Weeknote 28

The Great Unsettling

What I did

• More work on The Organisational Resilience programme with Liz. Discussing structures and content, getting in the detail more on that side of things. Much of that will be led by Liz as I focus on the Collective Resilience aspect. We disagree on some aspects of the Collective Resilience part at the moment, that's ok. Also spoke to a designer about maybe making some of the Organisational Resilience principles into physical cards, with ideas for how to use them.
• Was meant to have an interview with CivTech on 11.9 "How can technology help people overcome barriers to accessing key online services?" along with Doug and others. We unfortunately had to withdraw due to tricky situation regarding ownership of ideas. It's a real shame as I think there could have been a real interesting and useful thing to explore and maybe begin putting into action. I suspected this might happen when I wrote a post last week.

What’s the value of an idea and does anyone actually own it?

A rather strange situation last week made me revisit the idea of… well, ideas. Back in 2011, I was bored of my meal options.

LinkedInTom Watson

I won't be giving up on potential solutions to that CivTech question, I think it's too important I wrote up one of my(?!) ideas on Open Ideas.

• Created an Airtable Base for a tiny charity who work with refugees and asylum seekers. There are many CRM's out there. Some of them are very good. I still think there is a gap for something simple. Many CRM's try to do too much, which is understandable because more features means bigger paying clients, but there are many left behind by this. It's been a while since I've really been Airtable. A lot has changed with layouts. I tried a bit of Vibe (no)coding using their omni to build the base. It was a decent start actually, but like many things, it needed tweaking.
• Was meant to be at the Lloyds Bank Foundation Fortyfied conference. Had to switch to joining online which was a shame, as really I was looking forward to people in real life. It was nice to hear the emphasis on resilience as terminology. I thought the panel on data & AI was interesting with Charlotte (Care Free), Kyle (DataKind) & Marco (ProMo Cymru) - give their perspectives - I think each of these organisations do great work for what it's worth. Nice shout out for Stu and the team at SORT around Caddy also
• Helped a charity with trying to improve their HAF application process. Time was VERY short so had to try to do a half way measure that still sets things up for later improvements. What this meant in practice though was working on some thing in a Microsoft environment. Urgh. This may or may not have inspired my bluesky early morning rant

I even managed to infiltrate UKCharityCamp with this provocation (thanks to Bobi for being the trojan horse!)

Wrote a thing on linkyin about problems and modes

Whats the problem? How might we solve the problem? Try to solve the problem. Random friday thoughts on tenders, commissions and being clear about where we are and what we know. I've written… | Tom Watson

Whats the problem? How might we solve the problem? Try to solve the problem. Random friday thoughts on tenders, commissions and being clear about where we are and what we know. I’ve written tenders. I’ve responded to tenders. Both are not fun or easy. AS someone who is currently in the responding to camp I see lots of tenders. Some have budgets, some don’t. Some are highly structured and rigid. But I think one of the challenges of this, especially when you are smaller as an organisation, is actually knowing where you are, being clear about that. But when I say clear, I don’t mean you need to know everything, unless you actually do. Far too often I see requests for solutions and nothing to show how you got there. This is especially true when there is some kind of technological solution. I’d suggest that trying to break things down into 3 ‘modes’ is helpful. 1. What is the problem we want to solve? Well of course Tom, that’s obvious. But is it? In my experience often we try to treat symptoms not causes. We skip the deep discovery of what the real problem is. During this mode it will be tempting to try to think of ways to solve the problem. Don’t. 2. How might we solve the problem? Ok, so we really know what the problem is. Now how ‘could’ we go about solving it. What are our options, what are our restrictions? It is tempting to start trying to actually solve the problem here. Don’t 3. Try to solve the problem Finally. This one could be a long piece on it’s own. Delivery methods, frameworks, etc etc. And so when thinking about getting someone to help, just being clear about how much you’ve done in each of the modes. Be clear on how much you’ve done in modes one and two. Share this openly. It’ll help you, and the people who want to help you. It’s ok to just say....we think we have a problem, but honestly, we’re not sure *3 steps are nice, but I couldn’t leave it 4. Learn Did we solve the problem? Where did it go well and where didn’t it? Think about the modes again - was it the right problem, was it the right way of solving, did we deliver the solution the right way

LinkedInTom Watson

I'd suggest that trying to break things down into 3 'modes' is helpful.

1. What is the problem we want to solve?
Well of course Tom, that's obvious. But is it? In my experience often we try to treat symptoms not causes. We skip the deep discovery of what the real problem is. During this mode it will be tempting to try to think of ways to solve the problem. Don't.

2. How might we solve the problem?
Ok, so we really know what the problem is. Now how 'could' we go about solving it. What are our options, what are our restrictions? It is tempting to start trying to actually solve the problem here. Don't

3. Try to solve the problem
Finally. This one could be a long piece on it's own. Delivery methods, frameworks, etc etc.

I decided to then make a bit of a visual to help my thinking on this as it's something I use quite often. I purposefully called them 'modes' rather than steps or phases because things are rarely linear.

I then, because sometimes I need to go down the rabbit hole, I made a google doc further exploring this!

The doc below is open for comment. I'm interested in people's thoughts on if it's useful, but also I've begun listing out methods to use in the different modes and I'd love other people thoughts or suggestions on what methods they find useful

Modes of solving problems (and asking for help)

Modes of solving problems (and asking for help) Introduction Most of the time, we treat problem solving as a tidy sequence of “phases” or “steps”. In reality, work is much messier. We move forwards and backwards, we discover new information, and the thing we thought we were fixing turns out…

Google Docs

• Finished the week with a lovely meeting with a CEO who I'm supporting. We explored mode 2 - how might we solve the problem. We explored distributed leadership, self managed teams and alternative governance structures. They thought I really helped, this was nice

Things I'm noticing

The Great Unsettling. I've noticed a lot of people and organisations (and the world obviously) feeling very unsettled. People in my professional life and in my personal life. Maybe it's the time of life I and they are in.

I've noticed people in well established careers move into consulting and enterprise. I've seen a lot of freelancers, consultants and small agency people more into employment or at least consider it. Running a small agency has been hard for a while, the last year harder. Organisations and systems are unsettled. There is very little certainty. Maybe there never has been. Change comes for us all, it's coming for me in relation to work. How we respond & ultimately adapt to change is what is important.

Interesting things

• The “Other Things Box” Understanding and Navigating What Really Drives Change
• Dynamic Capabilities for Human Flourishing: Why Cities Need a New Investment Logic for Innovation
• Blended Finance and Catalytic Capital in Bio-regional Financing Facilities
• Relationships, influencing and collaborative working - third sector trends 2025
• Scribe V2 Realtime Speech to Text - will be testing this week
• Data, BI & Analytics Trend Monitor 2026 - “AI initiatives can only succeed if these prerequisites are in place. What we are seeing in 2026 is not resistance to innovation but a disciplined approach to 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮.”
• Transformative Philanthropy - Oak Foundation Case Study

Just for laughs. Or for crys