Investing in diversity and vulnerability

Posted July 17, 2022

By Tania Krasinski, 17 July 2022.

This is one example of how diversity, by way of different perspectives, adds value, leads to innovation, and better ways of working as we head towards the new world-of-work.

Summary

Early December 2021, a greater Sydney Council contacted me to help them with a number of projects whilst a team member was on secondment. I was undergoing chemotherapy at the time and explained my limitations. They took a risk with me and it has paid off in ways beyond both our expectations.

Background

The pandemic has affected us in ways we could not have realised in our lifetime. After some soul-searching, I left quite a secure role in local government to start my own business. With a business degree, experience in business and community and a passion for change, Redwoods Work Collaborative was registered in January 2021. By May that year, I was ready to go to market and expand my network. That was just before Sydney’s significant lockdown, it did not deter me, I decided to run an online pilot. Fortunately for me there was no urgency.

Unfortunately (or not?) the next few months would lead me to new ways of working and offer me a new layer of experience in vulnerability. A cancer diagnosis in August had changed my life and plans way beyond the pandemic could for me. My priorities over the next 10 months were to (a) ensure my physical and mental health were resilient enough to withstand chemotherapy, surgery and radiation and (b) that my own finances were in order to support this change.

Value

This opportunity was valuable for me as it not only offered a distraction from the cancer treatment, but it also made me feel useful and valued. I was able to work within my own health and time constraints, therefore I worked smarter and was inspired to put in the extra effort to work differently. The outputs included nine events with two new collaborations, a consultation and a playbook. At the time of writing, outcomes are yet to be measured, however, I ensured that there were processes in place to enable measuring the team’s project outcomes.

Outputs and Outcomes

The team had highlighted the value of my contribution of an outside perspective and noted that they had learned a lot about themselves and their contribution through their work. The playbook reflected their work and included templates and frameworks for the team to streamline current processes and add value to their data collection and reporting.