I remember seeing a medieval illustration of what they imagined an elephant might look like, having never seen one and just relying on hearsay and travellers tales. As you might guess, the animal looked pretty bizarre. Well, my first week in my new job has felt a bit like our leader has been told what an ideal team looks like without ever having had to create one, or work in one, herself. So she thinks we need a Vision, and a Strapline, and we need to look at Enablers and Blockers, and do teambuilding exercises to get to know one another etc. Which sounds great on paper. The reality is being sent away as a small sub-group with just 45 minutes to come up with a Vision and a Strapline, without being told what those look like or why they are important (I of course have been exposed to these in the corporate world, but for many of my fellow civil servants this was their first experience of such things). One of our group hurriedly googled what these new things were and read out a short summary, then we randomly jotted down words like 'collaborative' and 'creative' and 'challenge' (with our over-worked under-informed deputy leader desperately writing things down and going 'ooo, that's a good word' etc) - before we returned to make our unimpressive report to the main group, which itself was running out of time so our output has apparently (and deservedly) vanished without a trace.
We've had a week of similar sessions: either for the full team (which were great for me, no cameras on so I've been knitting on the Brodgar mitts, working on my Bucks point lace edging, and practicing my kumihimo braiding) or equally pointless smaller sessions. I'm not really complaining because I've had a pretty relaxing week without having to do any actual work. This coming week we will start taking some real work, but I'm not sure how that's going to go because some of the underpinning IT structure hasn't been put in place yet. The most interesting issue is that we're all from different office locations, and have all been trained to do the same things in different ways, and of course we all think 'our' way is the best way and other offices aren't doing it properly (which they aren't because my office does it properly :) ) so I forecast a few rocky roads ahead as we try to hammer out a consensus on what and how we will actually do things. But I'm still pleased, it's got me away from my previous dull and miserable team and has been a nice change of pace, it's nice to make a fresh start and talk to some different people.
I finished the pink dress and turned to my Janet Clare BOM quilt blocks, putting up all the blocks I had sewn onto the design wall, coyping the layout from the magazine. Obviously there were some gaps where I had chosen not to make, or hadn't got round to making, some of the monthly blocks. I realised that the designer's layout (as shown in last week's post) was alternating 'picture theme' blocks with pieced blocks. I found my more literal mind felt it was important that the boats be in front of the beach huts, and the seagulls should be above the boats, and the fish should be underneath all of those. So I started rearranging and ended up with my picture theme blocks in the middle two rows, and my pieced blocks in the outer rows like this:
So it looked like I needed three more picture theme blocks and one pieced block. I started looking online for ideas and found a picture of a starfish block (from a bag pattern), and got the idea of downloading clipart for a sea anchor. I had a look on my old BlockBase programme by Barbara Brackman for marine-related block themes and of course found Storm at Sea. From the magazine patterns I decided to make the Map of Britain block and the Nautical Flags block. So after a few days of cutting and sewing, and some rearranging, I now have this layout:
We actually got out of the house today and drove over to Sywell Country Park, on the site of an Edwardian drinking water reservoir. There are some interesting old brick structures left from its industrial days, and a path all around the sprawling outline of the reservoir of about 3.5 miles in length. We went all the way around, and apart from navigating past a few groups of Covidiots hogging the path, it was a very pleasant (albeit windy and a little rainy) walk which felt really good for us both mentally and physically. This picture is taken near the entrance, the reservoir itself stretches far off to the upper right in two long tributaries, and most of the path is through woodland. There was a tearoom doing takeaways only, a playground and some interesting history information boards. In some parts of the walk, with only swans and cormorants for company, it felt like you were really in the wilds. Have you had a change of scene lately?
1 comment:
Oh dear, that does sound funny about having to create the vision etc. We seem to spend a lot of time doing things like that! Have you got on to Belbin team roles yet?! ;-)
I hope your move will pay off in the end though, I find it's usually better to be seen as the person who has chosen to do something, rather than getting swept up into something you don't want to do!
Sywell looks like a lovely day out.
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