Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:19: Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint

00:01:20: Working with what you've got

00:04:14: Anticipation vs in the moment

00:06:10: Ideas for action…

00:06:36: … 1: write your worry list

00:11:48: … 2: pre-empt a no or blockers

00:17:24: … 3: try a trade

00:23:18: … 4: resourcefulness role models

00:31:40: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  Every week, we talk about a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions and tools that we hope will help all of us navigate our Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control.

Helen Tupper: I'm hoping, if you are a regular listener, that you are well aware the Squiggly Sprint is coming.  In fact, it is coming next week.  Next week starts a 20-day learning series to help you accelerate your career development.  These are super-short episodes, it's 7 minutes each, and during the 20 days of the sprint in August, we'll be covering 20 different skills.  So please sign up, get involved. 

We've already got thousands of people who signed up to sprint with us in August.  And I think it's just a really motivating way of learning. All the links for this are either in the show notes, so it just says, "Sign up to the Sprint", and that will basically start you off.  You'll get the Ready, Steady, Sprint guide and then everything else will come.  Or, if you can't find that, follow us @amazingif on LinkedIn, because we're posting about the Sprint there.  You'll be able to see all the resources and get access to it there.  And if you still get a bit lost, if you're like, "Oh, I'm not on LinkedIn and I don't know where these show notes are", just email us.  It's really easy, helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com and we will send you whatever you need to get started on your sprint.

Sarah Ellis: So today, we're talking about how to be resourceful at work.  And we think about resourcefulness as working with what you've got.

Helen Tupper: Motivating!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  I don't know, I think it is, I think it will be a motivating episode, I promise.

Helen Tupper: It sounds like, "Just get on with it"!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  Well, I guess that's the point, isn't it?  It's almost going beyond getting on with it, because you can't just get on with it, usually because something's got in your way.  And I think it's often in those moments, where you need to be resourceful, where something has become more limited than you'd imagined.  So, whether that is time, money, people, they tend to be the classics, the classic three areas; or sometimes, I was reading a bit of research about moments where being resourceful is particularly useful, it's often where an unexpected change has come your way.  It could be a bump in the road, it could be, "Oh, well, we thought we were going to have £100 to spend on this and now we've got £50", but you can't change that £50.  So, it's not that you can negotiate or make an argument to get back to where you were before.  You have got to work with where you are and you're trying to then stay optimistic, and also probably rediscover a bit of control when things are feeling messy and probably not working out in your ideal way.

Helen Tupper: What I'm thinking in my head is, do you think we are equally resourceful, you and I, or do you think one of us is more resourceful than the other?

Sarah Ellis: That's a good question.  I would give us credit for both being resourceful.  I think you have to be as well to run a company.  And actually, when we talk about the skills you need to be resourceful in a second, there's a lot of chat about entrepreneurial mindset being really helpful.  Now, I don't think either of us ever describe ourselves as entrepreneurs, but we did start a company and we have started lots of things and side projects.  And so, I do think that ability to sort of find a way, we're both good at.  I just wonder if we do it in slightly different ways.  What about you?  Was that basically just a leading question?

Helen Tupper: Oh no, I think I'm amazing at it and I was just trying to put you down.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you were just like, "So, if you could just tell me how brilliant I am at this", is that what you were hoping for there?!

Helen Tupper: No, I think I came to the same conclusion.  I think we do it in different ways, which is quite useful sometimes because when I'm stuck, you can sometimes see ways through things that I can't.  You'll be like, "Well, why don't you do this, or speak to this person, or get that?" and I'll be like, "Oh, yeah".  I think your resourcefulness can unlock things.  And I think sometimes my resourcefulness, I don't even talk about it.  I'm like, "I've already tried".  You'll be like, "Oh, should we do this?"  And I'm like, "Oh, no, I've already set these things in motion, and I've already found a way.  I just haven't told you about it yet!"

Sarah Ellis: Yes, I definitely recognise that, yeah.  Well, I wonder, when I was listing some of the skills that'd be helpful, I actually did divide them into almost spotting or anticipating where you need to be resourceful, and then in-the-moment resourcefulness.  And I think that's probably where some of our differences lie, because I think I'm often good at spotting, "We are going to need to be resourceful, so let's think about it now", because I look ahead, I'm naturally future-oriented, I'm a good critical thinker so I see the shades of grey.  I always ask myself, "What if this doesn't work out or what if something changed?"  I think we both have a level of optimism and pragmatism that helps us, just in terms of our behaviours and how we approach things.

