LiA Week 1-3 Reflections
Please note that these reflections have been written without the use of LLMs/Generative AI – I think that the act of developing ones ideas from rough bullet points into prose is part of the process of reflecting and allows me to gain more from the reflection process. This may mean my writing is therefore more clunky and uses less flowery adjectives than you might expect – but it is my honest reflections, in my own words.
Week 1 – Settling in; Learning
Key Laidlaw Change-maker values developed: Curious, Determined
Key Laidlaw Capacity area developed: Process
Key Virtuosity/OCP Character dimensions developed: Temperance, Humility
I arrived into Wageningen late Saturday night, and took the Sunday to hire a bike, cycle around and get my bearings. The thing that struck me about the Netherlands (having not been to northern Europe before) was the level of cycle lanes and green space! The country is partly green due to having such a high water table, but also by design, prioritising space for cyclists and pedestrians, with a result that most people choose not to drive! Wageningen is the site of a large life sciences university and therefore also hosts a lot of environmental NGO & Charity headquarters – so perhaps this is also due to a population of more environmentally-conscious people than average.
Once I remembered how to cycle(!) and got used to cycling on the right hand side of the road, it’s a really nice way to get about. However I definitely struggled at the beginning, finding navigating the chaotically busy cycle paths with new road rules, while attempting to cycle one handed to signal, and figuring out where I was going without being able to hold a map or GPS in front of me - all very challenging! The character dimension Temperance (including ‘calm’, ‘composed’ and ‘self-controlled’) is by far my weakest character dimension, and I was definitely challenged by that here! However, I started stopping in laybys to assess the next intersection and plan how I would get across it, which was really helpful preparation for allowing me to stay calm in the moment, and gave me time to check maps. Now, at the end of the week 1, I’m confident cycling and navigating the busy roads, and have even been out on a long cycle for fun - It’s been really good for my physical and mental health to start the day with a cycle to work, and it’s a habit I’m going to try and bring it back to the UK.
The office is filled with people from around the world, and has a really good working culture of everyone taking a lunch break in the kitchen area away from their desks. In these breaks it has been lovely to chat to everyone about where they are from, what the working culture is like in their country, the food they are eating, and more. This has developed my perspective on Global Citizenship – instead of a model of someone travelling to a new country to learn about their local knowledge and then bring it back (which would be surface-level and perhaps in some ways extractive), the organisation headquarters is filled with people from around the world, who bring their cross-cultural knowledge to the table every day. People casually talk about their work at lunchtime, allowing colleagues from other disciplines and cultural backgrounds to weigh in, creating small but powerful improvements in the cultural sensitivity of the work.
In the first week on the project, I was mostly learning – about the SWAT model and how to use it; about previous work conducted in the Central Rift Valley basin; about the different management interventions that could be used; about the political & cultural structures of the communities in the area and which areas would be more able to implement an erosion management intervention. Lots of information – which was a little overwhelming at times!
Key Laidlaw character values developed here were Curiosity and Determination:
Curiosity to ask the right questions and find out as much information as possible, led by a desire to learn more about the people & environments that the erosion management strategies need to support. Curiosity to question my own assumptions and to not take anything for granted, digging deeper into each topic l learn about. Determination, to wade through what felt like a never ending pool of information, including keeping going when trying to find contact details for people that wrote certain reports (which was very challenging!) to ask follow up questions and learn more.
A key Virtuosity/OCP character dimension developed was Humility, as I realised just how much I didn’t know, and how much I could learn from research and from other people. Although I had learnt a lot by the end of the week, I had also learnt how little I knew about the area (I moved from ‘unconscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious incompetence’ within the four stages of competence). Being consciously incompetent was scary! How could I possibly contribute new and meaningful insights about the management plans for an area of the world that I had limited knowledge of before I arrived?
I made a plan to leverage two of the three Laidlaw capacity areas – People and Process:
Process: I did lots of planning and research about how I would execute my aims and deliver meaningful impact, but also how I would learn how to do that! I made a timetable of what I needed to learn and achieve each week, and for some of the weeks broke down the tasks day by day. Edit: made when coming back here mid-way through week 3: The timeline I made in week 1 has been incredibly helpful as I have navigated challenges in weeks 2 and 3. It has also really helped my motivation, by allowing me to see how the work I do today will enable me to deliver on my aims at the end of the project.
People: During my initial research, I realized that Acacia Water had done work in the same basin that I was working on, and spent a while scouring reports and webpages trying to find a contact detail for someone who worked there. This was taking me a long time, and I started to get quite worried that it was all a waste of time – so I went around the office to see if anyone knew the people that worked there – and they did! This taught me how important it is to utilize people and networks. On Monday of Week 2 I am headed to Acacia Water to pick up some key data that will be invaluable to my project, and to learn more from the hydrologists at that organization.
