This week I was back in London for my mother’s 70th birthday. My mother reaching “three score years and ten” feels like a real milestone.  Turning seventy is more than just a number; it’s a testament to resilience and a life well-lived. Seventy years, filled with countless memories, laughter, lessons, and love.

She threw a party on Saturday bringing together the remarkable collection of friends she’s gathered over the years together to celebrate with music, dancing, cake and wine.

I guess that’s where I got my love of all of those things from. Along with my fondness for travel and eternally itchy feet.

Some things I did this week

It was a short work week as I had commitments back home.

The finish line is in sight on one project. I’m proud of how much progress we’ve made, but also daunted at how much there still is to do. We’ve got a to-do list longer than a Leonard Cohen song. But I’m confident we’ll get there.

Our other project has been frustratingly stop-start, as we’ve struggled to get time from stakeholders who are dealing with a lot of other change at the same time.

Non-work things

Nothing to report this week – no gigs, no films!

What I’m reading

I feel like I have over-indexed on books about how and why Britain is broken this year. But this week I added another to the list: Sam Freedman’s Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It.

Over the last fifty years, changes in how the government operates have made it hard – arguably impossible – for even the most skilled and well-meaning prime ministers to be effective (and those have been in short supply). The central government is simultaneously over-powerful and overburdened; harmful incentives are everywhere; short-term thinking dominates; and the mechanisms of power aren’t effectively linked to the system that should carry them out.

Connections

While I was in London I had the chance to catch up with Matt O’Neill. I knew it’d been a while since we last met, but was pretty staggered when he told me it’d been fourteen years. A lot’s changed for both of us, and we had a lovely long chat about AI, VR and becoming a futurist.

Travel

I’m briefly back in Amsterdam for a few days, before heading on a holiday to somewhere that’s been on my list for ages – Georgia 🇬🇪

As summer’s warmth has faded fast, a quiet transformation begins to unfold. The golden sun now softens, casting longer, more thoughtful shadows across the landscape.

This shift has happened a little too quickly for my liking this year. When I headed to Riga it was glorious sunshine. When I returned autumn was well and truly upon us.

(the Riga trip was why there was no Weeknote 38 btw).

While the Dutch weather is already testing my patience, I’m trying to stay positive. The air carries a crispness, a promise of change, as the first leaves turn amber and red, dotting the trees like whispers of the season to come. There’s a gentle pause in the rhythm of life, as if nature itself is taking a breath, settling in for autumn’s embrace—a time for reflection, comfort, and preparing for the colder months ahead. The shorts-and-vests bit of my wardrobe goes into storage; the opaque tights and boots come out.

The shift from summer to autumn is more than just a change in the weather; it’s a reminder of the cyclical beauty of life. The vibrant, carefree days give way to a season of depth and colour, inviting us to slow down, savour the warmth of a cosy jumper and a baked potato and find joy in the rustling of leaves underfoot.

It’s in these little moments that I remember the real charm of autumn—a time to let go, just as the trees release their leaves, and make space for what’s next.

Some things I did this fortnight

We’ve been focused on a big shift in the plan on one intranet project. I’ve been quietly pleased at how swiftly we were able to identify and investigate alternative paths to delivery that meet their new strategic direction. We’ve barely even lost any time on our own project roadmap.

As part of that we’ve begun to explore how we might use auto-migration to move some content over from the existing landscape. On the whole I’m not a fan of any large-scale content migration. These just move crap over from one site to another, passing up the only real opportunity you have to improve it and focus on high-quality materials that deliver value. Migrated content is often never looked at again, until the cycle starts all over again with the next site. On one ill-fated programme we found content that was 17 years old, having been migrated from site to site twice (and, as far as I know, a third time – those pages are in their mid-20s now).

But sometimes using automated tools is simply the only pragmatic way forward. If there’s a hard deadline or a burning platform, for example. But while we’ve been exploring the technical feasibility, we’ve also been conducting an assessment of the outputs and associated risks.

That is: you can run a script to move it from A to B, but what you’ll get in B probably won’t be much good. We’re working out what’s needed to turn that into useable, useful and well-structured pages. I strongly suspect it’ll be a significant chunk of effort.

Over on our other project, after a few weeks of delays things were unblocked in a major way this week and suddenly we’re cracking on at pace. It’s been wonderful to see our team getting stuck in and delivering at speed.

Less positively, with it being the end of the month I did the usual round of invoices, and the sadly usual round of checking and seeing that none (0) of the ones that were due before the end of this month have been paid. It really grates that organisations don’t consider the impact treating due dates as – at best – guidance has on cashflow for SMEs like ours.

Some non-work things I did this fortnight

My husband and I headed for the Baltics for a long weekend. Mostly Riga, which was a delightful combination of fine weather, city walks, climbing up a tall building and delving into the darker side of the city’s history. The Museum of the Occupation was heavy going. We also booked in for a tour at the former KGB headquarters, with a guide who, having been a young man in the dying days of the Soviet occupation, knew much of the history of oppression first-hand. Somehow he bought just the right degree of levity to the occasion. Very much recommend.

