LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

Working Mums and the Myth of "Part-Time"

I have been thinking about this a lot recently probably because of my current obsession, Lean In. 

Earlier this year I went to an event that Anna Rafferty (Penguin Digital MD) put on for Seth Godin's new book. One of the things that he said there really hit home, (and I paraphrase) "In this globalized economy there will always be somebody who is willing to do your job and work longer hours for less money. "  The point being that if you make it all about the hours that you work, you will always lose. In fact it is impossible to win. You have to make it about the impact that you have. not the hours that you work. 

Today I had lunch with another brilliant woman, Kathryn Parsons of Decoded fame (and Veuve Cliquot Young Businesswoman of the Year 2013) where we talked about a million different things but one of them was what happens when women have kids and potentially want to decrease the number of hours that they work a week. As I was talking to her it suddenly hit me how much I hate the term "part-time" to describe what I do. I do a four day week but like every other professional working mum that I know the focus and dedication that I have during those 4 days (and evenings) means that I achieve more in those 4 days than I ever used to in 5.

The descriptor "part-time" is just wrong.

Take Nicola Mendelsohn for example. Nicola has worked a 4 day week for the past 15 years and is now taking up an EMEA role at Facebook on a 4 day week and I bet there's absolutely nothing "part-time" about her approach, ambition and determination.

Maybe it's time for a new descriptor of those of us who work shorter weeks? "Compressed-Time"? " Condensed-Time"? Not sure what the right words are, but "part-time" is just plain wrong.

EDITED over-night:

I think that a 4 day week should be considered: "Smart-Time" working, not "Part-Time" working

Does the PR world care about SXSW?

In the advertising world the interactive festival SXSW (South By South West) has acquired a status as a cooler Cannes, a more democratic TED.  But it appears not to have resonated so much with the PR world. At SXSW this year there were 31,000 people including inventors, professors, tech start ups, a lot of clients and, according to the IPA, about 150-200 UK agency folk, but I did not meet a single UK PR professional. 

When I asked clients why they had flown to Texas they gave the same answer: technology is turning their industries upside down so in order to to help shape the direction of their brands they wanted to be much better informed about the leading edge of innovation.

So where were the PR professionals?

Is it that it's just too expensive for PR agencies to cover the costs? But saying that, I did AIR B&B and stayed in a cheap apartment and not a swanky hotel and flew over economy so actually the costs weren't that high. 

Is it that its not seen as relevant to anyone's day job, so it's hard to justify? If that's the case, that's pretty sad. In my opinion SXSW is the one global event where the world of brands, products and services, technology and marketing collide. Attending something like this is a way to raise eyes up from the day job into the near-future. It's a chance to think hard thoughts about where our world, and our clients and our industry is heading. I found it to be invaluable, but it worries me that so few of the PR industry made the trip out. 

If you work in PR in the UK, did you head out to Austin? If you did, what did you think?

Lessons the PR World Can Learn From Advertising

I am a PR newbie. Though the kind of work that I got excited about when I was at VCCP people told me was "sort of PR" - initiatives like blogger outreach programs for o2 way back in 2007, special non-advertising projects for Unilever and social media work for Aleskandr the meerkat. In fact the planning methology that we developed at VCCP which asked these specific questions "Why would I talk about/blog about/tweet about this idea", "how can I participate in this idea" and "what keeps the conversation going" are actually all (I find out now) classic types of PR questions. But the fact remains until January of this year I had never actually worked properly in a PR agency. 

I now divide my working week between a central strategy and innovation role at Chime and a Board role at the newly formed Good Relations Group. Its the space where Digital meets Advertising meets PR which facinaties me most and where I think that the future of our industry lies. There are so many cross-pollination lessons that each of these disciplines can learn from each other but I thought that I would start with what the PR world can learn from the advertising world. 

I think that it is a result of structural issues in the PR world namely that everyone does everything instead of traditionally either allowing for specialisms or T-shaped people. So on the whole most agencies don't have planners, suits or creatives. One person does all of it they just move up the ladder of seniority. 

