By Rebecca Mollart
What does a day in the life of erosh CEO look like? In a nutshell – varied, interesting, sometimes frustrating, always rewarding.
Varied – yesterday for example, I did some social media posting, worked on the 2025 budget, prepared papers for a Trustees meeting, wrote some good practice for a forthcoming guide, updated our monthly policy focus, contacted a potential sponsor and studied the new supported housing regulation consultation document.
Interesting –the variety makes the role interesting and enables me to constantly update my knowledge, skills, and experience as I cover topics from social media algorithms, to government policy, to how to deal with infestation in sheltered schemes. No two hours are alike, let alone days.
Frustrating – the variety can be challenging and frustrating and not for everyone. Just when I get my head around writing a policy document, I need to switch to budgeting, to good practice work and probably back to policy. Plus of course financial stability and resources are always challenging as is balancing the day to day running of the charity with growth and development.
Rewarding – working for a small organisation makes it easier to see the difference we make. We have a close relationship with our customers which enables us to find out about their needs and the support they would like from us. We know what they want to be informed about and we produce good practice guides we know will be of practical use and their feedback is a great measure of our success.
I approach this combination of varied, interesting, frustrating and rewarding by:
Organising and planning – rather than jumping around on different activities, I plan blocks of time on different types of tasks so I can get in the right mind set to focus appropriately. Never wholly successful of course as urgent things pop up, but always good to at least have a plan.
Keeping in mind that we can only do what we can do – making sure we are clear about what we can achieve within our resources, but at the same time keeping an eye on greater ambitions for growth and development so what we do represents steps on the way to achieving these.
Recruiting the right people – with the right skills, a positive can do approach and a commitment to the organisation’s success. I have a fantastic team of staff and trustees who bring a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience as well as ideas which enable us to progress our ambitions in a measured and risk free approach. Being a small organisation, everyone has the opportunity to feed into all areas of activity and the whole really is greater than the individual parts.
Focusing on core activities and core income – so we can ensure we remain financially stable and grow in a controlled way which enables us to gradually increase our resources and core activities to keep moving forward and developing our member benefits. This also helps to manage unplanned opportunities as we know if and where they would fit into our existing commitments and whether it is appropriate to divert resources to them.
Go back