Building Momentum

After a period of chronic forgetfulness, I can now say that I am near fully re-adjusted to the demands of Autism Works, which has come at just the right time, especially as we are highly likely to be extremely busy over the next few weeks. On a positive note, Grayson Cobb, our new Testing Manager, appears to be settling in very well in his first week with the company. Elsewhere, we have also appointed a marketing student from Newcastle University to work with us on an internship basis for ten weeks to help develop a marketing model, in particular utilising the social networks more.

This morning we have had our first team meeting since Grayson joined us. Though we all know what we would ideally like to achieve in terms of providing sustainable employment to adults on the autistic spectrum, what we have agreed that we need to do at this stage is to set about how we will achieve this. To help build momentum towards this, we are working towards developing a culture of collective responsibility, knowing our individual responsibilities as well as our responsibilities as a team, which will provide consistency as well as aid decision making.

With Peter taking much responsibility for the business development and decisions and the finances largely being within the realm of Karl Hardy, there have often been many inhibitors within my tasks, particularly with the financial information needed. Where collective responsibility will help is with decision-making without too much need of relying on a seeking a second opinion or being blocked by an inhibiting factor. This will also help me to avoid excessive procrastination, something which I was talking about at a mindfulness conference I was speaking at this about how mindfulness practice, by just being here and now in the present moment, enables one to focus on the task in hand avoiding procrastination.

Right now, in this moment, I am continuing to work on funding bids. With Grayson on board, this presents me with some help when applying for funding bids. Part of Grayson's duties and responsibilities is to allocate costs for training and employee costs, which will make it clearer for me when filling in funding application forms, particularly when answering questions such as how much funding are we to apply to for as well as what we will use the funding for. To have such clarity will be of great help to me. To keep on track of where we are, we have arranged to have 'scrum' meetings each day, to tune in the past and future to the present, enabling us to review recent activity, look at where it has us in the present before looking at the next step, rather like converting third downs in a game of America Football until reaching the ultimate aim, scoring a touchdown!

Be sure to watch this space as momentum continues to build.