Wednesday, 28 November 2007

I went to NCVO via St Pancras this morning to see the new(-ish) statue The Meeting Place which is stunning.

At NCVO our PQASSO group met again and we went through the materials. There were some useful discussions and it is always useful to talk with other practitioners about how they approach things. The others on the course came from a wide range of groups and all were charming and erudite. I was (almost) sorry to say good-bye at the end of the day.

In the evening, I reviewed my Watford CVS workload. Tomorrow is my first day in the office this week. I can anticipate a backlog of about 200 unread e-mails. When I left on Friday I already had 133 e-mails bearing little red “to do” flags. I also have a list of 21 tasks that I simply must complete asap (most of which I have been postponing for several weeks). Added to this, I have four meetings scheduled for tomorrow (including one in the evening) and I need to speak with several members of WCVS staff. What are my chances of making progress on all this tomorrow? Are all my meetings really necessary?

In the evening, I completed Robert Harris's book Selling Hitler on the remarkable events of the early 1980s when Stern magazine and The Sunday Times paid vast sums to publish diaries supposedly written by Adolf Hitler. Why was anyone so interested? People have a worryingly large capacity for stupidity and gullibility. The failures of corporate management sparked a series of events that ultimately produced the Code of Governance.