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Monthnote: January 2026

Posted by
Zach Moss
Published

Not the best blogging start to the year… but not for lack of ideas!

Challenges at work

It’s been an odd start to the year, with a lot of headspace going towards organisational strategy and big questions.

No specific reason for this, but I think it’s been brewing for a while. I never know quite how to feel thinking about this sort of thing, on the one hand it’s not really part of my role but on the other hand I want things to improve so maybe it is?

Part of this is the strange world of middle management. I do think at this role/career level you’ve been around long enough to see problems, but you’re not really in a leadership position in order to address them. I think at my low points at work recently, I feel like I’m complaining and seeing problems everywhere. It’s sometimes hard to not make it personal.

The positive development more recently though have been some really open, thoughtful meetings where people have acknowledged the situation which I genuinely do think is a ‘moment’. The key, is turning this recognition into an effective next step for thinking through how to define specifically what’s not working and think of some things which need to happen. I need to council myself that this is good, and to not expect immediate solutions to what are very long-running and sticky problems. I am quite optimistic though?

I always (and still do) come back to the same point when I struggle… that we have the ingredients (people and mission) to do great work. Many don’t.

Practitioner vs. Manager

Slightly linked to the above point I make, is an idea I came across in this blog from Frankie Roberto about his work at the NHS.

He makes an interesting distinction between being a practitioner (in his case an interaction designer) and a manager:

Possibly I’ll at some point I’ll hit a career fork of having to choose between being a practitioner or a manager, but for the time being I’m enjoying being mostly in the first camp whilst learning more about the second.

Side note - he writes some great weeknotes from his work at NHS digital prevention services.

At my charity (and the sector as a whole maybe) I don’t think we’ve ever reckoned with this distinction. It’s complex I’m sure, but I don’t think we value specialists enough, and I think it means people find themselves in senior leadership positions due to experience and skill at being great practitioners rather than great leaders?

What I don’t know is whether the really good leaders were also great practitioners?

Cyber incident

We have (and still are currently) been dealing with a cyber incident at work. It’s been stressful, but thankfully at present it seems it could’ve been much worse.

We’ve just coming out of the diagnose/react phase of our response and will eventually be in the review bit where we can really analyse what happened, what we did well/not so well.

I’m looking forward to this bit in a way, but I think it’s sad that this is part of our jobs. But it is what it is. Lots to learn from.

My AI reckoning

I have been a pretty big AI sceptic for some time. Not a sceptic in the sense of not believing in it, but just someone who actively has refused to engage. I really have resisted it. For a few reasons - but one thing I didn’t like especially was this established narrative of its inevitability. I still don’t. It’s not if you use it, it’s how.

Well, I’ve officially had my sheeeeiiiit moment.

It came when my partner (who works in tech) told me to try something called Claude Code. I genuinely had a “that’s nuts” moment where it did something that would’ve taken me days, weeks and maybe not even been able to achieve.

For a few years I’ve dabbled in some basic GOV.UK design system and NHS service manual prototyping. With varying success. When I last tried to use AI to help, it actually broke the prototype I was working on - and I didn’t have the skills to figure out how to fix it. Neither did AI at that time.

And it’s that’s the point… at that time. What is now very clear to me is that you shouldn’t take a static view on AI, what it can do or what it might mean for you. AI models are now changing so fast that my view one year ago is now so out of date as to be arguably risky.

I do think it seems to have fundamentally changed the accessibility of software development. What that means for me, the charity sector particularly is huge.

Anyway, I’ll have a lot more thoughts about AI this year no doubt.

Suffice to say, I saw almost overnight how AI could fundamentally change my role and put our entire organisation at risk. So it’s probably time to start thinking about this very seriously.

What else

I have officially taken ownership of an allotment plot locally. After nearly 8 years waiting!

My new plot
My new plot

I’ve decided to setup a separate blog for now to track the journey - let’s see how that goes.

I’m in equal parts excited and daunted. Am hoping it turns into a long, rich hobby to take me into old age.

Oh, and I’m getting married very soon. I’ll be one of those married people with a ring… who’d a thunk it!

Things I read