But then, where I think you are really good is in-the-moment resourcefulness.  So, whether I've anticipated it or not, once I then say okay, "I feel like this might not work out in the way that we'd hoped", you're like, "Right, okay, so let's go.  How else?  Where else?  Who else?"  I suppose you're such a pacey problem-solver that that is then incredibly useful, because I think that then translates into being resourceful.  And I feel like neither of us like the idea of, "Oh, there's a bump or a brick wall", and going, "Oh, yeah, okay".  We're not very accepting.  I don't think either of us are very accepting of that.  We're like, okay, we don't ignore it or avoid it, because I think that doesn't help you.  We're definitely not blindly optimistic in the, "Oh, well, hopefully it'll just all work out".  I don't think we do that; I definitely don't do that.  I think you are more optimistic than I am generally, definitely more upbeat generally.  But then we both will be like, I think we back ourselves to be like, "There will be another way, we perhaps just haven't found it yet.

Helen Tupper: Well, what we're trying to do in this episode, everybody, is sort of take that find-another-way mindset and turn it into the skillset.  So, give you things that you can do if you have got a bit of a blocker or a barrier that is being put in front of you, to help you think, "Well, I'm going to find my way around this".  So, we've got some very practical things for you to take away and try out afterwards.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action one is firstly to write your worry list.  Now, this does sound negative and I do get that, but it is incredibly useful to get worries out of your head and to write them down, get them onto a bit of paper, what is keeping you awake at night, what are you worried about?  Because then, I think you can turn that into, how do I work with that worry, how do I make that something that is more active rather than passive?  Almost as soon as they get out of your head, as soon as you start to think about actions you could take or to do something about your worries, I feel like the size of that worry automatically gets smaller.  I think it always magnifies it in your mind, or certainly that is true for me. So, to give you a very practical example, Helen and I actually did this yesterday.  We saw each other in real life in a room, and we both said we are worried about a book deadline we've got for a first draft.  In September this year, we're going to be submitting our first 50,000 words on a new book.

Helen Tupper: Gulp!  Don't say it like that; really confrontive!

Sarah Ellis: No, no, that is what we are going to be hopefully doing.  But we both said we were worried about not the writing but the time.  And you could just keep worrying about that, right?  It could just keep circling in your mind, it could just spiral.  But then we worked with the worry, we went, "Okay, so that is true, we can't change that", some of the constraints, some of the things that are limited is time, so we can't just say, "Oh, okay, well we're not going to go --", we've both got holidays, so don't need to feel too sorry for ourselves.  But we're like, "We can't not go on the holidays, there are only so many days between now and September to do that".  So you're like, "Okay, so the time is a limited resource.  And so is the people, because it is mainly you and I, there is just the two of us.  We can't say, "Oh, does anyone else fancy writing a bit of this?"  Or, I mean maybe we could …

Helen Tupper: What, AI?

Sarah Ellis: … delegate it to -- maybe.  Maybe this is where everybody's using AI.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, the ChatGPT version of us!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  I feel like we're working really hard to make this brilliant.  We're like, "We could just literally delegate this to someone who could do it probably in half the time".  But so, we have got some very clear reasons why we need to be resourceful.  And I think because we took it off the worry list yesterday and we worked with a worry, we were like, Right, okay, so what's the worst-case scenario?  How could we think about our time differently?"  And we made some useful decisions around, "Right, let's focus on some of the main chapters, let's worry less about some of the other things that that can wait until post September, that we know can wait, but that perhaps in an ideal world we would do now".  We did work out some days that we can connect our holidays very unhelpfully, or one after the other, so we were both like, "Right, okay, but if you read this here and then we could chat here, then we'd make a bit more progress".  So, we did some of that interdependency planning. Suddenly, it doesn't mean that the worry goes away, I think that's important to say.  

Like, if you said to me, "Are you still worried about that?" I think we would both be nodding, like, "Yes".  But I think how you feel about that worry does change.  I felt more optimistic having talked about it than I did before, I felt like we've got some practical actions and I just felt more confident.  And I suspect then, you're actually better able to take on the worry and to be more resourceful.  And I was thinking about this and I think a good tip for everybody is, if you are managing a team or even if you're just having a chat with a colleague, actually saying to somebody, "What's on your worry list at the moment?" is a really good question for a one-to-one conversation, because I think people often do keep their worries to themselves.  And certainly if you're managing or leading a team, you might assume that something is on someone's worry list and actually they feel okay about it, but something different might be worrying them that you could support with, you could help them to work it through.  But until someone says it out loud, you often don't know what they are.  So, I actually really like hearing what's on someone's worry list, because then I can be useful, I can be helpful.

