My God, I’ve been professionally challenged … my boss has just given me a TEXTBOOK to read. One of two she’s ordered – published by the Harvard Business School Press none-the-less on a strategic tracking system she wants me to adopt in my work. The Balanced Scorecard system (… read all about it http://www.balancedscorecard.org/). I’ve been dabbling in it a bit under her guidance with some reports I’ve done for a Steering Committee I support – using a graphical representation known as ‘dashboard’ to track using red, orange and green which tasks are on schedule and which are behind. I’m kind of excited and kind of scared – this text book is REALLY grown up, with diagrams and graphs and tables and massive overuse of words like strategy, platform, measurement, performance, map, alignment, derive, portfolio.

I hope the expectation is that I will read it on work time and not over Christmas! And fingers crossed for being sent on a course somewhere fantastic!!

Today I went locally for coffee as I ran out of time to go to Fuel. The barista’s said they were carrying out a survey this morning, asking customers what they thought the sexiest profession was. Interesting. They said the top male opinion was nurse, and the top female opinion was tradesman or guys in uniform. I guess it depends on your interpretation of the question. I did not interpret ’sexiest profession’ to be a sexy ‘person’ necessarily, but what the profession embodied. I went for lawyer. Not that I’m saying lawyers can’t be sexy as people! I thought the whole nurse and tradesman thing was interesting given their customer base is from around Featherson St … I wonder what the suits on The Terrace would’ve said?

I ask to be noticed. I really do. Today in honour of there being no wind and straight-down rain, I’ve brought out my big orange umbrella with an orange handle. My special one. And by lunchtime had received at least half a dozen comments about it; from colleagues, shop assistants and strangers in the lift. And in fact two people thought it very ‘feng shui’ of me to have matching accessories i.e. watch, rings, bangle, credit card wallet - feng shui indeed: I put them right and said it was absolutely intentional and was all about me and not the order of the universe!

And just now I had to reluctantly lend it to my boss who was leaving the building for lunch – very cool to watch from my office window down to the street to see it go off on an adventure – it sure is bright on such a dreary day!