Over the Line

Yesteday I left Speaking Up. Well, not completely as I am still the Chair, but it felt like a departure. Fifteen years of carrying a heavy bronze ball now over. The relief is still palpable and unexpected. A bit like still being drunk a day after two pints of bitter. But I will enjoy this feeling for as long as it lasts.

We immediately decamped for York from where I am writing now. We do house-swops which work on trust and are a fine way to holiday. Rather than a soul-less, high rent flat you move into the comfort and homeliness of other people's space. People you will never probably speak to let alone meet.

This week will see me doing a lot with the kids after a long pre-mergrt absence. Like many Dads I am prone to going AWL mentally for long periods and this is one thing about being a CEO I will not miss. Before the kids that job and organisation was my whole life really. Now that can't really happen again.

The big choice for me I guess will be whether or not I ever a) work again as a CEO or b) develop an organisation to scale. There is much about both that I no longer feel attracted to doing. Maybe this will change after a bit of a break but I suspect it won't. A lot of what drove me to build up an organisation in the first place is no longer there or has been satisfied by doing it once. I also feel that I have changed these last few years. I just don't have the same willingness to put my own and others happiness second to the requirements of a 250 person organisation - however fantastic the cause.

But neither do I wish to just chill out. Challenge is vital to me. I need, almost pathologically, to know I am making a difference. The intensity and hunger won't dissolve. It just won't look the same. I am hoping that my new ventures will, though smaller, be just as influential as any larger thing I might go off and run. There is a new thing gestating which is still not clear to me. But I know it is coming. Now there is space I hope it won't take too long to sweep me off my feet!