I attended the second module of my ILM5 training last week, which covered budgetary planning and control. This is an area of work where I don’t have a great deal of experience, but one which I feel I’ll need a decent grounding in if I’m going to move any further in my organisation. The content was about as dry as I expected, and I think I’m going to have to do a lot more reading and research before I submit my assignment next month. I’ve devoted the whole day to ILM work today, and as well as this reflection I’ve created documents for each assignment (with headings and sections derived from the question structure) and have also had a first stab at writing the first half of the assignment related to last week’s workshop. I’m not completely happy with what I’ve written, but I think it’s a good enough start that will probably just need editing down and re-ordering during my second pass at the assignment which I need to schedule in for some point next week.
Since I wrote my last reflection (on innovation and change) my team have moved into a different part of the organisation, and I’ve already started working on the program of change that will most likely form part of my assignment. I felt that the changes were easier to deal with because of having the underpinning knowledge, and that I was leading change from a position of strength. I’m hopeful that next time I look at a budget I’ll draw some of the same confidence from my studies, but I think I just have to accept that this is the area of the program that is furthest from my comfort zone, and that it will likely take longer to integrate into my normal working practices.