On Monday we headed down to Lithuania – by my reckoning ticking off my 71st country – visiting the city of Šiauliai and the nearby Hill of Crosses. No one’s quite sure why people started leaving crosses on this old hill fort, but the practice is believed to have started in the mid 1800s. In Soviet times public displays of religion were banned, and so this became a site of resistance, with authorities removing or destroying the crucifixes, only for locals to sneak back and leave more. And so it became a symbol of anti-Soviet resistance and the fight for Baltic religious and national freedom. There are now thought to be over 100,000 crucifixes atop this small hill.

And if I’m honest we mostly went there because it’s creepy as fuck.

Saw retro pop-rocksters Lemon Twigs at the Tolhuistuin. Two weeks on I still can’t decide if their schtick is deliberate nostalgia-bait, or just some charming and annoyingly catchy 60s-inspired tunes. Enjoyable enough in any case.

We also saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at the cinema. A valiant attempt to capture the magic of the original, and a good performance from Michael Keaton. But maybe trying a little too hard. The plot felt over-stuffed. Overall it’s not a bad movie, but I’d wait for streaming rather than go out of your way to watch it.

Connections

Comms legends Advita Patel and Jenni Field were in town for the Amsterdam Business Forum. They were both pumped after meeting their hero, Brené Brown. And that enthusiasm was infectious. We had a lovely chat about emotions at work, how work’s changing – and how it isn’t – and what that means for communications. And some shared frustration at hearing the same tired debates in the industry when we should be stepping up and taking a lead as a critical business function in the context of a rapidly changing world of work.

It was only a brief wine and catch-up but I came away from this chat feeling energised and excited. I can see why people really rate the pair of them (and their co-conspirator Trudy) as business coaches.

I have finally downloaded the Brené Brown book to my Kindle.

I also managed to catch up with Kaisu Koskela, who’s a postdoctoral researcher on digital nomadism and digital labour mobility.

Coverage

Reworked’s Siobhan asked if I might have views on how ageism starts hitting in your 40s. And I certainly did. Here’s my piece on age, gender and the depressingly tiny window we have between being too young and past our prime. This was cathartic to write. And it seems to have touched a nerve, given how many shares this got on BlueSky.

Travel

I’m in London from Wednesday for five days. I’ve got a little spare time on Friday 4th; HMU if you want to catch up.

Upcoming in October:

🇬🇪 Tbilisi, Georgia
🇹🇷 Istanbul, Turkey

As ever, if you’re in either, or you know some interesting folk who are who I should meet, let me know.

As the Hackneyed old phrase goes, change is the only constant in life. The last few weeks have felt like we’re constantly re-planning and adapting as client needs have shifted.

I think we’ve done a good job in responding to change, and I’ve found the challenge of re-planning at speed quite rewarding. But I’ve had to get more comfortable with letting go of plans and ideas, having an open mind about direction… and a very flexible diary.

Some things I did this week

We’ve been making a progress on a big intranet content programme. Our internal stakeholders have been pulled in lots of different directions, but we were able to spend time getting foundations in place so we’re in a good position to crack on next week I think.

Over on our other big programme, an announcement from elsewhere in the organisation means we’re going to have shift focus a little.  This came quite late in the week so we need to spend the early half of this coming week working out what this means for us and our planned work. More change.

Hiring a delivery lead to help us manage all of this was the best thing we did this year.

I headed down to Belgium for the 7th Digital Workplace Brussels conference. It was great to see some familiar faces, and to meet some new folks too.  I get so energised meeting people in person – perhaps because it happens so much more rarely these days – and I came away buzzing and with loads of useful takeaways.

Organiser Guy Van Leemput curated a fantastic agenda. The theme was (natch) ‘AI in the digital workplace’. It feels like every conference has AI as an add on these days, but this was the first time it felt like a mature conversation that moved beyond ‘just look at what it can do!’ to real use cases, benefits, costs, risks and challenges for communication and collaboration. A sign that we’re over the hype curve at last.

Here’s some highlights:

• Monique Zytnik’s opening keynote set the scene by talking about the need for comms to be a strategic partner, and the potential for AI to deliver immersive communications at scale. It made me reflect on some of recent client work and how we need to offer personalised, relevant communications if we want to get cut-through in a growing tide of noise. I liked the idea of AI offering people agency, for example to receive messaging in the format and language that works for them. I had lots to think about after this talk, so I grabbed Monique’s book so I can learn more.
• Sam Marshall revealed his engineering heritage and what this teaches us about the present and future of AI in internal comms.
• Marielle Harsveldt-Terlaak had a great case study on co-creating values and getting buy-in through transparency. I liked this approach as it builds lasting trust. It was especially refreshing to see this approach in financial services.

I did the last talk of the day, a tongue-in-cheek one on how to ensure your digital workplace programme fails. Here’s my key points… every one of them unfortunately learned first-hand.

