This weeknote comes to you from Finland, where at the weekend they marked Tove Jansson Day. Fitting, as I seem to be living my own Moomin arc: part wandering, part nesting, occasionally hiding from the drama of the wider world.

A quiet week of admin, book-wrangling, and a festival… with just enough adventure to justify another lonkero.

This week at work

A pretty quiet one on the consulting front, which meant I could catch up on all the unglamorous-but-necessary stuff: clearing the admin backlog, wrangling receipts for the accounts, and making a dent in planning for the next quarter. The kind of work that never makes the highlight reel, but keeps the lights on.

The book continues its slow, steady march forward. This week was less about sprinting through word counts and more about wrestling with structure, reshuffling chapters, and chasing down examples that will actually hold up in print. Still counts as writing, even if a lot of it was moving things around rather than adding new paragraphs.

Also submitted a proposal for a potentially interesting project. It’s early days, but if it comes off, it’ll be one of those “clear the decks” pieces of work. Fingers crossed.

And somewhere in between, I’ve been inching along on the side project, in that oddly satisfying stage where it’s all post-it notes, loose ends, and the occasional “ooh, that could work” scribble in the margins.

Also this week

I adore visiting new places. Getting lost down unfamiliar streets, trying things I can’t pronounce, seeing the world through someone else’s lens. Which is why it’s slightly odd that I keep finding myself back in Finland.

This is my fourth summer here, lured by music, food, and the friends I’ve somehow collected along the way. For someone who’s ticked off 83 countries and counting, coming here feels less like an adventure and more like pulling on a favourite jumper — familiar, cosy, and just the right fit.

Turns out even wanderlust likes a regular haunt.

This week also brought the sad news that my former colleague and friend, Raphaelle Heaf, passed away at the far-too-young age of 42. She was smart, kind, and endlessly curious. One of those people who made work better simply by being there. She’ll be very much missed.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

A few things I’ve read this week have me thinking about a hardening of workplace culture — and what that means for comms.

The headlines aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy. AT&T’s CEO told 100,000 employees: come back to the office five days a week, or consider whether you still belong here. Chevron’s CEO opened his cost-cutting era by telling staff to be less nice to each other. The tone from the top is getting frostier; culture more clinical. Empathy is out, efficiency is in.

And it’s not just leadership. On TikTok, Gen Z are pushing back hard — clear-eyed about boundaries, unromantic about “work family,” and entirely unwilling to play along with performative loyalty.

That leaves internal comms somewhere in the middle. We used to be the warm hug of the organisation; now we’re the polite bouncer at the door. More often than not, our job is to deliver messages that boil down to “shape up or ship out,” but dressed in a way that won’t tank the Glassdoor score.

Enterprise social — once the place for connection — now feels riskier. Less community, more caution. Fewer conversations, more calculation. And if that’s the cultural weather, we have to ask: how should our tone, channels, and role adapt? If the rules of the game have changed, the storytellers need to catch up too.

📺 Watching

Picked Slow Horses back up. River Cartwright’s continued survival is starting to feel like it belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s still an enjoyable watch. All grubby espionage, sharp dialogue, and Gary Oldman looking like he’s just rolled out of a bin.

📚 Reading

Picked up Powerful by Patty McCord this week, on Ed Greig’s recommendation. McCord, Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, makes the case for ditching the comforting fictions of corporate life — like “we’re a family” — in favour of radical honesty, accountability, and treating employees as adults. It’s about building high-performing teams by being crystal clear on expectations, constantly developing skills, and letting go when the fit’s no longer right.

In the current cultural weather (with CEOs swapping empathy for efficiency and employees setting firmer boundaries) it reads less like a provocation and more like a playbook. McCord’s world is one where trust comes from transparency, not perks; and where directness is seen as respect, not rudeness. Which, if we are indeed in a cooling climate, might be the reality comms has to get comfortable communicating.

🎧 Listening

Over the weekend I went to my second festival of the year, Helsinki’s Flow Festival. It’s a completely different vibe to last month’s Down The Rabbit Hole. Less woodland whimsy, more post-industrial chic, set on an old power plant site just a short metro hop from the city centre.

Highlights:

• FKA Twigs: part art installation, part acrobatics, part fever dream
• Little Simz: razor-sharp, commanding, and somehow making a massive crowd feel intimate
• Burna Boy: pure charisma and unstoppable rhythm; had the whole place moving
• Underworld (yes, again): euphoric nostalgia, still as thrilling as the first time
• Fontaines DC: brooding, punchy, and gloriously loud
• Charli XCX: pop chaos in the best possible way

Disappointments:

• Khruangbin: gorgeous on record, but live it drifted into background music territory
• Air: Moon Safari nostalgia trip derailed by dodgy sound for the first few songs, and no Beth Hirsch vocals, which left it all feeling a bit flat

Travel

A few more days in Helsinki, then home briefly before a whole week in London — which, for me, counts as practically moving in. I’ll be hiding out in the Goldsmiths and Senate House libraries wrestling with the book, but I can be lured out with the promise of caffeine. If you’re around 17–22 August, let’s plot, gossip, or just complain about the Northern line.

Look for the person mainlining coffee and passive-aggressively guarding a plug socket.

This week in photos