But its the different approach to creativity that has really struc me and to be honest PR agencies seem to be struggling a bit compared to their advertising counterparts. 

In my experience there are three elements that PR agencies need to focus on if they want to improve their creativity. I don’t think that the solution to our creativity crisis lies in simply hiring a creative director (although I actually do think that PR agencies need them). Rather, it lies in a culture shift towards Curiosity, Constraints and Conflict.

Creativity starts with a curious mindset. Without curiosity there can be no creativity. The most curious people are the most interesting, constantly collecting experiences and ideas from everywhere. They make unexpected connections because they are open, alert and plugged in. It’s the agency’s job to create a curious culture. The American documentary photographer Walker Evans said about curiosity: “Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.” That sentiment should permeate everywhere.

The second thing to think about is constraints. Marissa Meyer, then head of user experience at Google, gave a talk at Stanford in which she said that creativity loves constraints. She was referring to technological constraints such as pixel size, file sizes and download speeds but Meyer makes a valid point about creativity generally. PR creativity suffers because it is unfocused. I was amazed to find out that, often, creative briefs are not written. How can you possibly know what problem you’re trying to solve without a proper, considered brief, complete with constraints?

What would have happened if Michelangelo had been told to paint whatever he wanted in the Sistene Chapel? Or if he had been told to paint the ceiling in order to cover up the cracks and damp or to paint the ceiling using red, green and blue? Those briefs don’t lead to much creativity. However when he was told to paint the ceiling in a way that inspired the audience to believe in the greater glory of God by bringing to life key bible stories then unprecedented creativity was unleashed. Constraining briefs unlock great creative ideas.

Finally, I think PR agencies need to embrace conflict more. Advertising agencies are filled with conflict. It doesn’t always make for a fun working environment, but it does make for better creative work. The triangular structure of ad agencies (suits, planners, creatives) means that everyone constantly faces internal battles which sharpens up ideas long before they are sold to clients. A bit of fear does wonders for an idea. PR agencies need more arguments and more balls.

One quote in the Creativity in PR study read: “PR people are fearful pleasers and wimps. Instead of fighting, we whine. It’s easier.” I agree. 2013 has to be the year that the PR industry ups its game creatively and takes the fight to the advertising world and beyond.

It’s never been a more exciting time to be a creative obsessive in the PR industry. 

 

The Modern Brief

Last year the IPA Strategy Group put on an event at the ICA called "The Modern Brief". It was based out of some research that we conducted with Planning Directors across the UK which showed the anxiety surround what we have taken to call "the modern brief" - realtime, participatory, multi platform, cross-channel (you get the gist!) At the 2012 event we gathered together some of the UK's finest minds from ad agencies, media agencies and communications groups and they talked about their perspective. You can find all those presentations at the IPA website and I really encourage you to refresh yourselves as there are some smart and very actionable thoughts and ideas.

After thet event the Strtaegy Group thought that it the debate would become far more complete if we invited some key clients in to give us their view. This event is taking place at Google on Thursday 25th Jan. We have a hugely impressive line up. Tickets are not expensive and there's a special offer if you bring a client with you.

If you do go, come and say hello!

Why the IPA Search grads are the Chief Strategy Officers of tomorrow

A while back the IPA asked me to deliver the graduation keynote to the grads who had completed the IPA Search Summer School. They asked me to talk to them about the future and my advice for their careers moving forward.

One of my many learnings from my WPP mentor Jeremy Bullmore is to treat every audience regardless of level with time and respect. So I sat down and did some serious thinking about the world of Search and the skills that I thought the discipline unlocked.

This is where I netted out - I think that these Search grads are the Chief Strategy Officers of tomorrow.

Why do I think that?

This slide tries to sum up why:

In a nutshell I think that the grads who are immersed in the world of Search have a better understanding of Brands, Technology, People and Culture than anyone else in the agency world.

The old traditional view of a Planner is someone who understands the consumer and represents them as the agency develops work. This could be done through focus groups, research panel information, ethnographic studies etc. But the fact is that its through the words that people type into Google that give you the best sense of a brand's health. Search terms capture people's inner-most feelings in a way that focus groups never do. So these grads have their finger on the pulse in an utterly unparalleled way.

