I joined Lagom as a Senior Delivery Manager at the start of February. A few weeks in, I’ve been reflecting on making the switch to my new role.
At the end of 2021, after ten years working for Skills for Care I decided it was time for a new challenge. I took to LinkedIn and set my profile as ‘open’ for new opportunities. Before I knew it my evenings were taken up with calls from recruiters. Talking about interesting opportunities. However no conversation was as exciting as the ones I started to have with Lagom.
I had worked with Lagom as a customer before. I loved every research project they worked on. You will spot quotes from me on Lagom’s website. Talking about how Lagom works in partnership with you as a client or how their Discoveries provide you with a map to bridge you to your Alpha. So when Lagom offered me the role of Senior Delivery Manager I could have jumped for joy.
As the time approached for me to actually make the move things did start to feel a bit strange. I must have said ‘weird’ everyday when people asked me how I felt about leaving somewhere I had worked for ten years. Although I had worked with Lagom as a client, being part of the team was going to be different. There would be lots of things I wouldn’t know. Questions kept running round my head like ‘am I good enough?’ or ‘what if I fail?’
During my first week I continued to say the word ‘weird’. However I am pleased to say that now that I am in my fourth week I am feeling more settled. The Lagom team has made me feel really welcome. I am getting to work with some of the team I haven’t worked with before and I am getting to work on some interesting projects outside of Adult Social Care. This feels like the change I started searching for back in 2021.
If I am honest, moving jobs has been a little more uncomfortable than I anticipated. But now I have made the move I am really excited to be working at Lagom. I love working in the problem space and making decisions on the way forward based on research. So I love supporting clients to do that every day.
Lagom has a great workplace culture in terms of work life balance. I feel I can be at my best because I get time to focus on my work and time to recharge away from work too. The team works efficiently and uses digital tools like Slack well to communicate. This means we don’t spend our days on endless video calls.
I am sure that things will feel ‘weird’ again over the next few weeks and months but I am going to continue to immerse myself in the new projects I am working on, enjoy meeting new people and having new experiences, and fall back on knowing that change can be fun as well as being scary.
