I suppose Valentine’s Day is as good as any for my first tentative steps into blogging. How did I get myself into this, and what am I aiming to do? I’m beginning to wonder that myself......
Behind the scenes, there’s a humungous amount of work to bring our new website to fruition – and as we hit the last fraught weeks, the pages finally take shape. Including a new section aimed at bringing an interactive Comment and Insights space particularly aimed at HR and other thought leaders interested in people and organisation issues.
And herein lies the thin end of the wedge.
And herein lies the thin end of the wedge - this section has the accountability finger pointing in my direction. Not me alone, obviously, as CIPD doesn’t work in silos like that! And the policy, research and external affairs teams have been doing ‘dry runs’ in the background for some time, generating a sense of how it would work, and also the all important content. So we’re pretty sure we know how to use our own insights - but we haven’t yet got into the groove of how we generate more from the very people we want to be excited by the area and contribute to it. And as it’s intended to be topical, we couldn’t ask them too much in advance, and there is always the small question of whether we’ll launch on time.....and so on.
And then someone mentioned that I didn’t seem to have got with the social media programme yet, and wasn’t it about time that I did, and wouldn’t this be the ideal catalyst. How could I be asking others, and not doing myself etc – you can sense how the script played out. So as someone had demonstrated the ‘courage to challenge’, I thought I ought to respond in ‘role model’ mode, admit it was a ‘fair cop’, and have a go.
I think what I want to do with this is give a personal view and flavour of some of the things we’re coming across, thinking about and working on - a sense of evolution and exploration rather than fully formed opinions. But it may not turn out that way.
And as I walked to the station, the restaurants all seemed packed to overflowing – but very few people seemed to be having a good time. Ritual display vs authentic romance……
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