This week’s update comes to you live from Bucharest, fuelled by pastrami, palaces, and yet another chance to indulge my not-at-all-unhealthy interest in dark history.

I’m trying not to compare every client challenge to a diplomatic standoff with Vlad the Impaler—but some weeks do feel like they need a pointy solution.

This week at work

A week of three halves. Or maybe thirds. Maths was never my strong suit.

Slow but steady progress on work to help a team with alignment and ways of working around their digital transformation.

Meanwhile, cracking on with content development for another client, where every draft is a thrilling journey into “what if we just said it like humans?”

Also: quite a lot of time on a new secret-squirrel project. Can’t say more for now, which obviously makes it sound far more exciting than it probably is. But still—watch this space.

Also this week

Faced with a dangerously empty weekend and an allergy to sitting still, I panic-booked a solo trip to Bucharest. Because why not? Romania becomes country number 81 on the list, which is a very normal number of countries to have visited, thank you for asking.

Highlights included:

• A walking tour that packed about 1,000 years of history, coups, communism and chaos into three hours and one coffee stop
• Discovering pastrami is one of the few foods Romania can claim as its own—then heroically eating my bodyweight in it for research purposes
• Marvelling at Bucharest’s architectural approach, which seems to be: yes. Neo-gothic? Sure. Brutalist? Why not. French chateau next to a 1980s concrete monolith? Go on then. A city that feels like someone shuffled the architectural deck then played every card at once
• Taking a bus out to Transylvania to gawp at forests, palaces, and not one single vampire, which frankly feels like false advertising

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I had a play with the new GPT image tools like everyone else, because if you’re not anthropomorphising your inbox or reimagining your cat as a 19th-century general, are you even alive in 2025?

📺 Watching

I finished Adolescence. As everyone else has said already, tough but important telly.

Also most of Series 2 of Slow Horses.

📚 Reading

I like to learn about the places I visit, so I’m reading Children of the Night: The Strange and Tragic Story of Modern Romania.

It’s part travel writing, part history (so, you know, right up my alley), tracing how Romania ended up where it is today. Full of unexpected turns, grim humour and sharp insights, it’s a useful lens on a country that’s often misunderstood.

Connections

I met up with Stephan van Bolderik, who I met via The Breakfast app. We chatted about startups, exits, working culture across the generations, Burning Man, LinkedIn, and much else besides.

Travel

🇷🇴 Back from Romania tomorrow evening

🇩🇰 Copenhagen next week for IntraTeam

This week in photos

Inspiration comes from unexpected places. This week I read Jay Rayner’s final column for Observer Food Monthly—every word was bang on the money. Food should be served on plates and not in shoes or tiny wheelbarrows, concept menus are an abomination.

It made me think: what if I wrote my own set of Hot Takes on two decades in comms? And so I did. And had fun writing it.

Most intranets are bad. Not because the tech is bad—though it often is—but because there’s no strategy. An intranet without a strategy is just a dumping ground with a search box. And no, AI won’t fix it.

Read the full rant here.

Clearly, this hit a nerve—it’s one of the most liked and commented-on things I’ve shared in ages. It’s funny how stuff I knock out in a couple of minutes is a hit while content I take ages crafting and designing barely makes a dent. I guess you can overthink these things.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn is pushing everyone to do video now, but somehow I can’t quite bring myself to do it, even for this. I’m a written word person… do I really have to?

This week at work

• Helping one of our clients to hire a product manager to lead their intranet programme. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having one person who owns, cares about and champions the intranet to stakeholders. Behind every successful intranet is one tenacious, passionate person at the helm. Someone who makes the case, works with teams to help them build out their content, sells the benefits and makes sure these benefits are realised. This is a critical hire for the future of the programme, and it’s refreshing to work with an organisation who recognise this, and keen to find the right person and give them the autonomy and authority to make it a success.
• Worked with a client on preparing an awards submission. They’re incredibly proud of what we jointly delivered — and so are we, so we’d like to share it with the industry.
• Kicked off prep for this year’s 300 Seconds x Camp Digital, where I curate a section on the main stage agenda to showcase new speakers and perspectives, and in doing so help to build a more diverse pipeline of industry speakers. Prepped guidelines and caught up with the organisers. I’m really looking forward to it.
• Had a bunch of social posts Do Numbers, which prompted me to take a look at a writing project I’d put on the back burner.
• Started work on a keynote I’m doing in the US in the spring. The earlier I start prepping, the more confident I am on the day. So I’m getting on to this one early before I get too busy.

Also this week

Saw The Libertines at the Paradiso, and it was an absolute joy. Even the pre-gig DJ set was pure 2004 indie disco singalong classics, setting the tone nicely. The band were as good as I’ve ever seen them—less early-00s Brixton chaos, more tight and energetic. Great crowd, perfect setlist, and pure nostalgia.

