Y Tho?

Have you ever used a communal room? Y’know a shared space, maybe a storage room where you keep handy things like stationery, pens, paper, loo roll, that kind of thing?

Have you considered what makes a nice shared space? Is it clean and tidy? One where you can easily find what you want?

Now, think of the worst shared space you’ve encountered. Okay, maybe the second worst if that gave you a panic attack. Not so nice is it? Crap all over the floor. Pens in the pencil slots, and is that a stuffed parrot wedged into between the shelves?! How does anyone find anything? Do we need to go spelunking?!

Hey, maybe it didn’t start out as a mess. Maybe we started with a few unenforced rules and good intentions. No matter how it started, it sure ended up in a messy way.

Data isn’t any different. It’s a shared resource used by everyone in your organisation. Yes, everyone uses data in one way or another! No matter how you cut it, dice it, slice it, or stack it, no one fully controls the data they create, manage, or use. So sharing is a thing.

When it comes to shared resources, we need ground rules so it doesn’t end in tears. We need to know how to keep our data tidy, we need to be able to get at it when we need it, and we need to trust it and fix it when it’s broken, wrong, or just plain bad.

We can’t do all of that in any reasonably sized enterprise on a wing and a prayer. We need tools to help us, especially when we’re dealing with data at scale. We need people who know what’s what to keep an eye on things. We need experts to steer us towards pragmatic solutions. We need a form of governance, data governance.

Why? Because when our data is a mess, we enter the data despair cycle. A place where we don’t trust the data so we don’t use it and because we don’t use it, it never gets better. Since we need data for lots of important stuff, from making decisions to making AI, from automating stuff to understanding stuff, bad data is literally money down the drain.

That’s not the only reason we need governance around data. There’s also the legal stuff. You know, regulations and the like we need to comply with so we don’t get our wrists slapped, wreck our organisation’s reputation, or go to jail.

Data is a valuable resource and a shared asset. We need Data Governance to make sure the people in and around our organisation can keep it useful, make it usable, and to put it to use.

In summary: Data Governance is an approach, using processes and technology, to ensure that people manage and use data safely and effectively.

An organisation is a decision-making factory.

“A house is a machine for living in. – Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture ch. 1 (1923)

“An organisation is a decision-making factory. It refines information and expertise into valuable products and services, otherwise it falters” – Edafe Onerhime, in bed (2022)

Join me to learn about my workflow for crafting presentations, tips for presenting well, and having fun while doing so.

Hello, my name is Edafe Onerhime. I’m an Executive Director and Data Governance Architecture Lead at JP Morgan Chase.

In 2021, I gave 21 successful, well attended, insightful talks. Talks I learned a lot from and based on their feedback, talks my audience appreciated too.

How did I do it?

#KnowThyself

Before I dive into the tips, let’s get to know you – the speaker. The most important starting point for giving lots of great talks is to know thyself. By that, I mean understand what your motivations are as a speaker. What do you want to get out of speaking? Do you want to have fun? Build your platform? Exchange ideas? Find a community of like-minded people? Travel to exotic locales?

Understanding your motivations, or understanding that you don’t understand them yet and need to find them is crucial. Why? Because this will be your north star – the point towards which you build as you craft, deliver, and improve your skills as a speaker.

Next, what kind of speaker are you? There’s more than one way to be a great speaker. You can be motivating, fun, charismatic, a deep diver, all while bringing your audience along with you. It’s wonderful to aspire to be the best you can be, it can be tough to recreate your personality completely. Find the speaking persona you are most comfortable with and keep improving your delivery.

Finally, what do you want to be known for? Leadership? Diversity? Technology expertise? More than one thing?

I’m primarily known for my interest in leadership, data, and diversity with a lens on decolonisation. After a few years of delivering talks, I had enough evidence under my belt to decide what I enjoyed speaking about, am passionate about, and what my audience want to hear.

Arriving at this nexus gets you in the zone to deliver more talks without losing quality.

#AboutMe

Here’s my north star.

What do I want to get out of speaking?

I want to inform, delight, and motivate. I want people to take action after my talks and I want them to be excited or intrigued by the topic. I want to make it easy for them to take the next step or steps.

What kind of speaker am I?

I see myself as collaborative and informal. I was raised in an African tradition of call and response. 

Have you ever heard “Can I get an Amen?” – you, the audience, become part of the story. In essence, I am a story teller who wants you to be part of the story we share.

Finally, what do I want to be known for?

