October 8th

Bobbie sat in her office, head in her hands. She looked up occasionally before shaking her head and looking back down. Despite her normal ‘paperless’ approach, there was paper all over her office. Old reports with Post-It notes and coffee stains were stacked up next to binders of SOPs and a pile of full yellow pads lay on the desk next to her. Propped up behind the door was a roll of sheets from a flip chart.

And that was only what she had on paper. 

The ‘XYZ Co Risk Assessment’ folder on her computer had well over 200 documents in it.

‘All this and I haven’t even started writing anything,’ she thought. 

She pushed herself back from her desk and stood up. 

“OK,” she said to herself and the piles of paper. “Time to harness my inner Marie Kondo.”

She tied her hair up, put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door and got to work.

– – – – –

Several hours later, her stomach told her that it was time to take a break. That and the fact that she wasn’t sure she had made much progress. 

The volume of paper in her office hadn’t changed although it was now organized differently and instead of getting rid of notes, she’d found herself adding more as she went.

She walked down to the small kitchenette, grabbed the sandwich she’d brought with her for lunch and headed outside. Maybe a walk would help.

She strolled around the building, munching on her sandwich and enjoying the sun on her face. It was a beautiful day and it was nice to be outside, letting her mind wander for a while after a morning of organizing and annotating.

She headed back upstairs to find Xav in her office poking around in the piles of paper.

“It’s not as bad as it looks…” She started but he cut her off.

“Bad? What are you talking about? I would’ve probably thrown everything out by this point. How are you even keeping track of all this?”

Bobbie walked back behind her desk and started pointing things out.

“Well, these are previous reports, those flip charts are from the team sessions and these are my notes.” She gestured at the pile of yellow pad pages.

“I see,” said Xavier slowly. “This is a lot Bobbie. I had no idea.” He paused and smiled at her. 

“Well, I had an inkling. You are pretty thorough. May I?” He pointed at a pile of her notes with ‘XAV’ written at the top in Sharpie. She handed over the sheaf of papers and he flipped through them.

“Wow, we talked a lot. Sorry,” he held up his hands, “I mean I talked a lot. These are great notes. What do these marks mean?” He pointed to some highlighted sections with circled letters next to them.

“That’s to help me pick out the threats, vulnerabilities and impacts so ‘T’ for threat, ‘V’ for vulnerability, etc. Anything with an asterisk next to it is something that keeps recurring so I can identify themes. I’ve also highlighted the quotes or data points that I want to use to support the final assessment so I can find those easily again later.”

“And the arrows with names next to them?”

“Cross referencing other interviews or documents where things correlate. Sometimes there’s an exclamation point where there’s a conflict I need to look at in more depth.”

Xavier put the papers down and let out a low whistle.

“Bobbie, you continue to astound me. This looks like a Masters thesis not your own notes for an internal project. Amazing! I don’t doubt just about anyone could come in here, pick this up and make sense of it all. Great work.”

Bobbie let out a sigh of relief.

“That’s a big encouragement, Xav. Thank you. Honestly, I was getting lost in all of this and felt like I wasn’t making progress.” She picked up a pile of notes and dropped them back on her desk.

“You know, I think I might be just about ready to start pulling this whole thing together. Let me take one final look at what I need to do and I’ll get Debbie to schedule some time for me to share the preliminary results with the leadership team.”

“Sounds good to me,” Xavier said as he started towards the door. “I’ll leave you and your highlighters in peace.”

He flashed her a thumbs up as he left and Bobbie turned back to the papers on her desk. After her walk around outside and Xavier’s comments, she did feel ready to pull the report together.

Now she just needed a framework to use.