Ideas and aims to help me improve my work next week:
The aim for next week is to create and utilize networks. To get to know more people so that I can ask them for help and support if I’m struggling during later phases of my project. I will set up meetings with people living & working in the Central Rift Valley, Ethiopia, to make sure the management strategy locations I model are sensible and would be adopted by the people that live there. It is really important that I prioritize this local knowledge in my modelling and decision making.
Week 2 – Communication & Collaboration
Key Laidlaw Change-maker values developed: Brave, Good
Key Laidlaw Capacity area developed: People
Key Virtuosity/OCP Character dimensions developed: Temperance, Humanity
The key theme this week was creating networks – in week 1 I realized how big my knowledge gap was and how much there was to learn, and going back to my leadership training notes I saw that I had really emphasized the idea that successful scholars draw on their networks and ask for help. I had about one hour while the model & datasets downloaded in the Acacia Water Office, and so I tried to speak to as many people as possible while I was there, and during this week I also really focused on building relationships with colleagues at WI. My process looked something like this: I tried to come across and friendly and personable, learnt about their work, and obtained their LinkedIn or phone numbers. That evening (or in person the next time I saw them for those in WI) I sent thank you notes and follow ups to try and build the relationship, and I made sure to log what I had learnt from each person. This could be a note about their work I found interesting or a note to self that they may be able to help me with a specific area of my work. This process developed my Laidlaw capacity area ‘People’.
Later on this week, I had meetings with people working in Ethiopia over the phone, and spoke to them via text, to learn from them about the specific needs of the area. I also was able to utilize the relationships I had built and start to ask people in the office for their advice and support about my work.
This challenged and improved my communication skills (capacity area ‘people’ and character dimensions ‘collaboration’ and ‘humanity’): I needed to carefully consider what method and style of communication would be best for that person – the head of the WI Ethiopia Office, for example, would expect to be contacted by a professional-sounding email and have a teams meeting, but other people there would prefer to be texted or to chat on a phone call. There was an element of language barrier to navigate (I am lucky that I could speak to people that spoke English – I (perhaps obviously) do not speak Amharic or Oromo!), and I realized that simple language that can be understood effectively is better than using overly formal corporate language, for the sake of sounding professional. One thing that surprised me (but now seems obvious as I write this) is that it is often better to text than call – I assumed that speaking on the phone would develop relationships better as it is the most similar to speaking to someone in person, but actually with a language barrier involved texting is often better as it allows for more time for looking words up and understanding before each response. These experiences developed my ability to adapt my communication to suit the person I am engaging with, and developed my Collaboration and Humanity character dimensions as I became more cooperative, flexible in communication, and considerate.
My character dimension Temperance, specifically patience, was once again challenged – sometimes people didn’t pick up, or the signal dropped out, or people’s other (probably more important!) teams meetings ran over, or for whatever reason the person I was hoping to speak to was unavailable. This tested my patience and empathy, and also my flexibility, as I tried to find other short tasks to do in the gaps so as not to waste time.
Reflections on wether aims were achieved; aims for next week
Overall, I learnt a huge amount from the people that I spoke to, which has really shaped the aims of the project, the interventions I’m choosing to model, and the places that I’m choosing to model them in – ie the whole project! This will (hopefully) make the finding and report I provide as meaningful, sustainable and as culturally sensitive and place-based as possible. I think I effectively worked on my aims I wrote in week 1, to create networks and learn from others. For next week, I’d like to try to be more outcome-focused and productive; working on the Laidlaw change-make value Fast, capacity area Performance, and character value Purpose. It has been really important to learn and much as possible about the area before I dive in so that my work is focused around something meaningful, but I only have 6 weeks so next week I need to get going on actually doing some modelling and finding some results.
Week 3 – many spinning plates!
Key Laidlaw Change-maker values developed: Fast
Key Laidlaw Capacity areas developed: Process, Performance
Key Virtuosity/OCP Character dimensions developed: Drive, Judgement, Humility, Courage
This week was characterized by juggling many different facets of the project and with other experiences, and trying to be both purposefully driven and flexible to changing the plan.
