In the deep end

So if I was concerned yesterday about being bored for a little while … no more. First of all, I am now getting involved with one of the in-house social enterprises called Purple Heart. Its entire business and operational model are being changed, and there are a couple of things that need to be done like yesterday, such as putting together a franchise agreement for the young entrepreneurs it will be working with. But, actually, this needs to be done before Monday so not a lot of time.

I also agreed to be a business coach/mentor for two hours a week for one of five young entrepreneurs. These five have been with us for a while, and we met with a few of them a couple weeks back in a round-table discussion. I am actually quite looking forward to this – I know learned a lot last year by working directly with the students in the townships, and I will learn a lot by working with these guys, hectic backgrounds and all. But at least I know not to insult their pride!

I was reminded as we had a very productive two-hour meeting in the Purple Heart offices how much I enjoyed my time at Ask Jeeves International, where we had a small, tight-knit group of people and we (pretty much) all liked and trusted one another. This feels the same. Also the nature of our open plan space area and very limited real estate makes the work much more collaborative by definition than at my last company where we were portioned off into offices.

Anyway as if that wasn’t hectic enough, taking up most of my afternoon coming up to speed, then working through the operational model, and trying to get my head around the level of sales that would be required to make the business model work I met with the CBDO to talk about how the school will work with Purple Heart over the next three weeks. Apparently by the time the project manager in charge leaves at the end of June, he is supposed to have written a business plan. It is most likely the case that there will not be enough time to put him through the full business plan school module (if it were developed, that is … I am currently working on class 1 out of 10 that I have to do!), so we will probably need to do a needs assessment and then tailor what we teach him. Talk about just-in-time product delivery, I am going to have to step up my pace of development even from what I had planned.

In brighter news, the Flyers won game 3 in OT. Again I didn’t watch the game as it occurred during the middle of a school night and I wanted to be at the gym bright and early, but I woke up just after 5am local time and I knew the Flyers had won. Boy, if they had lost I would really have been surprised. Sometimes you just know things.

Tonight is welcome drinks at some bar in Observatory for all the new people. At the moment I am icing myself and now that I’m done writing this up will move on to reviewing the parent support module I said I would review for my coworker.