This month’s notes are probably the saddest I’ve had to write since I started writing monthnotes back in 2019.

Last Thursday, our beloved labradoodle, Meg, had to be put to sleep. She was nearly seventeen years old. It’s been a very sad time and a lot of tears were shed in our family last week.

As I reflect on our time with her, she joined our family when our boys were very small and has been a constant part of their growing up.

Meg was a remarkable dog, always full of character – loyal, friendly, gentle and kind. As she got towards the end she was blind, nearly deaf and began to struggle to stand. We did our best to try to make her comfortable, but we had to make the difficult but right decision that enough was enough.

Toby, our youngest son, is on an extended trip in Asia so it was especially hard for him. He wanted to be as present as he could be so he had to watch her final moments on video call – so we did share her final moments with us as a family in a way. Now the house feels very empty without Meg and our other dog Dot is adjusting to being by herself.

At times it’s hard to see much beyond what happened last week, but there’s been plenty of other things going on.

On the work front it’s been another busy month.

The launch is Team Wakeman is going well, with marketing now happening consistently and an early client engagement this month. I’ve been delivering a Team Wakeman project, a Find audit for a third-party logistics business. It’s been really interesting getting into the inner workings of the business to help the founder understand what’s going on and to show the root causes behind what’s happening. Hopefully that turns into a further engagement to help him address the issues I identified.

There seems to be a bit of an M&A theme this month too. Three clients are involved in M&A activity that’s rapidly progressing, so that’s interesting to be back doing that kind of work, this time mostly on the sell-side this time rather than the buy-side. Undoubtedly those clients will continue to work with us over the coming months to help them navigate the process.

I’ve also been coaching a new operations director in an agency, helping her build out a roadmap to address some of the challenges of smoothing out operations in an agency that hasn’t previously had a particular operations focus or a dedicated operations director role.

With one of my fractional clients, I’ve been working hard to help develop leadership accountability. This involves putting in leadership team scorecards, ensuring each leadership team member understands what’s expected of them and then showing them what a monthly one-to-one process to hold people accountable to those scorecards actually looks like in practice. They’ve responded really positively to that and we’re now starting to cascade that way of working out to more people in the team.

We had an Extra Brain board meeting this month, which was great as we start to think about what the next stage of Extra Brain looks like and begin to calibrate our aspirations with the capacity we have. Extra Brain is a consultancy collective where I’m a founding partner, but it’s a part-time part of my work. All of the board members have their own clients alongside our roles leading Extra Brain so there’s a constant tension between doing the work and building the business.

Away from work this month, lots has been moving forward on the house we’re looking to build near Ashford in Kent over the next couple of years.

We’ve been having lots of meetings with the architect and moving the designs forward. We also headed up to Birmingham for the Motorhome show in the middle of the month for a home-building show at the NEC. That was really helpful to meet lots of suppliers and understand much more detail about the different choices we need to make on a house-building project.

Our current home is up for sale with good early interest, so hopefully things move forward on that front in the next month. Jo did a great job hustling journalists this month, which led to our house being featured in the Sunday Times yesterday.

This year, as I turn fifty, I’ve finally booked in some challenges to keep me focussed on training. My friend Paul and I are doing a 50K ultra run in Kent next month. It’s going to be quite a flat ultra run compared to what I’m used to, but it’ll be nice to be doing it with someone else. I think 50K is about the right distance for this time of year given I haven’t been training properly for a while – I’ve got about eight weeks to get some miles into my legs.

I’m also excited to enter a 120-mile cycle sportive on the South Downs in mid-May. It starts and finishes in Hazelmere in Surrey and does a number of ascents of the South Downs. It’s not an area I’ve cycled in much so I’m looking forward to going somewhere new, as well as getting some road miles early in the year.

Music this month…

This Carl Cox mix is a belter and has been played a lot very loud this month.

Podcasts this month…

I enjoyed this chat between Trenton (a fellow consultant) and Jess (a client of mine) about her experience leading PrettyGreen. I’ve always admired how PrettyGreen balance clients, their team and the business so well – and this podcast goes into how Jess does it.

Reading this month…

I’m reading Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty at the moment. It’s a pretty deep dive into the Sackler family and their links to the opioid crisis in the US. Fascinating and shocking in equal measures so far.

Cycling this month…

More time on gravel and road this month as the weather improves and the mud dries out. 187.2 miles.

Running this month

Need to up the miles, but have got back into weekly speed rep sessions to help with cardio. 25.8 miles.