Happy Friday! 🙌 Hope you had a great week.
If you have to navigate things like half term, I trust it was enjoyable and if not, at least survivable. 🙂 My kids have been riccocheting around family and friends and I have missed them terribly!
What have I been doing this week? (*1)
I’ve been doing (..or rather, attempting) a bit of user interface flow mapping for an ‘off the shelf’ product to support a better conversation about what it actually does and what it’ll look like for users. This is a fairly new approach (to me) so it’ll be interesting to see how useful this is in practice.
In other news, it’s been a while since I’ve had a look at Realtimeboard (now re-branded as Miro), which is the thing I used as a virtual whiteboard to map the interface out. It’s a nifty little product with loads of useful templates and collaborative features. I may persist with experimenting with it — although I have a deep lasting love for Google Draw, which is simple but effective.
I had an opportunity to watch a recorded talk by Jim Collins and his 12 questions about “what it takes to build an enduring great company or social sector enterprise”. In the main, I thought it offered some interesting concepts that fit with my internal narrative. Although, in retreospect I wondered that whilst the research conclusions are based on 6000 years of combined corporate data, how much of it is pre-Internet era. Platforms and marketplaces seem to be super charging capitalism and influencing our society in ways that some are only just starting to consider. Have the variables irrevocably changed?
Anyway, I digress.
I particularly liked his first key point that great leaders typically have huge amounts of humility & modesty paired with a furious resolve for a purpose or mission larger than themselves. When I think of people I admire, they almost always fit this mold, be they historical figures or people I know via Twitter! I’m reading Quiet by Susan Cain at the moment and it’s filled with further examples of unassuming people with a quiet determination that achieved amazing things.
I could probably ramble on longer about more books I’m reading at the moment, but I’m going to spare us both. Mini victory dance for manging to write weeknotes on a Friday night.
Have a restful or energising weekend (whatever you need!) and see you next week.
*1 — … that I can share here. 🙂