I want to be known for data, leadership, and decolonisation of data and technology. I’d love to be known for cats, I’m an avid cat mum, but I’m not a cat expert – yet. So although I love cats, I haven’t built my speaking career around our feline overlords.

So – fellow speakers, how well do you know yourselves?

#Workflow

Now we know ourselves, we know what we want, we’ve spent time delivering talks to refine that learning, what’s next?

Workflows. A good workflow is a joy forever. It means you can turn around a talk quickly and easily. When I say workflow, I mean how you get the work for speaking done: the process of crafting, practising, delivering, and refining your talks as well as the tools you use to do it. 

You aren’t starting from scratch each time. Why? Because crafting, practising, delivering, and refining talks takes time and effort.

A good workflow minimises the admin so you can focus on the content. I like to think of the admin around a talk as the container and the talk itself as the content.

As a speaker, I want to change the content up as and when I desire, without changing the container too much.

Your workflow will be determined by how you work best. There is no one true way. Some people are motivated by the prospect of failure and love writing their slides last minute. Some plan meticulously. Some people deliver the same talk at every event, others want to deliver a new talk each time.

However you do it, find a workflow that works for you. You’ll want to review and refine it – a lot at the start and then less often as you become comfortable and competent.

#Slidedecks

Before I dive in, it’s important to understand how I use slides. This will help you understand my workflow better and adapt it for yourself.

I call my slides, my slidedeck. A slide deck is a pitch deck or a presentation deck – essentially a set of related slides.

I use slides as a visual aid for my audience and reminder for me. The points on the slide help the audience orientate themselves to where we are in the story and follow me on the journey. I rarely create slides with a lot of text, because you’re here to join my story, not read my deck.

After a talk, I like to share my slidedeck and narrative, including a bibliography of useful links. These may be things I referred to during my talk or things I found useful as I researched and developed my talk. I tend to link to articles I’ve written or reviewed that expand the points I covered and continue the story.

You needn’t do this – but if you recall my north star? I want people to take action and I want to make it easy for them to do so.

Now on to my workflow.

#MyFlow

Complete a know-feel-do on my audience

For every presentation, I want to deliver the best talk to my audience. To ensure I understand them, I  break down a ‘what’s in it for me?’ for my audience – (WII.FM) to tune me in to three categories: information, emotion and action. At the end of my presentation:

• What do I want my audience to know?
• How do I want them to feel?
• What do I want them to do?

I work on this till it’s clear then think about how best to communicate my message using a message structure.

Choose a message structure

It’s easy to lose your audience when you don’t set their expectations or they can’t remember why they’re there. A message structure helps me prepare so I can be present and my message has structure. This makes communication more enjoyable and memorable.

Matt Abrahams, professor of communication at Stanford University shares three communication structures to place content into:

1. Compare – Contrast – Conclude: List things in common, things that are different, then identify your conclusion.
2. Problem – Solution – Benefit: State what the problem is, how you solve it, and finally the benefit to the person. Alternatively, Opportunity – Solution – Benefit as above but start with the opportunity.
3. What – So What – Now What: Matt’s (and my) favourite is to start with what you’re talking about (the product, the idea, the process), why it’s important to people you’re talking to, then next steps – what can you do with that information. This structure is perfect for agendas, email, getting feedback, delivering presentations and more.

Find inspiration

I look for inspiration in previous decks or on Canva. I prefer to stand on the shoulders of giants. I reduce the number of topics I talk about, I reuse slides and tweak them, and I repurpose my content for each audience. This means I have a core of talks in each area I’m passionate about that I apply these principles to. For example, last year, I presented My Superhero Origin Story to Government Digital Services (GDS), a central government department in the UK. This year, I shared a talk about Transformation When the Stakes Are High – Getting to a High Performing, Data-Aware Culture – in One Piece. This is a mashup between the previous presentation and Leadership: Communicating well when the stakes are high article published in 2020 and lessons learned since.

Develop materials

At this stage, it’s pretty straightforward thanks to all my preparation. I write an outline and start a bibliography – remember I want people to take action, so I share links to make that easy. I also create or adapt slides to fit my outline and write the content as speakers notes.

Practise, deliver, get feedback

Practice makes perfect they say, but in reality, practicing bad habits isn’t the path to perfection. Practicing with good feedback will help you perfect your talk. I time my talk, and fine tune after sharing with friends who aren’t familiar with the topic, so they can highlight where I’ve lost my audience. You can gain confidence with speaking through practicing with others, for example, with a group like Toastmasters. I then deliver my talk and always, always ask for feedback.