1. Don’t listen to end users; you know better
2. Have a singular vision. Take inspiration from Elon Musk and don’t be dissuaded by user feedback, data, plummeting user engagement or basic logic.
3. Devolve decision-making to as many committees as possible, ideally all with very different views and objectives, give each of them an equal vote, and don’t spend a moment trying to find alignment or common ground.
4. Content is king. Forget about useful transactional tools and services. Just add more content. Generative AI can help, because it doesn’t matter if the content is any good
5. Get your metrics right. Just collect data on absolutely everything and present it in a complex dashboard, shared with tens of people who don’t have the time, skills, authority or interest in doing anything with the insight. Time spent measuring is time you’re not spending actually fixing things.
6. Build excitement, not features. Why have tools that instinctively make sense to people when you can have an adoption campaign instead?
7. Redesigns are a great way of saying “yeah, we screwed up, everything about this page is wrong,” while at the same time not really making any improvements
8. Insist that every element of your digital workplace is custom built to meet the very singular needs of your organisation. This will pile on additional cost for no reason and is guaranteed to put you years behind schedule. Even better, as these custom elements will need support and regular fixes, you can see your costs absolutely balloon for years to come.
9. Ensure that your budget is slightly smaller than your ambition and your employees’ expectations… because hearing users say “is that it?” is the finest measure of success there is.

Non-work things I did this week

A quiet week as I was out of town for some of it. I did go and see Blur: To The End at the cinema. It’s a behind-the-scenes documentary about Blur re-forming and touring in 2023. Having gone to three dates on that tour it was interesting seeing it from the other side.

Their Wembley show really was something special. Like a big homecoming hug for every 90s indie kid in London. And this film was almost like experiencing that a second time.

Connections

As well as all the folks at the DW Brussels event, I found time to catch up with Anthony and Jane Zacharewski for Belgian food and European politics chat.

At the weekend my old university pal Mark Glennon was in town for IBC, the international broadcast tech and media convention. We had a chance to catch up for dinner and a chat about us getting old (when did that happen?), Blur getting old (same), and –  going a full circle – the explosion in AI in media production.

Travel

This week’s travels saw me staying at the unspectacular-but-reliable Moxy chain. Bagged a free upgrade, which it turns out is just the same room with a balcony. Which I then failed to even step on to. But they have decent hairdryers, which I did use, so it’s swings and roundabouts I guess.

Upcoming travel: Riga this week, London the week after next.

Brat Summer is apparently over, without my ever really finding out what it was. And it’s been a full fortnight since the ‘very mindful, very demure’ meme popped up and I’m still resisting the urge to look up what the hell that’s about too.

I guess this is coming to peace with aging. Trends can now pass me by entirely without my noticing or caring.

Some things I did this week

After a month or so of our team taking a deep-dive into existing (but earmarked-for-shutdown) sites, we’ve gathered enough insights to start to identify what functionality and templates will be needed to publish content on the new site. This feels like good progress.

This programme gives the client an opportunity to streamline what’s currently a hot mess of layouts into a more consistent, uniform one. But at the same time we need to make sure the new intranet can accommodate a wide range of publishing needs. It’s always a balance between flexibility for publishers and usability for end users, but where possible we lean toward the latter.

We’ve developed a robust process that means we’re mapping and tagging needs as we see them, which gives us some nice data we can play around with to find commonalities (which we can prioritise in templates) and differences (which we need to assess in detail; can the need be met in another way? Or is this a development priority?).

It’s early days but the future scope is already taking shape, and we’re getting more detail as the team work through more of the existing estate. It’s satisfyingly nerdy.

Our other big project is picking up pace too. In any multi-vendor collaboration there’s a strong need for clear but quick decision-making and open communication, as delays on one side can leave everyone twiddling their thumbs. I’ve been impressed across the board here. While the programme started a little later than intended, both our team and the software vendor have worked their socks off and we’ve already made up a good chunk of time and we’re all set to dive into actually getting content written and on the new site.

Not Work things

Saw Japanese electro-punk-pop auteur Cornelius at the Paradiso. A splendid ethereal show that mixed sound, animation and lights to transport you to another reality.

Went to an Amsterdam Fashion Week screening of The Devil Wears Prada. That this film is 18(!) years old and yet in my mind still feels recent-ish speaks volumes about my rapid aging. Nonetheless it stands up incredibly well. The main storyline – of Andi giving her all to work in the hope of getting ahead in her career, before having a moment of clarity and jacking it in – spoke to me on a level it did not when I last watched it. After I got home my Facebook memories reminded me that this time a previous year I was still in the office at 10.45pm again. I got a bit emotional, but that might have been the two glasses of wine at the cinema.

My second cinema visit of the week was for newly released directoral debut Blink Twice. It’s a psychological thriller in which a tech bro lures women to an island and Bad Things Happen. It was a decent enough film with some brilliant attention to detail and plenty of dark humour. But watching it the same week that Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity to ensure the men who raped her while she was drugged unconscious are bought to justice… well that was a little too on-the-nose.