So keep an eye out for the IPA Search Grads of 2012 and if you have a Search division in your agency and you don't know the guys who are working there, then make it your new years resolution to go and take them out for coffee and find out more about what they do and what they think.

My bet is that you'll be talking to a CSO of tomorrow.

How to pitch and win - lessons from London 2012

I love pitches.

I love the adrenaline.

I love the tension.

I love the brutal focus on a client problem and  the relentless concentration on a strategic and creative solution.

I love working out how best to tell the story that sells the strategy and creative ideas.

I've wanted to meet David Magliano since reading the chapter on the London 2012 bid in Jon Steel's excellent book, Perfect Pitch (best book I have read on how to pitch and win) David's pitch strategy for the bid is a world-class example. He talked at an event at the IPA on the 27th as part of their "Pitching Legends" series. What a speaker! If you ever get the chance to go and hear him talk move mountains to do so - you really won't regret it.

I am going to try and encapsulate his story and share what I took out.

The first thing that David asked the audience to do was to think about the audience, the members of the IOC. He wanted us to put themselves in their shoes. He then showed us the first 30' of each potential host cities opening video - Paris, Rio, Madrid, Moscow, New York and finally London. Each video felt like a love story to a city - beautiful, stirring, emotional. Expansive cityscape shots, fly over views and smiling friendly people. London on the other hand started with footage of a sprinter at the beginning of a race and then showed the story going backwards to that moment when as young child in Africa this boy was inspired by grainy footage that he was seeing on a TV screen of London 2012. This wasn't a film selling a city, this was a film selling a vision - a vision of using the power of a London games to inspire young people all over the world to choose sport, a vision of re-connecting the ideals of the Olympic movement to millions of young people and a vision of legacy. It dramatized a problem and showcased a solution.

It still amazes me that so often agencies still choose to start their pitch with their credentials, Magliano calls it "the plumbing." He said "I trust that you have offices in the right place." Get to the heart of your thought right from the start, build that emotional connection from the outset, show you understand the problem, demonstrate empathy and understanding and then work from there.

The London 2012 bid script was so tight, each word was important. not a single word was extraneous. There was one phrase in particular that I just loved: "As leaders we have a duty to reach beyond our own time and borders." It's beautiful, like poetry even. It also makes the audience feel that its not a choice between cities, its a vote for the belief in the lasting legacy that the Games can bring. "What city," they asked, "has the vision that best serves the Olympic vision?"

In the Q&A David was asked how they could prove that London was more likely to inspire young people than New York or Paris. David's response was fascinating. "We didn't have to prove it because no-one else claimed it." I asked whether any other city had a similar singled minded thought that there pitch was based on, he said no and that they all  had multiple messages and all sold the city, not an aspiration.

Some other take outs - Authentic stories not just research facts: Seb's story of being 12 and being taken in a school hall to watch the Mexico City Olympics was hugely moving because it was authentic and because it turned Seb into a walking case study of what the London 2012 team were hoping to achieve around the world. Seb also talked about the fact that his heros were Olympics, "my children's heros change every month." Every parents or grandparent in the IOC must have been nodding along. 'But we must understand and respond to their world."

Know your audiences and tailor your messages: On the night before the bid the London 2012 team had a list of the floating voters (mainly the South Americans) who they needed to convert. Blair took a suite on the 55th floor of the convention centre and as each floating voter was coming up in the lift, he was being texted to say what hot buttons to push. Did this IOC member care most about the legacy in the UK of their particular sport, were they passionate about sustainability, did their grandchild just want a kick around with Beckham. They had all the options covered.

Ownership: Let one person write the script of the pitch, the "narrative arch", rather than each presenter write their own little bit and then worry how to piece it together. Its one story, with different parts voiced by different people. Think of it like a script for a play.

