Month note, Jan-Feb 2024

New Year 🕛

I started the new year recovering from a double hernia repair. The pesky things had been bothering me for years, but I had only had a diagnosis for about 18 months. A Christmas operation whilst trying to wrap up a major piece of work wasn’t ideal, but I had to think about the short term pain (literally) for the long term gain.

Everything went to plan and at the start of the month I went back to Leeds Culture Trust for a week or so before heading off for my new adventure with TPXimpact. I wrote a short blog about my motivations to support more organisations with transformation.

My new job marks me returning into paid work five days per week, having mostly worked a four day week since returning from maternity leave in late 2021. So juggling the mum guilt is real. But my little one loves nursery, has heaps of great pals there and I know that it’s the right thing for our family right now. Besides some tiredness, she’s adjusted really well and thrown herself into full time nursery life!

Welcome to TPXimpact 👋

My welcome to TPXimpact has been swell. I’ve pulled together a few notable nuggets about my first few weeks in a Twitter/X thread — I talk about how everyone in our ‘coffee chats’ has put us as people first and the projects second, the informality and how that’s helped settle my nerves and the culture of learning together that’s made it easier to ask for help and contribute. I think these things are really relevant and important for people to consider as they lead transformation programmes.

In a strange but darn right brilliant twist of events, I’ve also found myself working for the same organisation as Antony Haddley again. Ant joined a month ahead of me, so being able to check in and swap notes with him has been invaluable.

Presentation slide with title ‘welcome to the team Sarah’

What I’ve been doing 💻

So far I have visited the Manchester Hub (my local), the Leeds co-working space and our new London HQ. All fab spaces and it’s been a pleasure to meet people in each of them.

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with Polly Cook, who was actually kind enough to speak with me ahead of joining the TPXimpact family and shared her own experience of moving from ‘client side’ into consultancy. Polly leads our Not for Profit portfolio and we share similar passions, so I am really enjoying working with and getting to know her.

Polly has handed over the baton on a new client, so I have been getting to grips with the brief and I am looking forward to leading the team on that project imminently. It’s a user-mapping piece to understand the ‘as is’ of a not-for-profit’s current service experience and where the opportunities for enhancement might be. Nice work with a great purpose and people — what’s not to be excited about!

I’ve also been supporting a bid for some new organisational design work, alongside Sneh Patel and Mikey Roche. I loved this process, and I learned loads from observing the work evolve. I can absolutely relate to Ann’s weeknote 06 though, where she talks about trying to decide whether you’re adding value or not, and the metaphor of trying to join a motorway of drivers who are all driving at 90mph. I think where I’ve been able to add value on bids though is playing the persona of the client.

My buddy Holly Kennedy has been really generous with her time too, helping me navigate through bits and pieces and reassuring me when I feel the jitters of being amongst design royalty!

Speaking of which, it was a thrill to find out a couple of days before my start date that I’d be under the same roof as Jukesie, and a lovely surprise to share my first day with some familiar faces; Ann Kempter and Louise Mushet. Louise and I worked together when I was at JRF and she was with Snook. The look on our faces when we were in the same ‘people induction call’ was hilarious, followed by the almost identical ‘I know you!’ messages to each other. I am hoping we can collaborate soon!

I have almost finished reading Multiplied, TPXimpact’s book, written by Ben Holliday and I think I’ll jot down some key learnings when I’m done. I’m really looking forward to working more with Ben and appreciated him mentioning me joining the team in his recent month note. I think this is another great example of an action that has supported my onboarding and made me feel welcome.

Golden nuggets 💎

• Alex knows the best coffee shops around HQ and writes brilliant blogs.
• Tash leads our ‘learning design’ work and her programming of content has been superb and massively supported my induction.
• I joined Bluesky.
• A highlight last week was Joe asking people if they could spare some time to crit some of his thinking on an incredibly gnarly central government project. I loved how people rallied around and were so open and generous with their time and thoughts. To see the amazing work that Joe was doing, and then hear the in-depth discussions from a cross-section of colleagues was just a treat, and another nod to me being in the right place.

The personal bit 🤒

Unfortunately whilst I was working in the Manchester Hub I received the news that my Dad has skin cancer. He’s had cancer before, and in theory this ‘isn’t as bad’. So I am putting it into context and know there will be a swift procedure to sort it soon.

It’s also been a tricky week in my house as my husband was struck down with what we’re pretty sure was Covid, and I landed a nasty infection too! So managing health, work, the snow, childcare etc has been a stretch…but I think we’re coming out the other side now.

One more song 🕸️

Last week saw the final release of LEEDS 2023 ONLINE go live. It was important to us to ship a final release that would serve the needs of users post 2023. The vision for the ‘online legacy’ was that people could find what they were looking for, feel what it was like, and benefit from what we left behind.

This vision led us to this release, and to support the creation of content such as the LEEDS 2023 Wikimedia page.

The site now is very stripped back, it doesn’t house the plethora of services developed for ‘delivery year’ but instead it encapsulates the story of the year, through content and data and will serve as a reference and research points for many years to come.

Bonus point 👇

Consultant and content creator Gem Turner appeared on Sky News to talk about the lack of consistent UX in ticketing journeys, making most live entertainment inaccessible for people with access requirements. This is something that people across LEEDS 2023 worked really to avoid, baking accessibility into the design from the get-go and an area I’d love to do more work in (as clearly there is lots more to be done!). The clip is great, insightful and here.

Thanks for reading 🙂