Helen Tupper: It makes me think of sort of the weight of the worry.  You know when it's in your mind and it's not shared and you don't feel like you're working on it?  I feel it's actually quite a heavy weight.  So, like the weight of the book date, for example, that's definitely been heavy in my mind and it's distracting from other things that I want to do.  Whereas when you talk about it, like you say, the worry is still there, but it's a bit lighter.  I feel like I can work with it, I can move forward.  So I think part of talking about it with other people is also part of that. 

And when you are being resourceful, I think leveraging the people around you is a massive part of how you are resourceful.  And sometimes, that can be as simple as, "I've got a worry I'd like to work through with you".  That is a way you are being resourceful because you're getting their brain on it and their thinking on it, rather than you're just carrying the weight of the worry in your mind. So, idea for action number two in order to be more resourceful is to pre-empt a no or blockers.  So, one thing that can get in the way of being resourceful is when you get surprised by a no.  So, I ask Sarah for something, which I'm assuming she's just going to say yes to, and it's all going to be fine.  And then the reality is, I get a no, and suddenly I'm like, "Oh, I wasn't expecting that, and I don't know what to do with it", and your emotions might get flagged by it a little bit, which can sometimes make you a bit less objective, and you suddenly feel a bit stuck, because the thing that you want to do is no longer -- it doesn't seem possible.  But the point with pre-empting a no or a blocker is you go into that situation with another way in mind. 

So, if I ask Sarah, I mean I did ask Sarah for something earlier today, there's a trip that I would like to go on in November and that has an impact on my time, which is our time in the business, because that will take me to a different place for a few days, and it has an impact on cost because I have to travel to the place.  And so, there are some considerations. But if Sarah had said -- I mean, Sarah said yes, which is very kind, but she could have said no.  She could have said, "I don't think it's a priority at the moment.  I think we need you here more than there", all those sorts of things.  And I could have pre-empted a no and thought, "Well, what if I offered to work when I'm there?  Or what if I offered to meet some of our clients to get double the benefit of being in that place at that time.  Or if it was absolutely a no, then maybe what I could do is create a mini summit here. 

Could I have a mini summit here with people rather than go over there?"  And having those things in mind, meaning that situation when you get the no, it doesn't have to be the end of the conversation.  Because sometimes noes are valid.  There are lots of reasons why people might give you a no.  There might be a really good reason why it isn't possible right now, but it doesn't have to mean there isn't another way or an alternative option. So I remember before, for example, I've had no funding for things that I've wanted to do in large companies, or projects I wanted to get involved in or things I wanted to spend my time on.  But having another way in mind, "Well, if that's not possible, then what about this?  Or, if I can't do that at the moment, then could we come back to it in a month's time when this particular thing has moved on?" it just means the conversation can keep going.  And it's back to that creative thing that Sarah mentioned more.  You're being creative with the no because you've thought about it in advance.

Sarah Ellis: So here, we would encourage you to ask lots of "else" questions.  So, "How else; who else; and where else?" will always just help you.  That's a good sort of creative thinking technique, I think, it gets you started.  And when Helen and I were practising this on a different project yesterday, all this resourcefulness that we need at the moment, those questions I think automatically get you to some different answers.  And again, I was thinking through lots of the projects that I worked on in organisations prior to Amazing If.  I always needed money for them, because I always created things where I was always asking for cash.  I was like, "Oh, can I have some budget for this project or this idea?"  I was never saving money, I was always spending money. 

I definitely did jobs where I spent companies' money on really good stuff, obviously, but it was definitely the sort of roles that I had. So, I think I got very used to the resourcefulness that's needed with people saying, "Well, no, there isn't a budget for this.  There is something else somewhere else that is more important or more of a priority".  And to your point, that wasn't wrong, and it wasn't because it was always a bad idea. 

It was just like, that is the reality.  And so, I often would ask myself, "Well, who else might have some budget who I could borrow?  Is that a possibility?"  I would think, "Who could be an alternative to budget?  So, could people basically help us to make progress rather than cash, essentially?  Where else cares about the work that I'm doing?  So could all or part of my project be achieved by connecting it to another team's objective?"  So I was like, I didn't care, "However I'll make it happen, I will find a way!" I would equally think, "Well, what could I make happen with no budget?  Is it literally zero, like with no cash we can't move forward?  Or actually, are there some things here that we could still do in a meaningful way, which then might actually create the case for cash further down the line?"  So back to that point about, "A no now is not a no forever", and I think I often saw that.  I think that helps you to also be resourceful, is not seeing where you are now as where you will always be.