Finally made it to the Joan Miró sculpture exhibition at Beelden aan Zee before it closes. The windswept Dutch coast in February isn’t quite the sunny Barcelona rooftop where I first saw his work, but the collection was as playful as ever. Well worth it.

My next PowerPints appearance is locked in for 9 March, so I’ve started on new material. If you’re in Amsterdam, come cheer me on—or heckle.

International Women’s Day is coming up this week, and so too is the annual round of corporate hypocrisy.

Every year, we see companies posting about IWD, celebrating women in the workplace while doing little to advance gender equality in practice. They talk about empowerment but pay women less. They post about inclusion while sidelining working mothers. They share glossy graphics but resist flexible working that enables working mums to thrive at work.

Having taken last year off, and with orgs rapidly rolling back their meagre DEI efforts and Twitter dying its arse, I’m getting back on the case this year calling out firms which say one thing about equality on LinkedIn but do another in practice.

If your employer is one of them, I want to hear from you. I know that calling out your own company is career-limiting. But I don’t have a career to limit—so this year, once again, I’m offering Asking Awkward Questions As A Service.

I’ve cleared my diary to do some serious shitposting. I’ve already started compiling a database of the worst offenders.

📩 DM me or fill in my anonymous form to tell me about the gap between your employer’s words and actions. I’ll do the calling out so you don’t have to.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting
What’s in my browser this week

I liked these tips from Giles Turnbull on working in the open. It’s always a tricky balance. I share what I’m doing partly because writing helps me untangle thorny questions and articulate issues. But most of our work is with private sector clients, where commercial and reputational concerns mean I can’t share much detail.

Turnbull suggests embracing “bad first drafts.” These weeknotes are where I do that. I share what I can, but worry it’s too vague, leaving people unclear on what we actually do.

Still working out the balance between confidentiality and openness. I’d love to hear from others in the private sector trying to work out loud.

📺 Watching
On my telly

Two-year-old documentary The Search For Instagram’s Worst Con Artist was on my Netflix homepage this week, and sucked me in immediately. It’s a two-part series on a wellness influencer who claimed to have cured her cancer through healthy eating alone.  I missed the entire story at the time, but the sheer scale of it – and the absence of any due diligence from parties who should have known better – was quite astonishing.

It’s trending again because a drama on the same case has just come out. Which I am going to watch next, obviously.

📚 Reading
Books I’ve (tried to) read

Nothing much this week.

🎧 Listening
In my earholes

Not content with giving us the likes of the IT Crowd, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh and What We Do in the Shadows, Matt Berry is also a brilliant musician. I’ve had a couple of his albums (Phantom Birds and Heard Noises) on repeat this week.

🧳 Travel

Nothing coming up immediately but I’ve got a fair bit booked now for the months ahead. Let’s meet up in:

• Copenhagen (8-11 April)
• Chicago (27 April-1 May)
• Toronto (1-5 May)
• Glasgow (8-15 May)
• Milan (18-20 June)

Inevitably I’ll also be in London a few times.

Connections

I caught up with Nebius‘ Peter Morley for chat about AI, scaling at speed, the value of a good editor and why no podcast should be over an hour long.

Coverage

I wrote this piece for Reworked about the state of enterprise social networks—why the grand vision of open, company-wide conversation never quite materialised and why social collaboration hasn’t disappeared, just fragmented.

ESNs have largely shifted from collaboration spaces to corporate broadcast channels, while employees now default to Teams, Slack, and smaller, purpose-driven communities. The challenge isn’t the tech; it’s organisational culture. If ESNs aren’t driving meaningful engagement, maybe it’s time to rethink their role.

Buenos días, dear readers

There was no week 6, and week 7 is late, because I’ve been (mostly) offline. And it was absolutely bloody marvellous, so I’m not apologising.

I’m writing this 33,000 feet over the Caribbean Sea, heading home after an incredible trip to Colombia. This country was a glaring omission from my earlier South American adventures—frankly embarrassing, given how much time I’ve spent on this continent. So it seemed like the perfect place to hit my 80-countries-visited milestone.

I travelled with Flash Pack—again. They specialise in high-end, high-energy group trips for solo travellers. Which, in reality, mostly means women. Because, let’s be honest, most men would rather miss out on a brilliant experience than admit they’re nervous about going somewhere alone.

This was my fourth trip with them (last one: 2024/week 42), and as usual, it was a high-octane sprint through three destinations and three weeks’ worth of activity in nine days. Equal parts thrilling and exhausting, designed for people who are determined to live the absolute shit out of life. My people.

