Luckily, my scaphoid fracture last week didn’t interfere much with the day-to-day. It was nuisance alright, and I did get a couple of bad nights, but apart from the superficial aberration, I was able to carry on. What shone through this whole evolving episode is NHS’s Torbay hospital. The staff, their diligence, the patience despite the hectic Easter weekend has been superb. It would be an organisation that I would love to work with and support their magnificent endeavour.

On the personal front, we celebrated my wife’s 44th. Celebrations extended into the weekend and we had fun, relaxing time (intercepted but thankfully not interrupted by hospital trips). We had a fun afternoon at Theatre Royal Plymouth enjoying the magical dramatization of Three Little Pigs, and enjoyed lovely meals out. I discovered the cooking of the Levant for the first time in its full galore and despite the cast on the right-hand, the sumac and the za’atar did add the zing to the east mediterranean diet. In all of the chaos that surrounds us, as we finish the first quarter of the year, this week, in summary, was a pause, a space.

Similar vibe pervaded the work front too. Punctuating the work-week with breaks and focused efforts created a space to reflect on the strategy work proved useful. The work on the 3-year plan culminated this week and we submitted the first draft. It was truly enriching exercise - validating our understanding of the market, our customer needs, identifying the value drivers, and prioritising to come up with a financial forecast was a useful exercise that I feel need to carry on throughout the rest of the year. We changed narrative from long-standing valuestrems to a bit more clearer programmes of work. Using the analogy of airplanes company, and to paraphrase my CTO, they are broadly divided into these three categories:

• On-going projects/programmes to enhance our current product pipeline (eg. an aircraft being refitted with better audio equipment)

• One-off programmes to transform/change our status-quo (eg. an aircraft being replaced by a more modern aircraft)

• Investment programmes to add new capabilities and new markets that we don’t currently have (eg. drone transport, anyone?)

This narrative enables us to see how risky is the portfolio and our attitudes towards the future. At present - am being honest - the current portfolio approach looks balanced across these three categories, reflecting the economic milieu we’re currently operating in.

Next week, will see me doing a quarterly review, celebrating Ugadi (with our homemade Ugadi pickle) , Songkran (with homemade son-in-law eggs/kai loug kheuh), signing off on Programme Management 101, and creating space.

See you on the other side!