Publish materials

My final step is to publish my speakers notes and bibliography. I share on social media and with anyone who’s asked for updates when my materials come out. By doing so, I tend to get great feedback and opportunities to deliver my talk to new audiences.

#TakeAction

Thank you for joining me on this journey. Next, I’d love for you to:

• Visit my website ekoner.com to find my previous talks.
• Connect with me on LinkedIn and read my articles on communication and my featured articles.
• Share your workflow with me!

#ThankYou

Hello!

• Hello, I’m Edafe Onerhime and I’m so happy to be here.
• Today, I share my journey in data governance: building and leading high performing, data-aware cultures that deliver transformative business outcomes from investment in data and AI, sustainably.
• I love talking about data, design, and culture when we’re having a conversation.
• This is a collaboration. Use the chat feature to ask questions and let me know what you’re thinking.
• I’ll be asking questions too – and not just to make sure you’re awake!

We Live in Interesting Times

• “There is a curse. They say: May you live in interesting times.” – Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
• The turmoil in the world right now (post-pandemic rebuilding, economic disruption, military action) can be seen, as in this mythological curse, as both a challenge and an opportunity – a time when the stakes are high.
• And I say this, as someone who has been deeply affected by recent events. Family bereavement, uncertainty, illness – I don’t take any of these things lightly. They can, however, be a signal of or for change.
• A chance to make things right.

Who am I?

• My name is Edafe. You can practice pronouncing my name and discover my pronouns (she/her) at http://name.pn/edafe-onerhime
• I’m a technologist and data specialist, speaker, mentor, coach, and author with 25 years of experience in technology.
• My focus is making an impact with data: data strategy, data governance, and data standards.
• My motto is Data + Design + Culture.
• I’m passionate about data leadership.
• I lead data governance in a global financial institution.I live in Glasgow, Scotland with my wife and cat, Fergus
• In the next 30 minutes, I’ll share how I came to lead high performing teams, build data-aware cultures, when the high-stakes are high, sustainably by reducing burnout.

Disclaimer

• Everything I share is about my personal journey.
• It doesn’t reflect the views of my employer nor the organisations I have relationships with.
• You can get in touch with me on twitter @ekoner or LinkedIn.
• I can’t promise to answer every question or reply to every message. I’m always happy to hear from you and share with my networks, with your permission.

What does this mean?

• Before I dive into why you’d want high performing teams who are data-aware, I want to make sure you understand how I use these words.
• Matt Abrahams, professor of communications at Stanford University, says: “Never lose your tour group“.
• This advice was the most important takeaway fro om his years leading tour groups around Stanford’s massive campus.
• And these words still resonate for anyone giving a talk. They are also important for people who care about data and culture – what do the words we use mean and how do the people around us understand them?
• Let’s talk definitions.

Data

• There are many definitions of data and most people vaguely have an idea of what data is – or are. I’m agnostic.
• For me, data (in a business context) is anything we care enough about to record in analogue or digital form.
• It can include text and numbers, facts and figures, bits and bytes, representing images, sounds, and tangible or intangible objects.
• At the level I work, data and information are tightly aligned. This might be different in your context or at your organisation.
• When talking with others about data, it’s useful to define what data means for you.

Data Governance

• I see data governance, then, as how we plan, control, and get oversight of data used in our organisations.
• That means not just having good standards for control, but planning how we implement and use policies, put into place procedures to help us have better control.
• Governance can sound like a barrier, even though we might intend for it to be guardrails. So we must also consider adding speed boosts – ways to make it fast, easy, and pain-free for people to do the right thing.
• That might mean learning and development, roles like data stewards to enforce rules and data champions to advocate for better data. It might mean embedding policy and rules into our tools to make life easier.
• And finally, we need oversight, so we know what people are doing (rightly or wrongly) with data and the impact our efforts are having on our mission, people, and culture.
• With good data governance, you have useful, usable data that’s widely in use.
• In other words, good data governance can lead to a data-aware culture.
• A high-performing culture can also make it easier to embed good data governance – more on that later.

Transformation

• Transformation is change – on steroids. To transform, is to make radically different.
• No wonder change can become a word that strikes fear in the heart of people trying to get the work done.
• Not again! Not yet another change.
• Transformation can give us huge benefits but it comes at a cost.
• I’ll come to why that cost doesn’t always pay off, and what I’ve learnt about balancing the scales.