Helen Tupper: And Sarah and I were having an interesting chat, I say interesting, we found it interesting, about the relationship between resourcefulness and resilience, and I think particularly when you get a no, you can really see how these things overlap.  Because when you get a no, I think part of this is you've got to be resilient.  It's not going, "Oh, they said no to me and that's the end of it", it's seeing that that no is just a trigger to find another way.  And I think that's a big part of being resilient.  I always go back to Adam Grant's definition of, "Resilience is the strength and speed of your response to adversity". 

And I think, "Well, that's resourcefulness, right?"  I'm going to quickly come back with an option that can help me do this differently.  And so, we were like, "Are they the same thing or are they different?"  It's a reflection for another day, but you can definitely see the relationship between them. So idea for action number three is to try a trade.  And I find that I do this a lot, particularly now, I think, running our own business I do it, because I feel we're constrained with all the things that Sarah mentioned earlier, the time that we've got, the money we've got.  And so sometimes, to make things happen, I can't use the obvious things, which is to pay somebody or spend a day somewhere.  I have to get a little bit creative and think, "Well, what have I got to give in exchange for the thing that I want to get", basically, which is what we're talking about with trying a trade.  And this might be your expertise. 

So, maybe you've got particular knowledge of a business or a system or an industry that someone else hasn't got.  Maybe you have got some time and you think, "Well, actually, if you're starting that thing, then I can give you a day a week for the next month to help you out".  Maybe it's your profile.  Maybe you could shine a spotlight on their work.  I try to do that quite a lot.  Sometimes I'm trading for things, particularly for people's work that I'm really interested in and I care about. You might have some particular skills.  So Sarah and I have got career development.  I'll often trade that with people for things.  There might be some services that we are looking for for our business, like design services or people who might be working on, I don't know, help us to think creatively about what we do with the podcast.  I can't pay everybody to come to a workshop because we haven't got the funds to do that. 

What I could do is offer, in exchange of their time on a workshop, like a creative workshop for us, I could offer them half an hour, an hour of career coaching, for example, because I have got that skill to trade in exchange for their time and expertise on something for us. It starts with you really thinking, "What is it that I need right now?"  That's different for all of us, depending on what you're trying to do.  And when you think about who's got what you need, knowledge, time, money, whatever it is that you need, then think about, "What have I got to give that could help to make that happen?"  And it's that give, gain, trading thing, it is quite creative, but it definitely unlocks lots of opportunities.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think in these moments where we need to be resourceful, it is tempting to focus on what we've lost and what we don't have.  And I think here, what we're encouraging you to do is think, "Okay, I haven't now got the money that I thought I had, or the resource that I thought I was going to have.  What do I have?"  Instead of really trying to get specific about all of the do's, like what you can offer, expertise, time, profile, influence, skills, contacts, really break them down as well.  When I was thinking about this, you can go a bit big when you're thinking about this, whereas I'm like, really be specific about, well, maybe you have a great skill that actually not that many other people have. 

Or maybe you've got experience working in an industry that not many people in your organisation have, because maybe you've worked across a few different industries. It's almost going back across your Squiggly Career and thinking about all of your what's, all of your how's, all the experiences you've collected.  That list of do's might not seem immediately obvious, but the more I thought about this, the more I was like, "Oh, well actually, I think for all of us, this would be quite a long list of things that you do have.  You might not immediately see how all of that long list connects to your challenge, but I would encourage you to start with a really, really long list.  Because I was like, "Oh, actually, I've still got some marketing skills", because I always think now, "Oh, I don't have marketing skills anymore because I'm not in marketing".  But then equally, I'm like, "Of course I do".  We did a big company redesign and rebrand last year and I led most of that work with our designer, I worked with our designer a lot, I wrote our tone of voice.  So I'm like, "Actually, that's good stuff, right?"

Helen Tupper: Still got those skills in the bank!

Sarah Ellis: Still got, well, sort of!  But you know if somebody said -- if tone of voice was useful for somebody else, I have got that to give; that is something I could trade with someone else.  It's a bit niche maybe for some people listening, but for some people they might be like, "Oh, actually that would be helpful", or writing skills, how to write an article, how to come up with ideas.  And so, I think start with the long, long list and then figure out, "From my long list of things that I do have, which of these can I trade in this moment?"  But I think, if you've got your long list to keep coming back to, I wonder whether, because we're all resourceful, I reckon, most weeks at work in some way, shape or form, you'll just start to practise this as a natural way of responding when you do hit those small bumps along the way.

