Dr Rachel Hughes

It’s Week 2 of my weeknoting journey! I am trying to embed this practice. To help, I have created a tab on OneNote specifically dedicated to weeknotes so that I can jot notes down as I go. I don’t know about you, there is so much that can happen from one end of the week to the other that there’s always a chance you forget something, some key bit of learning, an important reflection.

This week it’s been particularly helpful to keep track of the Podcasts I have listened to, and there’s been quite a lot. In part, because I have done more travelling this week than I normally would. I was thinking about writing a few notes and/or thoughts on each one (please let me know if you think this would be useful), but for now, I’ve just listed and hyperlinked them (they’re towards the end of this weeknote). As you can see, there’s a bit of variety there, so hopefully, you’ll find something of interest.

I’ve had a really interesting and eclectic week. Our son’s School Sports Day and theme afternoon. Governor More Able and Talented Committee meeting. Transition morning with our daughter in school. Our children’s usual extra-curricular activities. Life Writing course. Good Practice Exchange webinar on Key Issues for Regional Partnership Boards. Cardiff Business School’s Executive Education breakfast briefing on the South Wales Metro. Conversations with colleagues. Writing and forming ideas for a project I’m working on. Meeting with academic colleagues at the University of Wales Trinity St David regarding the progress of our PhD students. They’re the main things. I love the variety and the ability to apply learning from one environment to another.

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Within all of this, a recurring theme is the importance of quality relationships. I am really heightened to this at the moment. On a recent episode of Radio 4’s Four Thought podcast, Julia Unwin spoke very persuasively about rediscovering human connections as a way of improving how we interact with each other. Similarly, thanks to a great conversation with Anne Collis this week about collaborative partnerships, Anne pointed me to a number of really interesting resources, including an article on the NPC’s blog about rebalancing the relationship between grant-makers and grantees. Central to any relationship, as you might expect, should be trust. Building trust is hard work; it has to be earned and it can take time.

I really liked what Lisa Trigg said in response to Australia’s Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety‘s examination of ‘person-centred care’. Lisa said that she preferred the term, ‘relationship-centred care’. It’s a subtle and important difference, one that values the relationship.

Similarly, thanks to Lauren Carter-Davies, I have been exploring literature relating to a complexity-friendly paradigm. What I really like within this, as the authors of A Whole New World: funding and commissioning in complexity discuss, is “taking responsibility for our impact beyond our immediate sphere of influence, acknowledging that what we do affects not just those we have a direct relationship, but the wider ecology as well. We are not lone rangers, and we shouldn’t seek to be. Our strength lies in positive collaboration, in honesty, openness and generosity.”

So, in building relationships; sharing power and responsibility (one of the five principles underpinning co-production), I am increasingly thinking we need to nurture the ecosystem; the community of interacting people and organisations with their environment.

Things I have learnt and/or reaffirmed this week:

The importance of organisational ecosystems

What am I committing to do:

Asking more open questions

Podcasts that I have listened to:

Women’s Hour. Parenting – parents’ evenings

Four Thought. Rediscovering human connections

Four Thought. All the music we’ll never hear

People fixing the world. Audience Takeover: your plastic solutions

People fixing the world. The school that puts wellbeing first

Addysg Cymru. Professional Learning – the new approach for practitioners in Wales

Fortunately… with Fi and Jane. Snoring on the sleeper with Kirsty Wark

Akimbo: a podcast from Seth Godin. Systems thinking

Akimbo: a podcast from Seth Godin. Norms and rules

Akimbo: a podcast from Seth Godin. Who is Banksy?

Seriously… The death of the eccentric

Seriously… The Art of Now: art surgery – anxiety

Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd. A Question of Sport: the fight for gender equality