High Stakes

• Let’s end with high stakes – involving serious risks in case of failure.
• The pandemic was a high-stakes global event. Everything shut down in a way we hadn’t seen in modern times.
• You could go as far as saying the pandemic was transformational.
• It certainly got people thinking about how they live and work.
• Overnight, many of us began to work from home – or live at work as some people coined it.
• Some people found immense freedom while others found it hellish – sometimes even the same people at different points
• What was the one thing the pandemic drove home for me? That a lot of the reasons we shy away from change are less concrete than I’d originally thought.
• It also showed me the benefit of embracing a risky move and how to manage and build on high stakes implementations in my professional practice.
• The question that coalesced for me is: How might we take advantage of high stakes events to build data governance and the cultures that support them? This brings us full circle (and hopefully together) to the rest of today’s journey together – Getting to a High Performing, Data-Aware Culture – in One Piece.
• What did the pandemic drive home for you?

Why does this matter?

• Why would recent events change my professional practice?
• When it comes to data governance, I’ve been fairly risk-averse.
• I’m not a fan, for instance, of buying tools to fix people-shaped problems. Investment in data and AI is expensive, so I like to approach the problems of implementing and sustaining good data, thoughtfully.
• This isn’t to say I don’t personally take risks. After nearly 15 years at the front line of technology as a database developer, data architect, full-stake Business Information specialist, I went back to university to read a masters in Business Intelligence full time. No income, no promise of a job on the other end. Big risk, big reward.
• Prior to that, I quit my job in Bolton and moved to Leeds in Yorkshire on 3-month contract to start afresh. Again, big risks, massive rewards – I met my wife in Leeds.
• I moved to Glasgow, Scotland from Yorkshire to head data in a central government department after years of consulting. Less of a risk, but definitely a pay cut.
• In my personal life, I’m a planner and a perfectionist. I constantly have to remind myself that things can be “good enough”.
• My wife teases me that when we go on holiday, I have everything planned – we will have fun between 2 and 4. It’s true!
• So the pandemic for me, represented what the economists behind Freakonomics call a natural experiment. One in agility.
• Reader, I was not agile and I burned out.
• As I recovered, I started to think about resilience, agility, and burn out in a whole different way.
• And that brings me to why high stakes and high performing teams can be a game changer for data governance.
• Let’s take a look at some of the stakes.

The cost of transformation

• The cost of tranformation is high but the outcomes are mixed.
• A survey of 85 Fortune 1000 or industry leading companies found 99% of companies invested in data and AI but only 29.2% reported transformational outcomes.
• The Journey to Becoming Data-Driven: A Progress Report on the State of Corporate Data Initiatives, does have a small sample size, so apply the appropriate level of scrutiny.
• It aligns with my own findings, however, remember: “We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.” – Frank A. Clark.
• Bias is real and your own context in your own organisation is the most important measure to consider.
• So how might we do better?

How might we do better?

• In 1965, Bruce Tuckman coined the phrase “forming, storming, norming, and performing”.
• His paper, “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.”, describes the steps a team takes from starting as strangers to performing effectively – the basis of a high performing team.
• A high performing team is one that delivers consistently at a high level. They are aligned, diverse, and inclusive, with strong values of trust and respect. They communicate and adapt well, by focusing on engagement, healthy conflict, and communication. This creates a sense of psychological safety and supports flexible, innovative, and agile decision making.
• As I started learning about high performing teams, I saw alignment between the culture that produces and sustains them with the culture needed for data awareness.
• A data-aware culture has cultural alignment, operates with trust, provides democratic access to data and insights, encourages agile use of data to support decision-making and has appropriately literate employees – people who can read, understand, interpret, find, and argue with data.
• To get to a data-aware culture, one route is to align that culture change with producing high performing teams. This culture is one that is resilient when the stakes are high and provides an environment that is sustainable – burnout is reduced.
• And now I’ll leave you with five tips to get from where you are now to nirvana.

1. Move fast, don’t break things (or people) – When an opportunity arises to move quickly, take it. When you do so, take care of your people too.
2. Plan for alignment, alignment, alignment – multiple streams of change are exhausting for the people experiencing them – how might you better align your efforts? Yes, it’s more work for you, but the pay off is more streamlined delivery.
3. Review, reflect, recharge – Reviewing and reflecting are key to learning from the work you’re doing. Afterwards, remember to recharge.
4. Be proactive, not reactive – When things are on fire, it can feel impossible to create space to be proactive. Take whatever measures you can to make sure the fires are put out enough to build in foundational work. Work that let’s you be proactive.
5. Look at high stakes as an opportunity to experiment – learn, grow, and transform

In closing

Quotes that resonated

We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.