Helen Tupper: And Sarah gave me a very valid challenge when we were talking about this idea.  She was like, "Oh, I don't want people to think, 'Well, I'm not a senior person, therefore what have I got to trade?'"  And I was talking about, I don't think this is, and I don't think Sarah does either, this isn't just about being senior, though it might seem simpler to see what you can trade when you're senior. 

And the example that I was giving of sort of a counter to that, a week or two ago, I did something with the Women's Association, where there was a group of young women, 15-, 16-year-old girls, who have spent a few days working on how we take Squiggly into schools.  And I think they could do a brilliant trade with me.  They could say, "Oh, could we have half an hour of mentoring, and basically in exchange, we will go do some research on what the top five things are on people's minds at schools when they're thinking about work?  And that could be really useful data for the things that you're trying to do".  

Because those people have got insight into an area that I haven't, because they're in it and I'm not, and that's a really trade.  They're not even in a corporate environment, they're not what you'd think of as senior, but they've definitely got some influential insights that I have not got, and that's what they can trade. So, think again back to the creative, just think really creatively about, "What have I got that that person has not?" and that is your trade, that's what you've got to give.

Sarah Ellis: And our final idea for action is, learn from the person or the people who always seem to find a way to make stuff happen.  So I think, if you look around your organisation, there'll be at least a couple of people who find a way to deliver impressive results, but they don't have endless resources.  So, there are some people in jobs where maybe, to Helen's point, they are senior, they've got massive budgets, they do brilliant work.  But that can be a bit harder to learn from in this situation because you think, "Oh, yeah, but I don't have a multimillion-pound budget, or I don't have a team of 20, there's just me in my team.  And, you know what, my budget's been cut.  So, connecting the dots between you and that person often feels trickier.

So, I think I want to learn from almost, and I'm putting myself in this category, I'm like, these are scrappy people.  They're quite good at being scrappy, being determined, but not in a way where they're stubborn.  It is, again back to this, they do seem to find a way through things changing or some of the uncertainty.  So, look for that person.  They're almost a resourcefulness role model, think of it that way, and then watch what they do.  Or even better, go and ask them for some advice, because if they are a resourceful person, they will probably enjoy applying those skills to somebody else's problem.  It's always quite nice, isn't it, to solve someone else's problem rather than solving your own? So, if you went to Helen, for example, and people in our team would do this, and they were like, "Oh, I've got a challenge today.  This has changed, and now we've got a challenge", I know Helen would get energy from doing that in the here and now. 

She would be better at doing that, certainly than I would be, in a spontaneous, you've not had to give her a heads up, she's just like, "Right, let's go, let's find another way".  Whereas, if someone was starting a project and they talked to me about, "What can you anticipate could get in the way here?" I would ask lots of questions that would help people to think through where and when they're going to need to be resourceful, "Oh, have you thought about what you would do if…?", I would be saying those sorts of things.  And so, again, it doesn't have to be just one person, but who could you go away and have some conversations with, or just notice and just watch and observe what are the behaviours, what are the skills that then you could just borrow a bit of brilliance from?  So, Helen, you've got a couple of examples of brilliant people here that we thought we'd give a shout out to.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and you can follow them on -- I would follow them on, well, Instagram or LinkedIn, whatever works for you, but I see most of their -- well because I know them, I hear it and see it in conversation, but I think you can get a good sense of it if you want a bit of inspiration from what they share on Instagram.  So, my three people are, first of all, Lisa Goodchild, just search for Lisa Goodchild on Instagram, and she's the creator of DigiLearning HQ, which is a social enterprise.  I know Lisa, and what I think she's very good at is, she creates energy and she makes the ask. 

That's when I see her, she creates a lot of energy all around her work and she's very, very good at just asking people to get involved in it.  And she does an instant ask, actually, so she doesn't wait.  If she's got your attention, she's going to make that ask.  And I think there's just a thing here, the more asks you make, the more yeses you get.  She probably gets loads of noes, but she just keeps making asks, it's brilliant. That, I think, is also quite similar to somebody else who I would recommend to follow, which is Bejay Mulenga, and you just search Bejay Mulenga on Instagram, you'll find him. 