Finally, last we went to Utrecht to see plus sized popstrel Beth Ditto’s outfit, Gossip. That was a super fun show and Ditto was very funny indeed. As it was the final date in this current tour we were treated to a bunch of bonus encore tracks which were well worth getting home late for.

What I’m reading

After a fallow period I found my reading mojo again this week when I picked up Going Mainstream: how extremists are taking over by Julia Ebner.

This is a chilling and meticulously researched exposé on how far-right extremism has infiltrated mainstream society with unnerving stealth and speed. Ebner, a counter-terrorism researcher, embedded herself in online communities and real-life gatherings where ideologies once considered fringe now blend disturbingly into everyday discourse.

I started this book last weekend. Then the news of charges being bought against US right-wing media and influencers broke, so the points she raised about the journey of extreme ideas from fringe to influencers and to the mainstream were particularly timely and worrying.

Her investigative style brings the reader face-to-face with the unsettling realisation that the digital world, with its echo chambers and algorithmic nudges, has allowed extremist views to slip seamlessly into political and cultural norms. Ebner’s writing is sharp and unflinching, exposing how language, memes, and humour are weaponised to make radicalism palatable.

Reading this helped my maintain my resolve and not skulk back to Twitter.

Coverage

Travel

None this week but next week I’m in Brussels from Weds to Friday for the Brussels Digital Workplace conference. Hope to see some of you there.

Today marks five years since I packed up my life in London and moved across the North Sea.

I originally planned to stay here for six months as a kind of ’emigration alpha’, to see how I liked it. Half a decade has passed and I’m still here. So I guess I’ve passed the assessment and Sharon In Amsterdam is officially a Live Service.

The city marked the occasion – intentionally, I’m sure – by taking the scaffolding down off the Westertoren after 18 months of repairs, so I have this wonderful view from my front window again. 🥰

Moving abroad for the third time has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life.

It wasn’t just about adapting to a new country or sloooooooowly learning a new language—it was also about discovering who I am when all the comforts and familiarity of home are stripped away.

Here are five lessons I learned about myself in these last five years:

1. I’m more resilient than I thought 💪

Living in a foreign country tested my limits in ways I never expected. There were days when everything felt overwhelming and I lay in bed thinking “what the hell am I doing here?”. Especially during Covid when home was no longer just a short flight away.

But I discovered a well of resilience and adaptability within myself that I didn’t know existed. I realised that I could handle uncertainty and find solutions to problems, even in unfamiliar situations.

2. My values became clearer 🔎

Being far from home forced me to confront what truly matters to me. Without the familiar surroundings and support networks, I had to rely on my core values to guide me. I found myself reflecting on what I need to feel happy and fulfilled—whether it’s a sense of community, meaningful work, or the simple pleasure of exercise. This experience taught me to prioritise what truly matters and let go of what doesn’t.

3. I learned to be self-reliant 👊

Unlike my previous move to Singapore, I had to navigate this on my own, without any corporate relocation package. Navigating life admin and building a new social circle all forced me to step out of my comfort zone. I learned to trust my instincts and rely on myself more than ever before.

This newfound self-reliance gave me a sense of empowerment that I had never felt before. That’s given me confidence in other areas of my life too, and I can see how this has propelled me to grow the business to a whole new level.

4. Embracing uncertainty became my new normal 🤷🏻‍♀️

Moving abroad taught me to let go of my need for control. Things often didn’t go as planned—whether it was a bureaucratic hiccup, a language barrier, and the small matter of a global pandemic messing with my shiz.

Over time, I learned to embrace uncertainty and go with the flow. That shift in mindset made me more flexible and open to new experiences, allowing me to see setbacks not as failures but as opportunities for growth.

5. I discovered the joy of solitude 🧘‍♀️

Living in a new place, especially when you’re far from friends and family, can be lonely at times. But this solitude also taught me a valuable lesson: I discovered that I enjoy my own company. I learned to find comfort in quiet moments and appreciate the freedom that comes with being alone. Whether it was exploring my new city by myself, enjoying a solo coffee at a local café (not that kind!), or learning to love exercise, I found that solitude isn’t something to fear—it’s something to embrace. It allowed me to reflect, recharge, and become more comfortable with who I am.

I know this sounds cheesy, but moving abroad was far more than just a geographical change; it was also a journey of self-discovery. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.