It was a night of illuminating anecdotes about the pitch - for example, when London and Paris when back into the conference hall to find out the result there were 57 photographers stationed in front of the Parisian team and only 3 in front of the London team, apparently in some TV footage you see photographers fighting and scrambling to get over to get pictures of the victors, so utterly convinced was everyone that Paris had won. David talked about the fact that they used images of Tony and Cherie Blair at the opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Games, because Chirac and Bush had both decided that post 2001 the security risks were too great and had not gone. Simply by showing this image as part of a much longer film the IOC were being subtly reminded that GB was always an active supporter of the Olympic movement. Fascinating. Final anecdote, the strategy about inspiring a generation actually came out of an insight into a business problem that the IOC had, namely an aging TV viewing population which was less attractive for broadcasters and advertisers, so originally the strategy had been to get more young people watch the Games than ever before. It was Seb who made the strategic leap to say that actually its not about getting young people viewing, its about getting young people viewing.

I will find out if the event was videoed and post a link if it was.

Great night!

 

Don Draper and the art of pitching

I was running a "behind the scenes in advertising" mentoring session today with a group of sixth form students. I really enjoy doing things like this, it reminds me why I love the industry I am in. It is so easy to get bogged down in the day to day, the niggles and the frustrations that occur in our world of advertising/media/PR etc but when you have to tell a smart bunch of teenagers, who smell bullshit from 100m, what it is that is that makes your chosen profession so exciting it forces you to look up from your desk and remember the good bits. And there are so many good bits!

One of the things that we covered in our session today was presenting and how to engage an audience and tell stories that sell - sell a strategy, an idea or a campaign. One of the students presented to us and to illustrate his point he said, "you know that feeling when you have priority boarding on an aeroplane and you walk past everyone else in the queue and you just feel so special and a bit smug. That's the feeling that we want to bring to life." We just sat there nodding because we all know that feeling. And half the battle of any pitch type presentation is getting your audience onside and nodding. I was trying to think of the best example to give to the students and I still think that the Don Draper "Carousel" example is one of the very best examples that I can think of.

If you haven't seen it recently, take a look again. It's pitch genius.

 

 

Ferran Adria's top 10 tips for innovation

A lot of people tweeted me asking whether I could condense the Ferran Adria post into a top 10 tips list.

Based from Ferran's story I have pulled out what I think to be the key recommendations for any creative organization looking to be world leading. Hope that you find them useful. If I was starting an agency tomorrow these would certainly be my checklist:

 

1. Don’t chase short-term cash without a long-term vision
2. Make the time to reflect and think
3. The journey is not done when you’re number 1, that’s when its time to change
4. Make sure that your physical space is flexible enough to move and change with you
5. Do everything to avoid falling into routines
6. Bring in “agitators” from outside to push your creativity and thinking
7. Being creative doesn’t give you license to be an arse, you still have to take out the trash
8. Work out how your organization can function at its most efficient
9. Don’t sign away creative freedom for the sake of money
10. But always remember at the end of the day, it has to be about making money!

Ferran Adria and the power of innovation

It started with a question about Cannes. "If you could bring anyone in the world to Cannes deliver a keynote, who would you bring?" We'd been talking about the superstar speakers that had appeared recently - the likes of Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Bob Geldof, will.i.am (ok, so will.i.am might be pushing the "superstar speaker" descriptor, but you know what I mean)

My dream keynote, I said, would be someone from outside of Adland who would talk about innovation and creativity. The expression I think I used at the time was "science and magic" because to my mind that is the key combination that our industry needs. The person that I thought best encasulated that was Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame. Not that I actually knew an awful lot about him, it was more of the impression of the man gleaned from the incredible tales of his molecular gastromomy and ancedotes such as his closing of El Bulli right at the absolute height of its worldwide fame.

So when I got invited by Telefonica to be part of an audience with Ferran Adria at their start up accelerator Wayra I was enormously excited. I went with a Spanish foodie friend of mine who was quite possibly even more excited than I was. Everything was set up for a great evening. But you know what, it wasn't great. It was so much better than great.

Ferran told a story in three parts: the first was about El Bulli and what occurred there and why; his new Foundation and Bullipedia, the online gastronomic website that he is in the process of building.

