COVID week 17 w/b 6th July

A catch up week

I had a week of trying to catch up with lots of projects, checking in with people, finishing things off, moving work on, and making sure I was up to speed. It was pretty successful, and I feel much more on top of my work than I did.

Models and cash

We have a new finance lead, and he has been brilliant in recent weeks. It’s such a relief to have that skill set in the organisation when things are challenging. One thing that we’ve been doing is modelling two different scenarios, let’s call them optimistic and pessimistic, and tracking where we currently are against them in terms of both P&L and cash. 

This week we discovered that the pessimistic cash forecast wasn’t as bad as it looked, because of duplication in the back-end formula. On our pessimistic scenario, we will be spending £50k a month less than we thought (and I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near our pessimistic). It’s funny how much mental pressure those things can release. After knowing that, I noticed I became immediately more positive and bullish. The company is in precisely the same position, but my disposition shifted.

Reading, listening and watching

I could listen to Michael Holding, and Ebony Rainford-Brent talk about race and sport and Black Lives Matter all day. Kudos to Sky for putting this front and centre in their coverage of the first test match (it was so good to have the cricket back).

I hope more sporting and other broadcasters continue to push this conversation into our collective consciousness. I can already feel the energy moving away. We are all responsible for making sure that doesn’t happen.

A while ago I recommended the podcast, the Last Archive because it was by Jill Lepore, but I must admit I didn’t really get what she was trying to achieve with it. Now it’s a few more episodes in, and I feel like the last three have been brilliant. Strong recommend.