Kindness.

It’s Friday and one week into the new phase of my career. My job on paper is Marketing and managing our own company’s impact on the environment and society (ESG). Of course, as a start-up, my work is broader than this, and probably always will be.

Here are some week one reflections. 

It takes time to evolve. I have some muscle memory of a 9 - 6pm routine although it’s going to take time to tone to the routines and behaviours that come with a more conventional structure.

I’m learning to navigate an alien environment, spanning from understanding customers to technology to the climate. There’s a new language here, and new politics.

I’m commuting. After three years of working from behind a home office desk, I’m back on a train, depending on the service’s proficiency. On day one, the points failed, someone vandalised a window and trespassers slowed the replacement train in its tracks. I’m reminded that most convenience foods are made portable by being wrapped in some form of wheat.

We - I - often forget to check in with how change feels. Reflection is key. We will do this as a team, as a culture, and I’ll do it personally too, mindful to be kind to myself.

Discipline. I have four to-do lists (work, other work, training, life) and they’re all demanding. My ability to manage them will be based on:

• Setting realistic expectations and communication.
• Considering energy, in and out, and balancing this equation
• Hyper prioritisation, day to day.
• Reassess each day’s schedule the night before and again as task one.
• What’s the most important thing?
• What does daily success look like? Be realistic.
• Make sure list 4 - life - doesn’t get neglected by overly focusing on list 1 or 2.
• Acute discipline
• If something takes longer than 5 minutes, it’s in the diary.
• Stay away from distractions.
• Preparation (for example, food preparation the night before).
• Selecting and laying out clothes.
• Packing the EDC (everyday carry)
• Reflection
• What worked? Why?
• What didn’t? Why?
• What can I change?

Principles and behaviours. One aspect of the job I’ve lived this week is considering culture and how to nurture it. We’ve discussed principles and their associated behaviours and these are far more powerful enquiries than “values” perhaps. All too often, companies hold a list of 6-8 words that they suggest are values they aspire to, and that imbue everything they do. Sometimes these work, but very often they don’t.

A principle is a “guiding rule,” its power being in that verb, guiding. It informs our behaviours, what we do and don’t do.

To an earlier point, we added the principle that we should always seek kindness in our decisions and actions, even if this is “costly or inconvenient.” That’s not to say that we are ineffective, inefficient or wasteful, more it speaks to being humanitarian, mindful and conscious.

So now we have two.

We must be generous, most obviously by generating social benefits in free heat. And we must be kind, in all that we do, for - and to - everyone involved.

On that positive note, on to the to-do lists.

Item one. Sea swim.