If you’re thinking about making a similar leap, know that it’s not just a change of scenery—it’s a chance to learn who you truly are, and what you can be if you push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Some things I did this week

• We’re working to identify content needs for a future intranet. As part of this process we have a team reviewing existing sites to identify valuable content that really needs to exist on the future site. This is useful, but intranet programmes should look forwards not back. We should work with users and stakeholders to understand what content people need, will value, or for whatever reason needs to exist (eg compliance). We need to be careful not to over-index on content audits, as this risks merely moving indentiying stuff over from one site to another. These should inform the discussion on user needs, not be the primary source of insight on user needs.
• All that said, on another project we don’t have an audit of existing content at all. That makes it difficult to understand what content is widely used in practice. We shouldn’t base content decisions on hunches and vibes, so we’ll need to think creatively on how we validate these. On the plus side, it gives a good opportunity to start all over again – greenfield – with content. That so rarely happens and I’d like to think the outcome will be better as a result.
• Developed a proposition and vision for a client’s intranet. It’s critical to co-create this with stakeholders up front, so everyone has a shared understanding of what the site is, what it should do – and what it will not. This helps to ground and guide stakeholder comms and engagement later, bringing conversations back to what we’re trying to deliver for users.

Some non-work things I did this week

It was a pretty quiet one. No gigs. I saw French arthouse film Daaaaaalí at the cinema, which was predictably, enjoyably surreal. Plus the usual gymmage and enjoying the summer weather we’re finally having.

Went to a talk on the opportunities and risks of AI. The speakers (from Google amongst others) were great, but overall I felt like this was covering the same ground rather than moving the discourse around AI on. I’m getting rather tired of pronouncements about 30% productivity gains, rarely based on actual real-world examples, that overlook the impacts on quality, accessibility and performance and skirt over the risk questions.

Like much of Britain’s middle-aged community I spent my Saturday trying and failing to get Oasis tickets. It made me yearn for the simple, stress-free experience of getting into Glastonbury.

It’s funny how we often measure our weeks by tasks completed or meetings attended (and this week had a lot of both), yet the most valuable moments usually happen in the spaces between—the unexpected conversations, the fleeting moments of clarity, the rare occasions when we can knuckle down and truly focus.

This week was no different, filled with its share of planned and unplanned, the expected and the serendipitous. And I find myself wondering: What if I paid more attention to those in-between moments? And do I need to carve out more time to be less busy so I can have more of them?

(Yeah I think I know the answer to that one already)

Some things I did this week

• The start of any project is a little frustrating as it feels like things are moving slowly, but if you don’t get the foundations in place it just causes headaches down the line. Skip this stuff at your own risk. We’re three weeks into one project, and it feels like we’ve now got key decisions made and people aligned so our blended team can pick up the pace on a content audit and understanding user needs for internal content.
• We did our first show and tell with this client. The early ones are often awkward as there’s not much to show, or tell. But there was a lot of interest in the foundations and how we’ve agreed to move forward, so it was pretty positive I think.
• All that means we can also now get stuck into all the stuff that isn’t content; scope, organisational needs, technical feasibility, resourcing, roadmapping, managing the associated business change, and so on. Really getting our teeth into the factors that will define what’s possible and how quickly it can happen.
• Similarly, we worked with another client to define their vision for intranet content. Any project like this will face difficult stakeholder conversations and trade-offs. Having a vision agreed up front will make those conversations easier, as we can bring it back to what the intranet and its content should deliver for employees and for the company.
• We onboarded another new starter to the team at Lithos Partners. We have someone new starting every week lately, which is exciting and scary in equal measure. I’m trying to find the right balance between documenting our onboarding as much as possible so I don’t need to repeat myself every time, while being available and welcoming and not leaving people to flounder about alone. Not sure we’re anywhere near getting that balance right, but we’re learning.

Some non-work things I did this week

As I write this, I’m sitting at my window, and the sounds of the annual Prinsengracht Concert are drifting from a stage on the canal nearby. In late August a stage is set up on the edge of the water and locals park their boats up for an evening’s music on the water, braving the inevitable rain to enjoy the concert with friends and wine on a boat.

The concerts always close with Peter Goemens’ love letter to Mokum, Aan De Amsterdamse Grachten (On The Amsterdam Canals). Amsterdam has a way of captivating your soul, and that’s captured in the timeless lyrics.

I’m not Dutch, but I feel like I’m an Amsterdammer now. And Goemans had it right; no one could wish for better to than to make this city home. It will have a piece of my heart forever.

Connections

Nebius Group’s Peter Morley was in town so we met up and talked about corporate comms and the challenges of working with dispersed teams.

I also caught up (remotely) with Christian Hunt. Ostensibly to appear on his Human Risk podcast, but it was just a hugely enjoyable, meandering chat about digital workplace, AI, the future of work, and balancing a desire to work out loud with client confidentiality.

Coverage

I was interviewed for this piece in Reworked on the importance of auditing your internal comms platforms, processes and content. This is something I’m hugely passionate about. Organisations always get better results, and spend their budgets better, by taking the time to do an audit or discovery first. As my business partner Jonathan, a recovering geologist, always says: time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted.

The key is to understand the barriers to effective comms and collaboration that exist within your organisation, and changing how you communicate and how you use your channel mix to meet your employees’ needs and the reality of how they work.

Travel

After getting back from Finland I had no travel booked at all. For the first time in years my Flighty App didn’t have a single flight lined up.

