What’s next?

A more personal note

Moved to Melbourne. Defended thesis. Made corrections. I’m a conferral away from officially being a Doctor of Government (yes, the move to Melbourne was a formal requirement too).

So you haven’t heard from me for a while. In this dense time of change, I had a moment to look back at what this newsletter has done for me, and what I hope I can put out into the world in future.

I began writing here, encouraged by the amazing Natalia Albert, a fellow doctoral student whom I had the pleasure of spending eight hours in a Koru lounge with once. I had decided to publish as part of my thesis, so I wanted to get myself “writing fit” – and this newsletter was my training ground. I set aside 3 hours each Wednesday with the goal: just write! About whatever was on my mind, what I had just read, what I was wrestling with. The result was posts that were pretty raw, direct, and honest.

Perhaps it was because I said the quiet parts loud, that – to my own amazement – people seemed to respond positively.

This newsletter has been such a blessing and a motivation for me to keep sharing, keep writing. Now I’ve come to the conviction that its former format has served its purpose, it’s time for a new approach.

One big recommendation from my thesis examiners was that my study of organisational restructuring would do very well with some international comparisons. So in my new home in Melbourne, I’m hoping to find a way to do that: what is different here, what is the same – what dynamics might be bigger than Aotearoa NZ’s cultural context and place-based habits?

I will continue to write. In fact, my queue for topics is longer than ever. I want that to take new forms though. More reflected and complete. Heck, I might even edit…

An editing keyboard, photo by Simon Hughes

You will see me publish in other channels, like my op-ed in Newsroom, and I’ll share that here when it happens. And of course there’s my peer-reviewed academic work, like my first publication “Performing change: the institutional logics of internal restructuring in the public sector” in Public Management Review.

In this newsletter, I will publish work that’s still in progress – thoughts I want to put out into the world especially when I hope to hear about other perspectives. And I’ll give myself more than 3 hours to write posts from here on. Luxury!

In that, I’ve been encouraged to edit, but not to lose my voice. You’ll be the judge of whether I’ll manage that. It sure fills me with fresh enthusiasm. Talk soon!