Frank A. Clark

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear .

Walter Lippmann

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

Reading and watching that shaped this talk.

1. Interesting Times: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?270
2. How to pronounce my name: https://name.pn/edafe-onerhime
3. Twitter: https://twitter.com/ekoner
4. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekoner/
5. Matt Abrahams: “How to Make Your Communication Memorable”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsr4yrSAIAQ
6. Journey to Becoming Data-Driven: A Progress Report on the State of Corporate Data Initiatives: https://iscdo.org/the-journey-to-become-data-driven-a-progress-report/
7. Developmental Sequence in Small Groups: https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Dynamics/Tuckman_1965_Developmental_sequence_in_small_groups.pdf
8. Data Tells Us That A Data Culture Matters: https://www.forbes.com/sites/googlecloud/2020/09/17/data-tells-us-that-a-data-culture-matters/?sh=42bc9c237c13
9. 14 Characteristics Of High-Performing Teams: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2020/09/16/14-characteristics-of-high-performing-teams/?sh=1ba8107816c6
10. Why does culture sometimes evolve via sudden bursts of innovation? https://theconversation.com/why-does-culture-sometimes-evolve-via-sudden-bursts-of-innovation-51092
11. Tuckman’s stages of group development (illustration): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Team-development-stages.png#mw-jump-to-license
12. How six companies are using technology and data to transform themselves: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/how-six-companies-are-using-technology-and-data-to-transform-themselves
13. Decade Of Investment In Big Data And AI Yield Mixed Results: https://www.forbes.com/sites/randybean/2021/01/03/decade-of-investment-in-big-data-and-ai-yield-mixed-results/
14. Pandemic ‘transformative’ for digital health sector: https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/pandemic-transformative-for-digital-health-sector
15. Digital transformation after the pandemic: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/digital-transformation-after-pandemic
16. Organisational culture and cultural change (CIPD): https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/culture/working-environment/organisation-culture-change-factsheet
    

As part of Pass the Mic writing project, I’ll be honing my writing skills with STV, Women in Journalism Scotland and others. Watch out for more throughout 2022 and something big in Autumn!

With thanks to Talat Yaqoob FRSE and #PassTheMic

“And it turns out that generating our own novel ideas helps us recognize value in other people’s novel ideas.”

Matt Abrahams, No Freaking Speaking

What does it mean to be African in the future? How will that affect Black culture, technology, and the future of work? I explore African and Afro-futurism with the Manchester Futurists.

Hello, my name is Edafe Onerhime. I’m a technologist. I specialise in making an impact with data. I help people change how they think about and use data to make decisions and build products. My motto is ‘Data + Design + Culture’. I believe that culture influences what data we collect and use, and the data we have available influences our culture in turn. I live and work in Glasgow, Scotland, with my wife and cat.

Now, I’m not an expert in African and Afro-futurism, more an enthusiastic consumer of creative works. I’ve been fortunate enough to discover the movement early. Over the next hour, come with me as I explore what the flourishing African and Afro-futurism movement means to me: to be Black, gifted, and represented.

What Even Is African & Afro-Futurism?

At its heart, Afro-futurism is the projection of Black cultures and Black experiences into the future. Afro-futurism flourishes in Black art, spirituality, theatre, writing, philosophy, technology, and more. You’ll find a tendency for the movement to be dominated by North Americans.

So Janelle Monae’s trio of studio albums (The ArchAndroid, The Electric Lady, Dirty Computer) might come to mind when you think of music. Marvel’s Black Panther is an easy example to reach for in graphic novels and films.

Africanfuturism diverges when it sheds the dominance of North American culture and focuses unapologetically on the African experiences. Nigerian-American sci-fi/fantasy writer and professor Nnedi Okorafor defines Africanfuturism in her essay “Africanfuturism Defined”. She focuses on Africanfuturism as a sub-category of science fiction and Africanjujuism as a subcategory of fantasy. Today, those labels, like many labels, are re-tread and redefined by us, the audience, and the producers of the works we love.

We’re not here to argue about labels and what falls into these categories. We’re here to talk about what it’s like to experience African & Afro-Futurism, in my case as an African, an immigrant, and a queer woman.