I will tell you the story that he told, as far as possible I will try and use his words (I was noting like crazy) but if not then I will paraphrase and hope people don't mind: 

Right from the start E Bulli was only ever open 6 months a year but that's hardly surprising when you think that we were a restaurant located on the Spanish Costa Brava, a holiday coast where tourists simply didn't come to in the winter. So we had no choice in the matter. For the first 14 years El Bulli did not make money, but we believed in something. When success came it was hugely important for us to make time to refect and think, afterall if you don't make that time then you'll never reflect and think. So we decided to close at lunchtime. We lost the equivalent of £6m a year. But it was necessary. Then we decided to get rid of the menu. It got to the point when we had 2 million requests a year for reservations, which was also the point that we knew that we had to change. I said to the press that we were going to take a 3 year sabbatical. And do you know, no-one seemed to believe that we just needed some time out to focus back on creativity. No-one understood when we announced that we were going to launch a new restaurant which would also be a creative foundation and centre. They all thought we were crazy. But that is exactly what we are launching in Cap de Creus. The space will be utterly flexible, think of it like a film set, you're meant to move it all around and change it. We don't want anyone to fall into a routine. So we do things like change the pencils that we use every single year.

We will have three distinct spaces in our new centre - one for reflection, one for brainstorming and one for worksharing in which we will invite in "agitators" from other disciplines around the world to come and give us their point of view. This is about creating dialogue with other disciplines. The whole centre will be sustainable in every way possible, we want to be a reference for the world. We also want to create the most efficient environment possible. Just because you are creative, it's not like it's a divine right. You still have to be efficient. I really admire McDonalds in the way that they function. We take out the trash, we clean the kitchen. But we are also creative. Also I want to think about how best people work  - are you more efficient if you work 5 days and then have 2 days off, or are you better working 10 days and then having 4? Are you better in the morning or the evening? In a group or solo? We need to consider all of that.

We are also creating "Bullipedia" as an online gastronomic resource where you can learn with precision, accumulate knowledge and get inspired. You can think of it like a curated search engine, I like to think of it like a neat and tidy cupboard with a lot of drawers. It will not be sponsored as we want to have absolute freedom, I want to make the decisions. People will pay for it but we are working out the payment model, it's not fair that a young chef pays the same as a large corporation so we are looking at how this will work at the moment. It has to be economically sustainable, that's what the internet revolution has to be about. It's not about giving everything away for free.

It's impossible to do Adria justice with my re-telling of us story. But there are so many elements that I think are hugely inspriational and also hugely applicable for our industry, here are my 5 key take-outs: 

1. Take time to reflect and think  (given the Ferris Beuller quote that this blog is named after, that should be a surprise that I agreee so whole-heartedly with that sentiment)
2. Be prepared to forego short term gains for longer terms success.
3. When designing work spaces flexibility is key- keep changing.
4. Being creative does not mean you're allowed to be an arse.
5. Bring external "agitators" in otherwise you fall into the expected.

I will try and find out if Wayra have a video of the talk that I can post up here.

 

Presenting without slides

I presented tonight at She Says's event on "2020 - imagining the future" event. And a funny thing happened. I didn't present any powerpoint slides.

I present a lot - whether it's at work or at conferences and events. And I always have powerpoints. They're pretty nice powerpoint slides to be fair - big, interesting images, not a ton of words on them but I always have them.

Today I didn't.

There's a true-true reason and a half-true reason about why I didn't have any slides.

The half true reason is that I had 10 minutes to talk to a small audience, so why should I have to have slides? As Jon Steel says more eloquently than I can in his brilliant book Perfect Pitch (read it, read it, read it!), Churchill didn't use powerpoint, Martin Luther King didn't use powerpoint, OJ Simpson's lawyer, who achieved the near-impossible, didn't use powerpoint, so why do we all? I have been doing some work recently with Mark Choueke who was a journalist and now works agency-side at Chime Communications (VCCP's holding company) Mark is a grown up and super smart and until he went agency side he never once had to write a powerpoint slide. So he had to go on powerpoint training. His view was that powerpoint seems to be the currency that the advertising/PR world trade in. How depressing.

