It’s a wet November day and once again I’m sitting down to reflect on the month.

I realise I say this most months, but once again it feels like it’s been a really intense month. Taking a moment to look back shows just how much is happening a the moment.

I’m working fractionally with a digital agency based in the West Midlands. As I head into month 3 it’s really interesting to see how things are changing in the business. The MD and CEO are leading with much more confidence, clients are starting to respond positively to our experiments with a fresh proposition and we’re starting to tighten up processes to improve the ways things work within the agency.

I’m also working with a rapidly growing agency with teams on both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve been delivering my new COO Blueprint Audit – a rapid seven day deep dive into the operational health of the business using a 180 point diagnostic tool (based on my B3 framework).

The client is a super rapidly growing business and very acquisitive. It’s fascinating to work with them to understand the story of the business so far and help them set up their operational infrastructure to cope with their next round of acquisitions.

A different project that’s coming along nicely this month is a piece of organisational design work I’m doing with a tech-centric legal organisation. It’s a fascinating project thinking about how you build an organisation around an AI enabled workflow. This is something I’m really excited about and is a theme that’s come up a few times this year in organisational design work I’ve done. I’m expecting that trend to continue next year.

This month also marked another exciting milestone on a project that I’ve been working on with singer and actor Matt Henry. This isn’t my usual kind of project as it’s a start-up rather than a scale-up, but when I first spoke with Matt I was inspired by his passion and vision to create The Actors House – a portfolio of affordable, accessible, safe and high quality places to stay across the UK for touring actors and creatives.

We did a research call with Equity earlier this month. Hearing about young actors having to sleep on mouldy mattresses in damp conservatories or having to share beds to be able to afford somewhere to stay when touring was a reminder of the difference that Matt’s venture will make. We’re still learning and iterating the business model, but a big milestone this month was the launch of the first property – a House in Bradford – where we welcomed our first paying guest.

As we approach the end of the year, I’ve also been thinking ahead to next year. I’m working with Alex at Outdo working on my own proposition. We’ve been thinking about how fractional work is evolving and what that means for how I might position and market my services next year. The pace of change in the fractional market means that there’s a need to be more differentiated and focussed in my own marketing.

I’ve also been working on my joint venture with former colleague Sarah Harris. We launched Actualise earlier this year. I think both of us are frustrated that we didn’t launch a proposition that was compelling enough. After some soul searching we tapped up Tim Deeson who’s generously helping us to kick a fresh new proposition into shape. I came away from our working session this month energised and keen to get our new idea out there in February.

I’m teaming up with a Taiwan-based fractional CFO on my course business Going Fractional. Having successfully launched the course earlier this year, I’ve recognised I lack the skills and time to properly promote the course and realise its potential. I’m excited to have partnered with someone who has an established course business, along with the tools and knowledge to take Going Fractional forward in 2026. More on that in due course.

Away from work, I headed up to Snowdonia mid-month to do a 53 mile ultra. Despite a huge storm the night before, it was a sunny day in north Wales with some beautiful views during the day. Overall the run wasn’t as physically tough as the last 50 miler I did but mentally it was a lot harder. The combination of much longer spent running in the dark, a particularly long hard three mile ascent and descent in the dark with no discernible path and the remoteness meant I had to work hard to hold it together mentally.

Last weekend was a bit of an unexpected and unwelcome turn of events. Our elder son who’s at university was hospitalised in a lot of pain. Thankfully a lot of tests ruled out a lot of scary things and he was home the next day. We headed down to see him and it’s been a relief for us both that he’s continued to recover OK this week.

On a happier note, I treated myself to a turntable this month and entered the middle-age crisis of building a vinyl collection. I’ve been enjoying the addition of vinyl to my DJ set-up as well just loving the feel and sound of real records once again.

Music this month…

Got introduced to Marsh by Enya this month and have become obsessed. Am loving his long sets as I work. This 7 hour epic at Fabric is a particular fave.

Podcasts this month…

Lots of podcasts with all the running training and a long drive to north Wales and back. I’m particularly enjoying the conversations on One Question with Michelle Cox.

Reading this month…

Am reading a fascinating book about the economics of the narcotics trade – “Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel“. It’s really interesting to see the parallels with the business world I work in and the illegal drug trade.

Cycling this month…

Less miles and mostly indoor this month as it’s all been about the running. 45.6 miles.

Running this month

82.4 slow ultra-paced miles. Be good to get back to faster pace now the ultra’s done and restore a bit more aerobic fitness.