I'm sitting in my office in London, writing my report this morning. It's very sunny and I can see the London eye and the Shard out of my window. I go back to work in a month's time, to the Home Office, so I finally have a sort of 'essay crisis'. I'm meant to be at a Home Office conference today but this feels more important. I might try and get to the end of it.
On Tuesday I caught up with Sophi and Jennie and Paul, who all teach systems thinking, to reflect on what we've been doing and adapting from our core material. (Paul of course is my husband and ironically, that 90 mins was about the longest I've spent with him all week!) In the course of our conversation I started talking about my report.
"Who's it for?" asked one of them. "Well, it's for people who do policy and strategy in the centre of government. It's basically for me!", I answered. "I sort of want to write, 'Dear Emily. Please don't forget all the fantastic things you learnt in your Winston Churchill Fellowship year to listen to the citizen. Remember to get a witness in who's got a neutral perspective. Take courage. Create political cover. And so on."
"That sounds much more interesting than an executive summary" said Jennie. "Why don't you do that?"
So now I'm wondering if I should write some of the report as a letter to myself. Is it naff? Or a bit different? Comments puh-lease!!!