My itchy feet got the better of me within days and I’ve booked a long weekend in Riga and a solo adventure in Georgia and Armenia. Hit me up with your tips for either.

As another week comes to an end, I find myself pondering the nature of time. A bit deep for a Sunday evening, I know.

I had an old friend in town. On Friday it hit me quite how old… it’s twenty five years since a strange teenage adventure in which our friendship was formed (of which thankfully there is no photographic evidence).

So time, then. It’s got this curious ability to feel both fleeting and infinite. There are days when hours stretch endlessly, weighed down by tasks and to-do lists. And yet a quarter of a century can slip through my fingers like sand, leaving me wondering where my life has gone.

What I’ve been up to this week

My big focus was the formal kick-off of a new project. We’ve an ambitious timeline and we’re working with a platform vendor as well as the client to deliver it. There’s no sugarcoating it: this one is going to be intense. But it was reassuring that everyone involves is well aware of that, and of the need for rapid delivery and decision-making to keep up that pace. We’ve got this.

Our other big programme is starting to make sense too. Between us and the internal team we’re making sense of the landscape and what we need to do, pragmatically, to move forward.

Between both of those, plus an ongoing programme and a smaller piece of work I have been spread rather more thinly than I’d like this week. I feel like I’m not really giving anything quite as much attention as I’d like. I’m grateful to have other members of the team who are able to crack on with minimal input from me. But I’m glad Jon’s back on Monday. This has NOT been a quiet summer.

Some non-work things I did this week

As I said, my old pal Adam was in town over the weekend. We met in Hong Kong when we were 18, hit it off immediately and, along with a mutual friend had a few weeks of madness that was standard for Wanchai in the late 90s (and which no teenager would believe today). But he’s one of those friends who I can go years without seeing, then pick up the conversation like it was yesterday.

Someone responded to my last weeknote to say it sounds like I am good at maintaining and nurturing friendships. I hadn’t really considered that before. But I guess I am. I’m lucky that I have a wide network of friends I’ve collected over the years. Every single one is important to me. I’m not always as good a friend as I’d like to be, but maintaining friendships does take effort.

Here’s a tip I picked up from Jane McGonigal on deepening relationships with people you’re rubbish at keeping in touch with, or new friends you’d like to know better.

• Text a friend you’ve been meaning to get in touch with and ask them: “How’s your day going, on a scale of 1 to 10?”. The scale’s important as it encourages people to share the reasoning behind their score.
• When they respond, ask them if there’s anything you can do to move that score up by 1. That shows that you’re willing to make an effort for the other person. It builds and encourages reciprocity.
• More often than not the friend will reply to say just you getting in touch has moved the dial up by itself. But if you commit to doing a thing, then do it.

McGonigal explains this, and the science behind it, in this video here.

The hotel review no one asked for

The early part of the week I spent in the Scandic in Helsinki. On the whole I like the Scandic chain, with its combination of good design, decent service and city-centre locations. It’s my no 1 choice when I’m in Scandiwegia.

This one was SO close to getting it right, and yet… it featured two of my pet hotel peeves in one ostensibly stylish room.

1 This is not a desk

I opted to get a hotel rather than stay with my friend as I had a shedload of work to do either side of the weekend and needed quiet, private space to join Teams calls.

But while there was plenty of space it was somehow all wrong.

All I ask is that someone actually attempts to do some work at whatever you’re selling as an in-room workstation.

2 These are not helpful curtains

I need it to be dark to sleep. These were perfectly decent curtains, yet no one had considered that given the angle of the walls these were functionally useless against the midnight sun of the Scandinavian summer.

It was so bright I might as well have been outside.

This week I’m on holiday in Finland. Except I’m not fully on holiday, because the reality of self-employment is you can take as much time off as you like as long as you accept you’ll have to spend at least some of the time either working or thinking about work.

I am, at least, in Finland. I can confirm, as Monty Python did, that it has mountains so lovely and treetops so tall. More on that shortly.

Some things I did this week

The team are making rapid progress looking at the path of least resistance in moving a whole bunch of content from old sites to a new intranet. At this stage there’s SO much left to define, but I’ve been impressed by how everyone has got stuck into the detail while being pragmatic about what really adds value.

Sure, you can look at every single page, you could even migrate every single page – but who does it help? And how could that time be better used to deliver a better, more user-centric solution?

We’re working as a blended team with some in-house folks, some of whom have been with the client a long while and have heaps of institutional knowledge. It makes so much difference when you have people on the inside who know where the (digital) bodies are buried.

I’m still juggling two other very full-on projects alongside that one, while Jonathan is having an actual holiday with his family. I feel like I’m being pulled in too many directions at once this week. I’m exhausted.

Some non-work things I did this week

Despite – or perhaps because – I am totally stacked with work, I found my exercise mojo again and went to spin, Sanctum or the gym every day until I headed on hols. In fact one day I went twice. I feel so much better when I’ve had time to step away from screens and move my body.

On Thursday I hopped on a plane to Helsinki. This is the third year in a row I’ve had a little summer break here, and the fourth visiting my dear friend Hanna.