Highlights included:

• Getting a crash course in Bogotá’s past and present via its banging street art scene
• Trying my hand at Tejo, a bar game that involves throwing a metal ball at some gunpowder, and despite a heroically shite performance and a police raid, surviving with both hands intact
• Conquering El Peñón de Guatapé. Less a hike, more an extended queue at altitude. Not quite “27 hours to shuffle past the Queen’s coffin” queuing, but a strong contender for the Queue Hall of Fame. The view from the top was worth it, mind.
• Visiting Medellín’s Comuna 13. Once a violent slum, now a riot of colour, music, and ice-cold micheladas
• A 17-course tasting menu at El Cielo, including a course where I licked chocolate off my own hands like a feral child, and an onion ice cream that was far tastier than it had any right to be
• Taking a salsa lesson, then, fuelled by rum, putting my newfound skills to use dancing with a man in a giant inflatable mouse costume
• Sailing to an island in the Caribbean, jumping into the sea, and ordering a ludicrous piña colada in a hollowed-out pineapple from a bloke in a kayak

Another perk of a trip like this? Someone else sorts out all the logistics. You just show up and enjoy. If something goes sideways, there’s a Pack Leader. In this case, a man called Oscar—part guide, part miracle worker, with the patience of a monastery full of monks and the problem-solving skills of a seasoned diplomat—who took it all in his stride. For control freaks people like me, the real luxury isn’t the boutique hotels or the fancy dinners. It’s the rare, beautiful feeling of letting someone else take the reins without worrying you’re missing out.

Colombia in slightly more photos than anyone’s really interested in:

More so than usual, this trip made me reflect. It’s impossible not to compare it to my first time in South America, 23 years ago. A time before smartphones, Google Translate, or even the vaguest semblance of common sense.

For reasons that presumably made sense at the time, I—a person who had travelled solo exactly once—decided to move to Bolivia on a whim.

The trip started badly. A two-night layover in Miami led to a wild night out with some nurses from New Jersey, the reckless expenditure of a month’s worth of spending money, and nearly missing my flight because I slept through check-out.

I arrived in Bolivia with zero Spanish. I’d bought a Lonely Planet phrasebook and skim-read six pages of it on the plane. By the time I landed, I could say “hello” and count to eight. And that was it.

A couple of days in, I sat on my bed in the random houseshare I’d moved into and thought: what the actual fuck have I done? Then I cried my eyes out. But I survived.

More than that: it changed me. When you’re thousands of miles from home with no one to rely on, you grow up fast. I learned the language (well, enough of it). I found a confidence – and a maturity –  I never knew I had. Getting on that plane was the kick up the arse I didn’t realise I needed.

Since then, I’ve been back to South America plenty of times, usually with my (now) husband. But this was my first time doing it solo since that first trip. And in the intervening years I’ve moved country three times, learned two languages, visited 66 more countries, started a successful business, and built a life I never thought possible back then.

I wish I could tell 2002 Sharon how it all turned out. But honestly, she’d never believe me.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting
Bits of digital lint caught in my browser’s belly-button

• Research by McKinsey finds that for all the bloviating over RTO mandates, the office experience still mostly sucks for a lot of people. In a tight job market, talent has to suck it up. But as soon as the pendulum swings, as it inevitably will, your best employees will jump ship for places that offer a better employee experience and quality of life. Forbes have a summary of the research here.

📺 Watching
What’s on my telly
I watched Lee on the plane out here. A sharp-elbowed biopic of the model-turned-war photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, who smashed through the glass ceiling with a camera in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Kate Winslet embodies her with grit and fury, trudging through the horrors of WWII while men in uniform try (and fail) to sideline her. A story of talent, trauma, and telling the patriarchy to get stuffed. Perfect material for the journey out to meet a troop of boss women, on reflection.

📚 Reading

Downloaded five books to my Kindle to read on this trip. Managed 0.4 books, or 41% of Killing Pablo: The true story behind the hit series ‘Narcos’ (a hit series I’ve never watched, but never mind).

Tl;dr: El Patrón was a bit of a shit.

🎧 Listening

A heady mix of salsa, raggaeton and Chappell Roan. Eclectic is my middle name*.

* it isn’t. It’s Margaret.

🧳 Travelling

Nothing coming up for a few weeks. Yay.

Coverage

I was interviewed for this piece in Reworked on why organisations have invested in collaboration tools but aren’t seeing the benefits.

Too often, employees default to email and chat instead of using shared channels—leading to confusion, lost information, and burnout. Many of these habits were cemented when organisations rushed to roll out Microsoft 365 and other tools during the pandemic, without the time or training to support real behavioural change.

The key takeaways:

• Create a team charter: Set shared expectations for when to use email, chat, and channels
• Equip managers: If leaders don’t use channels properly, their teams won’t either
• Customise notifications: A little time spent tweaking settings can reduce noise and improve focus