a bit of time unpicking the year and the range of things we did together.

So what did I find out and how can I use this learning in 2025?

Relationships rule ok - none of what we have been able to deliver would have been possible without the trust shown to us from our key partners. For L&D leads, their people are precious assets and they need to be confident that any training work they take part in is worth their time and effort. We're honoured to be a provider for a whole host of different organisations - some large and others small - and whether we undertake projects that last for many years, or just help out with that one piece of work that really needs doing right now it's great that we can get to know the people we are working on behalf of and make sure that we are delivering as external ambassadors for their business.

Size may matter, but credibility counts more - as a small provider, the temptation for us is to be gushingly grateful for every piece of work we undertake. However, looking in the 2024 calendar it was apparent that a lot of our initial meetings were with people who had been referred to us through recommendations and were keen to see if we could provide them with the type of support or activity that they needed to meet their goals. Whilst this doesn't affect our humility - we genuinely are gushingly grateful - it should give us that validation that we can deliver the quality that discerning customers expect!

Development starts at home - as an Outlook Calendar obsessive I always put everything I have planned in the diary. It did surprise me to see in that May week how many bits of internal training, strategic conversations, team development activity and other Orangebox-focused things were there. This not only helps to 'keep our hand in' with some of the popular training topics we are sharing, but also demonstrates our ambition as a business. We want to improve, and the only way we can do that is by investing time and effort into our people, so that we can nurture the talent and encourage progression as the company continues to grow.

Blink and you'll miss it - whilst it's great to be kept busy, seeing the different courses, locations and partners passing by my eyes as I scrolled through a week at a time I confess I had forgotten about some of them (or at least thought they had been delivered in 2023!). This made me head to my files to remind myself about the conversations, material prep and feedback from some of them to see what we did and feel like I was back in the room again. It might just be a feature of getting old but I definitely want to feel more conscious 'in the moment' this year and not have to rely on an accidental review to be able to remember all of the different experiences I have been involved with!

I had hoped to use last week to do some focused planning for the year ahead (that didn't happen) but landing in May 2024 by chance has actually done this job for me! The four conclusions I have drawn give me an important checklist to take with me throughout this year - with the addition of a fifth, which is to have the discipline to do a monthly calendar review so I can reflect more effectively and be more conscious of what the last few weeks have brought in terms of ups, downs, opportunities and challenges!

Finding myself temporarily back in the middle of 2024 today proved to be a fun and insightful exercise - thank you to everyone we work with for making it a fantastic year of partnerships and progress and to the Orangebox team for supporting me home and away.

Here's to a fantastic 2025!