Hanna and I originally met at a work conference in Denmark. We hit it off immediately and have been good friends ever since. I love how being a massive intranet nerd has given me such a great network of friends.

For the second year in a row we went to Flow Festival, a pop/rock/arts festival on the outskirts of the city. My highlights were:

• Idles. Brilliant raw energy and the lyrics – against the backdrop of recent racist thuggery back in Blighty – felt particularly apt
• PJ Harvey. Always a delight.
• Fred Again… Has been on repeat in my ears for the last two years.  Danced like an absolute twat and loved every second
• Alvvays. Everyone raves about how much fun they are live, and they were quite right.
• Pulp. I was at the first show in their Euro tour in Amsterdam, back in May, and it was rather lovely to be at the finish too. In Finnish.

I was looking forward to Raye but honestly I found her a bit meh. But we worked our way through all the flavours of longkero so swings and roundabouts.

This morning I went for a long hike in the rain around a lake in Nuuksio National Park and it was absolutely stunning. That cleared my head and filled my heart post-festival. I want to spend more time outside the city next time I come here.

Disconnections

Twitter has been a huge force for good in my life. I joined in 2008, with an account that hardly anyone knows about, before joining as the highly original handle @sharonodea in 2009.

For 15 years it’s been a daily presence in my life, and right in the middle of my homescreen on my phone.

And Twitter suited me. I enjoyed the challenge of finding a scathing pithy comeback in 140 characters. The perfect bon mot to encapsulate an idea.

I loved how being on Twitter meant I was always two news cycles ahead of everyone else. It was the place I went to find out about anything from an unfolding disaster to advice on upholstering a chair.

Twitter was a connector. It helped me find my tribe, prove my chops and grow my confidence. It connected me to brilliant ideas and even better people. Some of the most important people in my life are those I originally connected with via the platform, before quickly finding they were every bit as smart, interesting and funny face-to-face in a pub.

Twitter connections took from an early Tweetup in St James Park to my first digital jobs. To speaking stages all over the world and live on the BBC News At Ten from a conference in San Francisco.

I became smarter, sharper, funnier and more outgoing in real life by honing my craft on Twitter.

I was good at Twitter. I mean, I had enough practice. But I clocked up 21,000 followers and got an OG blue tick for being A Good Tweetist. I went viral many times, usually (but not always) for the right reasons.

And Twitter was good for me.

But now it isn’t. Negativity and anger and disinformation and straightforward hate have been allowed to run rampant. It’s infested with charlatans, liars and grifters. Promoted by an owner who has been driven mad by his own algorithms. When I open the app it doesn’t bring me joy or wisdom. It just makes me despair.

I’m sad about that.

It’s ok to be sad. Some of that is mourning what it was. And, transparently, I guess some of that is the knowledge I was a (low key) somebody on Twitter, and now I’m not. I had a tribe and reputation on Twitter and now I have to start again somewhere else.

But it’s time to go. I don’t want to be part of it anymore. I’m not deleting my account; I’ve got too many links and conversations there I want to preserve.

Moving forward I’m sharing my observations on comms, collaboration, intranets, politics, travel and whateverthehellelse is going on in my mind over on Threads and BlueSky. Do connect with me on either. Or both.

There’s something special about beginnings. A moment brimming with potential and uncharted possibilities.

I love starting things. Getting started is like standing at the edge of a vast, unexplored forest; the path ahead may be unclear, but the promise of discovery beckons irresistibly.

A therapist I saw a while back told me about the Sensation Seeking personality type. And yeah: it me.

I guess I’m lucky that I’ve found work that allows me to find “varied, novel, rich and intense” experiences regularly. There’s always a new challenges around the corner, new places to explore and problems to get stuck into.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what lies ahead, but I can’t help getting excited about starting something new. Maybe my superpower is my willingness to embrace the unknown, and my irritatingly exhilarating sense of hope that accompanies every fresh start.

Some things I did this week

The main focus was – finally – having the kickoff meeting for a chunky project. This is a new piece of work with a former client who have asked us back. But despite working pretty intensively with them before we’d never met any of them in person. It’s weird finally meeting IRL when you’ve spent hours talking to people on Teams and feel like you already know them really well.

For all the usual procurement reasons it’s taken a while to get this one over the line and there’s a metric fucktonne to do. So it was good to get cracking. I was joined by Nic, our superstar delivery manager, who kept everything on track, and Lisa, queen of absolutely everything, who asked all the right questions to help bring clarity on what needs doing. I’m really excited to work with both of them on this one.

Lisa and I also spent some time earlier in the week trying to see how we could use AI to do some post-workshop analysis. This is exactly the kind of thing I am rubbish at and don’t enjoy, so I’d really value Claude/Chat GPT/etc doing the write-up and spotting patterns where I don’t have the patience to find them.

Conclusion: plenty of potential but we needed to work through it systematically, step-by-step to get the level of detail that gives the insight and analysis we need.