He is an amazing entrepreneur.  He started multiple businesses.  The thing I think about that's really good about Bejay, he's always got a lot of things, so he doesn't put all of his eggs in one basket.  He's always got a lot of things on the go, so I think that's part of how I learn from him, and he always has questions.  He's just so curious, like, what are you working on?  Do you know this person?  What's interesting for you at the moment? 

In fact, he has got so many questions that he's made a pack of questions that he carries around with him.  So that's brilliant, like a pack of playing cards that's just got questions on them, because he's always asking questions, which I think he never gets stuck because he's always got another question. Then my third one, I've got loads of these people, I love them, Lemon Fuller.  Follow Lemon on Instagram.  Lemon runs a business called Lemonade Dolls, so she is another entrepreneur, but I think she's got such a Squiggly Career.  She's been a singer and a dancer, and now she runs this really amazing sustainable lingerie business.  But she's just so resourceful in how she grows that business, how she engages the community.  I think she is a very open learner. 

So, she lets people know where she is and what she doesn't need and what problems she's facing, and she creates a big community around her, so there's always somebody to help her.  And back to the trade, I think she gives energy, that is what she trades.  She gives so much energy to other people and then she gets back spades of support from them.  And so, there are more than those three people.  But just in case you can't see them in your network yet, then these are three people that you can borrow from mine.

Sarah Ellis: What's interesting is all those three examples, they are very entrepreneurial.  Because I know all three, probably not quite as well as you do, but certainly I've seen what they share.  And that sort of startup-y hustle mentality definitely comes through with all of them.  When I think about a couple of people that I know from my corporate days, like super-corporate days like banking, if we're going to go corporate, let's go big, big business, I once worked in an innovation team, worked for a brilliant lady called Claire, and in that team, in that innovation team, we actually didn't have loads of resources.  So we weren't the biggest team, we didn't have loads of cash.  And when I think about Claire, who I think is a very resourceful leader, and I think it is a really good leadership quality as well, I think what she did really well was influence.  So, she used her influence to find another way. 

She would be thinking, "Well, we want to try and make this project happen, but I just haven't got the millions of pounds that some of the other teams have got".  So, she would build brilliant relationships, she would use her influence, she would find another way of making progress on our objectives and our outcomes, almost by attaching herself to people of influence, and then she was very influential as well. I think almost it could have been a team where you didn't get anything done, because it's hard in big businesses to cut through when you don't have those resources. 

But we always did, and I think she over-invested in that area, and then it helped us almost as a team to be resourceful.  And we've not talked about that as much today, but I do think there are certain teams that you might also learn a lot from.  Look at the team in your organisation that almost has the least.  I think that's actually really interesting, how do they manage to get stuff done?  Because I have probably once or twice, I think, been in those kinds of teams.  And it's probably no surprise, given what we do today, that I didn't mind being in those teams. 

I didn't need to be in the teams that always had the biggest profile or the most amounts of money, because I probably quite liked the scrappy nature of, "Oh, we're just going to find our own way".  Plus, you can probably be a bit more rogue, right, which probably suits me and you, and you can probably be a bit more creative because there's less of a spotlight on you, which also probably suits us. But that's maybe the other way to do it, is look across your organisation and think, "Well, which is that team who they achieve stuff that you admire?"  It could be a finance team, could be a procurement team.  What is it that they do as a group?  Because again, I think with all skills, you can think about developing a skill individually for your career, but you can also think about how do we develop this skill together as a team.

Helen Tupper: So, maybe on this one, I think having some resourcefulness role models either in your organisation or outside of them, is a useful thing to do, and I think it also just makes this skill very real, because you go from, "Oh, wouldn't this be a nice skill to have?" to, "There are some people who are actually amazing at this.  I just need to do a bit more of what they do". 

So, quick summary of the ideas for action, which you will find in the PodSheet, which is one-page summary that goes with all of our episodes to help you take action.  So, the first one is about turning your worry list into something that you can work with; the second action was about pre-empting the noes and the blockers, so that you can find another way; the third one was trying a trade; and that fourth one we just talked about was learn from people who already do this well.

Sarah Ellis: So, that's everything for this week.  We hope that has helped you to be that little bit more resourceful.  If you've got other ideas or things that have worked well that you want to share with the community, please email us.  We love hearing from you and we love your feedback. 

If it has been on your to-do list to leave us a rating or a review or subscribe, we really appreciate it.  I know every podcaster always says it, but it does make a massive difference to us.  And we also read every one, so it also gives us a little boost in the week to keep being resourceful along the way too.  That's everything for now.  Thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.