The true true reason is that I was going to write my slides last night but the boys didn't want to go to bed and then I figured that I would write them at work, but a client meeting started late and ended late and I just didn't have the time. So although I had written my presentation I had not written any powerpoint slides. A presentation and a powerpoint deck not being the same thing obviously.

So I had no slides. Every other speaker did.

I was speaking last and as I watched the 4 speakers before me I suddenly realised that all of them had to keep stopping to click the computer in order to get to the next slide. I realised that often I was watching the screen more than I was watching them. I also realised that if your slides are in the wrong order than your story gets screwed.

So I stood up and I spoke. And I felt totally exposed, like a child without a much loved security blanket. But once I stopped worrying that the screen behind me was blank and concentrated instead purely on the audience and the story that I wanted to tell them it suddenly all made sense to me. This is the way  that we should be presenting. Unless you have a specific visual that you are referencing and want to share.Why do we always default to powerpoint??

My new resolution is to get myself out of my powerpoint comfort zone more often now. Something that I would urge all of you to try as well.It's not as easy as it looks, but often the right thing isn't always easy.

 

 

6 months in - Eugene and Felix

One of those much cited cliches that you just don't know where the time went, but it's the absolute truth. Suddenly my baby Felix is a little boy and my sqiggling newborn is now a proper baby, I can't quite believe it. It's also amazing to see their little characters develop even at such at early age. Felix is, and always has been, enormously active,. He loves flirting, opening things, making stuff, he's always on the move and very focused. Eugene seems to be the classic second child - chilled, relaxed and mellow, happy to sit back and watch his older brother play the fool.

I'm also getting ready to go back to work, which has its ups and downs. It will be hard to leave the two little ones, but I believe that I am a better mother for having some time away from them and thinking about something other than children, makes for a more balanced extistence and more saner me I think. Happy mum, happy children.

French Children Don't Throw Food...

This book has been getting a huge amount of coverage this year - and I can see why, It's a fantastic read and really taps into a hot issue, namely the art of parenting. French Children Don't Throw Food is written by an American mother of three, Pamela Druckerman, who married a Brit and now lives in Paris. Essentially it's a humorous yet serious look at French parenting compared to British and American parenting. The catalyst for writing it was a lunch at a restaurant with her husband and then 18 month old daughter. She notes that on their table chaos reigned - salt and sugar packets were ripped open, food was picked at and then thrown on the floor and within minutes her daughter was begging to get out of the high chair and run around. It's an image known very well to me and I am sure a lot of other parents. Seated all around them however were French families with children of a similar age happily eating, sitting together and behaving themselves. What, Druckerman wondered, was their secret? What were they doing that resulted in calm, contented children who eat regular food and don't have temper tantrums?

Druckerman started to spend time interviewing mothers, doctors, journalists and teachers and she discovered that there really were marked differences in the way that French mothers approach parenting. As a recent mother of 2 I can attest to the fact that in London middle class parenting is ever so slightly mental - baby yoga, baby salsa, baby sign, baby sensory, baby booters and the list goes on. There feels like there is an enormous pressure to sign your babies and toddlers up to as many classes as possible as early as possible. It can be hard to say that actually you just want your kid to potter around a bit rather than learn Mandarin. I remember waiting in a long line of stressed out mothers at our local swimming pool at 6.45am in order to sign a 4 month old Felix to baby swim class. As I said, it's all a bit mental really.

In Paris apparently there is none  of this obsessive over-parenting. Go to any playground in Paris and you will see lots of children and mothers, but you will never see a mother climbing on the climbing frame, jumping on a trampoline or sliding with her child. Mothers stay around the edge of the playground, children play. It seems that the centre of gravity in France is less child-centric which is not to say that French mothers don't love their children or send them to music classes, dance classes, sport classes, it's just that there seems to be less neurotic worrying about it all and less strict adherence to child-rearing "gurus" like Gina Ford etc.

