A return to my usual mixed diet this week, after two weeks committed to one place. I definitely enjoyed the experience of focusing on one relationship for the last two weeks; it was a return in some ways to the (comparative!) sanity of employment, without any of the mad juggling I’ve become used to. But I’m glad now to be back to mixing things up. Variety wins over stability every time.

A large part of my week this week was a day-long workshop for an agency consulting project I’m working on. I’m helping a creative agency with their positioning and vision, and to figure out how to focus and productise their offering. It was fascinating, and a privilege to be allowed into a successful agency and to hopefully help them to go from good to great.

Apart from that, I’ve been getting properly stuck into the Chinese ingredients brand I mentioned last week. There’s something fascinating in this brief about authenticity, which I think is always a troublesome concept within food. What counts as authentic? What should you be authentic to? How do you remain authentic without becoming frozen in time, unable to evolve because any growth is “inauthentic”? In the context of a Chinese food brand in the UK, do you stay authentic to Chinese food from China? (In which case, what region? On some level there’s no such thing as “Chinese” food, but instead Fujianese or Cantonese or Hunanese food…) Or do you acknowledge the way that Chinese food has already flexed and adapted to British tastes, becoming something different – and no less authentic? Fascinating stuff to dig into, with lots of references to the wonderful Angela Hui and David Chang.

I had a great meeting with another consultancy I’ve been working with to help figure out how to productise a one-off project we previously worked on together. I find the productisation process interesting generally, but this is a particularly compelling project that’s focused on lots of the areas that I’ve written about over the years, like how to harness an organisation’s collective IQ. Fascinating stuff!

Finally, I had a great catch up with a former colleague that I haven’t seen in years, Debi Magonet. She’s spent much of the intervening time training as a psychotherapist, and we chatted about her business, how to position it, and the extent to which being focused was helpful or harmful. On the face of it it’s a sector that’s pretty far from my usual stamping ground, but there are lots of similarities too, and it’s always nice to see the world from a slightly different perspective.