Last thing on Friday we also signed contracts on another project we’ve been in negotiations on since February. So all of a sudden, having had people on the bench itching to get started, we’re going from 0-60 on two projects at once. Wish me luck! I suspect I will need it.

(Did I mention we’re hiring? Well we are.)

Some non-work things I did this week

On Tuesday, in honour of Kate Bush’s birthday, my friend and I skived off work for the afternoon to do a two-hour-long dance class to learn the Wuthering Heights dance, before performing it on the steps of the Eye Filmmuseum.

It was spectacularly fun. And I surprised myself by both my ability to follow two hours of dance instruction in Dutch, and by not being entirely terrible at the dancing.

Here it is:

Saturday was Amsterdam Pride’s annual canal parade. It’s a spectacular party and passes just by my house. It’s such a smashing day out. The city is at its best. I love this town.

Connections

I caught up with Rod Cartwright for breakfast while I was in London. We talked about the changing relationship with the career ladder as one slides inexorably toward decrepitude. Eventually your real value isn’t in climbing the greasy pole, but handing the baton on to the next generation. Training, writing, speaking, bringing ideas and experience.

Reflecting, I feel this is harder for women, as just as you reach peak wisdom you also become invisible.

Travel

BA cancelled my flight home after I got to Heathrow on Thursday. But one hasty rebook and hotel scramble later, I checked myself in at Redchurch Townhouse. Which is as close to perfect a hotel as you can find in London. The extra night in London gave me an unexpected opportunity to catch up with Paul Clarke for dinner.

I also got to loll about in a fluffy robe watching the Olympics with a G&T. Silver linings.

I’m in Helsinki from Thursday to Tuesday. If you’re around, LMK and let’s grab a longkoro.

As I step into this new week I’m reminded of a quote by T.S. Eliot: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”

Each week presents a fresh canvas, an opportunity to write new stories and chart unexplored paths. The lessons learned from the past blend with the possibilities of the future and give an opportunity for a new approach, a new outlook. Onwards. Shaping my journey one moment at a time.

Some things I did this week

I’m feeling reflective because last week was A LOT.

We kicked off the week with a remote workshop. Experience has taught me that running activities on Miro in organisations which don’t use Miro a lot can go either way. They need careful planning and thorough board-testing to give them the best chance of success.

Fortunately this time we’d done plenty of both and came away feeling it went well. Participants understood the assignment, we got loads of great inputs and only a few very minor (and easily resolved) user problems. We could even see people going back to the board days after the session to add additional ideas and inputs. We’ve got far more and far better-quality inputs from this session than we expected to, which is great.

Another focus this week was a big board meeting. It was a tough one, with a central message that there will be some tough decisions to be made, and soon. With any call for compromise comes the admission that not everyone’s desired outcomes will be met, and inevitably that leaves people disappointed and concerned.

It went pretty well, but between the work getting slides ready for this, and presenting and answering a lot of thorny questions on the day, I came away feeling pretty drained after this one.

It was timely, then, that an old colleague dropped me a line sharing a Facebook memory of a similarly bruising day back when we worked together. I realised that I used to have a meeting like that at least once a week, but in a culture that was much more combative and political, and also where I had far less time or support to be properly prepared. It made it all so much harder, with everyone competing rather than working together to find the best solution, and I couldn’t help but take it personally when people were rude or uncollaborative, or I didn’t get what I wanted.

So much of the discourse about resilience at work is bullshit; you can learn to let toxic politics wash over you, but if the toxicity is still there it’s still an epic waste of everyone’s time and energy that produces sub-optimal outcomes for everyone.

So that gave me pause to reflect. In this week’s tough meeting I didn’t take any of it personally, because it wasn’t about me – or anyone else at the meeting for that matter. While it was tough, it was deservedly so and even the most challenging questions came in the spirit of finding solutions. It was hard work but it wasn’t a bad day.

Finally, we had an end-of-discovery report back to do at the tail end of the week. We try to get these things finished and presentation scripted at least a day or two ahead of time, so we can reflect on it before we deliver. But this week we didn’t have the luxury of time and it was all a bit more last-minute than I’d like. We’d done the analysis as we went along and had our recommendations nailed almost three weeks ago, so we were confident in what we were saying, at least, but the slides were metaphorical wet paint. I hate that.

I was pleased, then, that the client said “this is a great piece of work and you’ve been a pleasure to work with”. A nice note to end that project and go into the weekend.

Non-work things I did this week

Very little indeed. It was one of those weeks where I worked late every day then all I was good for was sitting on the sofa reading the entire internet on my phone.

Coverage

I wrote a piece for Reworked on how internal comms teams can build capability in AI. It’s not simply about learning how the tools work, but understanding the possibilities they offer (and the shortcomings they have too), and playing around with them. That process, called interpretive flexibility, is how we make sense of technology until it becomes part of how we operate.

Travel

This week coming I’m in Cambridge and London. I have a little spare time in both so shout if you want to grab a coffee.