Druckerman talks about the fact that French children seem to spend more time just being children and learning how to deal with delayed gratification and being bored, a skill that British children with all their numerous classes seem to be losing. There's a famous experiment called the "marshmallow test" that was conducted on 4 and 5 year olds in the late 1960s. In in the experiment the children are shown a marshmallow. The experimenter says that he is going to leave the room and if the child can manage not to eat the marshmallow whilst he is out then he will be rewarded with 2 marshmallows. Only 1 in 3 children managed it. What I found interesting about the test is that there was a follow up 20 years later to see if there was a difference between how good and bad delayers were faring as teenagers. Those who were children who managed not to eat the marshmallow turned out to be better at concentrating and reasoning and did not fall apart under stress unlike the bad delayers. Because French children aren't given't everything the moment that they demand it, her assertion is that they are learning to deal with the fact that the world doesn't revolve around them which then helps them become calmer children.

It's really about finding the right balance, being authoritative without being authoritarian. Although I know that I will never bring up my two boys totally a la francaise,  French Children Don't Throw Food was still hugely interesting and there are a number of parenting tips that I have picked up and put into practise in the last week and they work!

 

A more powerful "Brand You"

I did some work with David Royston-Lee back in 2006 when I had left Naked and was trying to work out where next in terms of my career.  David really made me ask myself some tough questions and work through to some interesting answers.One of the key observations that I made is that the perfect job very rarely exists, you have to create it yourself. So when I started talking to VCCP the job of Head of Digital Strategy did not exist, I was talking to them about a regular Planning position. Toegther with VCCP we then developed a different job spec, one which answered both their business needs and my career requirements. Then after a few years the scope of my job changed again and again we developed a different role, Head of Strategy and Innovation. David was critical to my approach to managing my own career and I have passed his name onto to other colleagues over the years and have no hesitation in recommending him to anyone. David is putting on a series of workshops starting in Febuary and I wanted to highlight them:

.........................
If you:
• Want to enhance your role within your organisation
• Need to clarify where you are going with your life
• Need to revitalise yourself or find more energy and ‘umph’
• Have lost career direction and want to find it again
• Or just want to do an ‘audit’ on ‘me’

Then these workshops are designed for you!

The 4 sessions will run over a month and are planned to run from 6.30 until 8.30pm on each Tuesday from the 7th February until the 28th, incorporating presentations, exercises plus time for discussion… and some ‘homework’ to be done between sessions!
Each participant will also be able to reach David in between meetings.

Dates and subjects are:

• 7th February – Understanding yourself - a personal audit
• 14th February – Identifying your mission – what you want to achieve
• 21st February – Exploring the world according to ‘Brand You’
• 28th February – Managing the challenges ahead - what is stopping you?

Numbers will be limited to a maximum of 12 participants to ensure everyone has the opportunity to be involved, ask questions, raise concerns and discuss the topics fully.

All for a great price of £72 (incl vat) per session (£288.00 in total)
The central London venue is:
The Royal Society of Medicine,
CUHK Room - 3rd Floor
1 Wimpole Street
London W1G 0AE

To enquire or to book, please e-mail: info@partnersinflow.com
or phone David on 07966 202243

Eugene and Felix

A father friend of mine told me that one of the joys of having a second child is watching the relationship build and develop between the children. At the moment Felix is interested but is finding the whole situation of being top dog and suddenly being one of two a bit hard to deal with. He's still so little, it must be tough for them to understand.And actually new born babies aren't very interesting at the start to anyone except for their parents - it's just about crying, feeding and sleeping for the first weeks. I am looking forward to seeing how their relationship grows!

Introducing baby Eugene

3 weeks old today and bloody hell, I had no idea how tough having a newborn and a toddler would be - it's brilliant, but tough tough tough.

And this is the lovely man himself, Eugene Hector Torode Joliot. The photograph capturing one of his rare non-crying, awake moments (there aren't many of them at the moment!)

Felix is interested and as the days go by seems to be growing into his role as the big brother, giving Eugene kisses and helping me with the (frequent) nappy changes.

The thing that amazes me more so this time around is just how little he is. Even in comparison to Felix, Eugene is just so small and delicate.

Now the next thing to start preparing is our first Christmas together as a family - exciting times.

(Photos by Carla Pyke, Custard Cream Photography)