A Black Philosophy of Hope

Both Afro-futurism and Africanfuturism to me are about hope: A hope for the future. A future where Africa’s children and her diaspora are unfettered by liabilities of the past — be that historical or modern colonisation. It’s a future where you as a Black person are represented in all of your Blackness by default.

Let’s explore the ‘by default’ a little more. For years when reading my preferred genres (science fiction, fantasy, magical realism), I’d been indoctrinated to expect characters to be white by default. Black characters tended to be in the minority and identified by their skin colour — usually something food-related like cafe au lait or chocolate and very little else. White characters were rarely described as white — it was simply implied that they were.

Around 2005, I read Anansi Boys by the English author Neil Gaiman, when it struck me: the main character was Black! I was amazed. I went back to the start of the book and carefully re-read to see if his colour was mentioned anywhere. No, it was pretty subtle. I mean, the clue was in the name. Anansi is the trickster god of West Africa. I knew him from stories. I still hadn’t put it together because of the ‘white by default’ thinking that accompanied my fantasy genre reading. It got me thinking — what else is out there? What’s written by people who look like me?.

We often hear the saying attributed to the cyberpunk writer Bill Gibson “The future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed”. Before, I’d think this meant the future hadn’t reached this place or that place geographically. Now I ask who has this vision of the future and who is or isn’t benefitting from it?

So that, in a nutshell, was how I began seeking out afro-futurism, then African futurism. My search led me through science fiction and fantasy to the art and music in this movement. While my interest is mainly in music and fiction, you can find examples in other creative areas.

Let me know what made you pause and think, what you enjoyed and who else I should add to my bookmarks: Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism bookmarked. You can reach me on twitter: @ekoner.

I started with a plan…

Having closed out the soil data standards report with CAB International, I was free to take on a few new things. Here’s what I planned for the week:

• Fit for the future: vision, strategy, roadmap & governance for a data infrastructure product.
• Navigating data strategy: How to get to outcomes-driven data maturity from wherever you are now.
• Data, Tech & Black communities — Making data & technology a positive impact on U.K. Black communities — with Tracey Gyateng and Ade Adewunmi. Rounding out our support team is the lovely Mollie Hanley.

Keeping on top of all of that (and having a personal life in pandemic) isn’t easy but it can be doable. Many years ago Jeni Tennison recommended:

1. A method: Time Blocking
2. A book: How to have a good day by Caroline Webb

Both worked wonders for me.

For time blocking, there are lots of ways to do this but in essence: my calendar is my to-do list. If it’s not planned in there, it isn’t happening. My calendar looks something like this:

We’re all different, so you’ll likely find your “Just Organised Enough” looks different from mine. If you have the capacity, How to have a good day is a useful resource. Caroline Webb handily explains the psychology behind her recommendations.

Some things went well, others… didn’t

Things don’t always go to plan. So what went well in my week?

• Planning with clients was a breeze. More on that below.
• Refining theories of change with Ade Adewunmi and Tracey Gyateng leaves me feeling like my brain has been hugged, in a good way.
• Getting paid promptly is always nice!
• Organising all of the things — I now have media, toolkits, documents, projects, and an archive folder. I feel on top of things size I sorted out my tool stack.
• In March, I’ll be giving expert advice on “high-value” #Covid-19 data, standards, and taxonomies. Readiness, response, recovery, and reform also needs gender and race equity. Discover curated resources in my bookmarks: https://raindrop.io/collection/16264843

It wasn’t always plain sailing:

• 2021 insomnia got worse and really disruptive which meant…
• Many things cancelled for self-care..

Useful things I did this week #Productivity

That’s nice that: I’ve been getting to grips with Canva Team and it is paying off — we did a quick branding exercise to improve the image diversity. I love the illustrations from https://www.blackillustrations.com/ including the disability super pack. I highly recommend them to support Black illustrators. You can even say you’re doing it for #BlackHistoryMonth (but seriously, support them).

Learning is fun: You know that feeling when you get to apply something you were excited to learn? This week, I’ll be putting John Cutler’s North Star Playbook to practical use. How will it pan out for a data standard product? Guess I’ll find out!

Come back anytime: I like to dust off useful material again and again. Sometimes I learn something new, others I refine my toolkit. With 7 workshops coming up, I’m deep in planning. A Pocket Guide: Effective Workshops by Alison Coward is helping.

And finally!

I love this so much, I hope you find it useful to visualise all the complex or dense things.