My aim for the project this week was to actually do some modelling, and improve my speed at creating outputs. I started by working on the changes to the model parameters I needed to make to model specific interventions in specific locations. It was really challenging to create a ‘final plan’ of parameter changes – as I researched and learnt more, I kept finding better ways to do things which meant going back and changing previous work. The head of the Ethiopia Office came to visit in person, and I had a number of conversations with him about my project. These were very helpful and needed, but once again I felt like I was constantly redoing work as I learnt more about a better way to do it, or changed my aims slightly as I understood more about the project. This was really challenging: I needed to balance being ‘Fast’ and keeping up momentum and productivity, while also ensuring that the work I was doing was ‘correct’ (or in estimation scenarios had errors as low as possible). I struggled to balance the idea that ‘done is more important than perfect’ with trying to invest time into the preparation stage to make my work as good as possible. It really helped to return to my plan from week 1 and to create stopping points: from my plan I could see that if task A wasn’t done by day X, I wouldn’t have time to get everything done. These deadlines I created helped me make iterative improvements until the deadline, and then just move on to task B without worrying that task A wasn’t perfect – I could see that it was as good as I could make it in the time that I had. This process helped me develop the change-make value ‘Fast’, as well as the character dimensions ‘drive’ as I was striving for results-oriented outputs, and ‘judgement’, through needing to be adaptable, situationally aware and decisive about when to move on.
At the end of the week, I went bird ringing with the visitors from the Ethiopia Office and a couple of other colleagues. The aim was for them to learn some basics about ringing, which is not currently happening at all in Ethiopia, to give them information about potentially starting up a ringing program there. I also knew nothing about ringing, so this was a really great opportunity to go along and learn how it works. I nearly didn’t go, as I was feeling stressed about the status of my project, but I’m so glad I did go in the end.
Firstly, the experience challenged my assumptions: When I first saw the birds in the net I felt that they must be getting hurt, and on the face of it the practice of trapping the birds in the net and then putting them into bags to be processed seemed cruel! However, I learnt that it doesn’t hurt them (they are just a little stressed and startled), and of course the information found out through the process is essential for their conservation, so my mind was pretty quickly changed on the whole thing. This developed my character dimension ‘humility’, through being open-minded and flexible & respectful in my beliefs.
I was really nervous to hold the birds as I didn’t want to hurt them (especially as there were some rare species found), but after watching other for a while to learn how to, I did it and it was completely fine! I ended up being on weighing duty and holding many of them (we processed 168 birds that morning), and overcame my nervousness and got much more comfortable with them. This developed my character dimension ‘courage’. I also found that the more relaxed and calm you are when you hold the birds, the more relaxed they are and the better it goes – which feels like an apt metaphor for an approach to life! At one point I was also on recording duty – putting the weights, heights, age, wingspan etc into the system. The numbers were spoken in Dutch – luckily I learnt a little Dutch, including basic numbers, before I arrived but this definitely tested my understanding, and humility & communication when I needed to ask for clarification.
Another challenge for this week was balancing admin & leadership roles from home while staying fast and productive in my work at Wetlands International. I am the president of DU Big Band, the leading jazz ensemble at the University, and my responsibilities over the summer involve planning and booking in all the gig dates for the upcoming year (including the logistics for our UK tour), auditions preparation, room bookings, checking that the work of others is going well (such as publicity & social media, repertoire planning etc), plus preparing our next album for release. Unfortunately, this week I was so focused on my LiA that I failed to keep up with my emails and messages in a timely manner. As the leader of the group, I need to be reasonably available when my team ask me for advice or to speak to/email someone on behalf of the band, and I struggled to fulfil these responsibilities effectively as I tried to balance them with the needs of my LiA project.
The first step I had to take was to apologize, and to make a plan to improve my ability to balance my commitments, to allow me to focus on my LiA without dropping the ball on my continuous leadership role. The apology took courage and vulnerability (which is my weakest virtuosity character element), and I found it quite difficult, but through reflecting on how best to go about it I think I developed my ability to communicate and set a plan for improvement in this way.
Moving forward, I chose to actively block out 30-45 mins of dedicated time each evening to keep up with my leadership of the band exec and respond to queries, and set reminders on my phone to make sure I actually utilized that time. Note from midway through week 4: This has been really helpful so far this week in making sure I fulfill my responsibility to the band, but has also improved my productivity and minimized distraction during the day – I don’t feel stressed about emails or queries as I can trust that I have the time blocked out to answer them later in the day.
Reflections on week 3 overall; aims for week 4
My aim for week 3 was to become more outcome-focused and productive, and to get some actual modelling results. I wasn’t able to achieve the second part of this aim (that is now the aim for week 4!) but I am proud of how I attempted to be outcome-focused and keep up momentum as the aims and methods that I felt were best continuously changed. I developed the Laidlaw Capacity area ‘Process’ as I developed systems to improve my productivity in my LiA and to balance my responsibilities. I think a lot of character growth happened this week, and I learnt more about how to create systems that enable me to stay productive while balancing different responsibilities. Next week, I want to continue developing these character traits, and to generate some tangible model outputs.