We followed the White Rabbit, and it led us somewhere wonderful

After weeks of cryptic Alice in Wonderland clues (and red herrings that sent a few people the wrong way), the Create Family’s mystery strategy weekend finally arrived.

Here’s what happened when the rabbit hole opened. We started off guiding the staff to the Knockin shop where they retrieved an envelope for their clue of where the venue was. 

The final destination was beautiful Bryn Tanat Hall.

Saturday was serious stuff:

→ Where the market is heading and what the future holds

→ New products and services we’re excited about

→ AI: how we use it well, safely and in ways that help people

→ What our clients really need from us

→ How the FCA’s ways of working and communications are changing

Heads and hearts suitably full. Then things got competitive.

First, Create Solutions took on our own version of Ready Steady Cook in the grand kitchens. Dressed in Aprons and Chefs hats the teams were handed a box of ingredients and access to a pantry – they had to call in their culinary expertise. Some people brought red tomato energy, others brought green pepper panic. The judge Chris is still recovering. It was hilarious and all teams produced some delicious dishes. 

Looking back at the photos it must have been thirsty work as plenty of glasses of refreshments were dotted around the kitchen. Even AI made an appearance in one team. They entered the ingredients and asked it to come up with a menu and instructions!

Then came The Mole: a few hours of more Teamwork – puzzles and challenges across 15 acres of beautiful grounds. It felt like we had stepped into a Traitors style game at stages…….There was sabotage, misdirection and some very suspicious alliances. Teams did everything they could to stop each other winning. Nobody has been formally accused, but trust is slowly being rebuilt.

In addition, there was time to relax (although our staff and consultants may disagree and say they are still exhausted as a result). 

Now the serious bit (yes, there is one).

Stepping away from the day job isn’t a luxury for us.

It’s how we:

Think more creatively

Stay up to date in a fast-changing regulatory world

Share experiences and learn from each other

Discuss fundraising ideas

Come back with fresh energy and better ideas for our clients

We take our work seriously. That’s exactly why we make time to step back, laugh together and look ahead.

Thank you to the whole Create Family for two brilliant days and plenty of memories. 

Written by, Karen Shenton

My husband said this to me this morning. In fairness, I’d earned it — I was mid-rant about the dust sheets, the disruption, and the general chaos about to descend on our house as he started decorating.

His response? Calm as anything: “You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.”

It stopped me in my tracks, not because it was profound, but because it’s one of those phrases we all say without ever really thinking about what it means.

What does this phrase me?

I looked it up.

Turns out it’s been around since the 1700s, originally French. And has been used (rather grimly, in some cases) to justify all sorts of upheaval over the centuries.

Thankfully, these days we use it far more gently.

The business meaning.

In business, it simply means this: achieving something worthwhile, a goal, a change, a better way of doing things, almost always comes with some short-term mess, cost or discomfort.

The goal is the omelette. The disruption along the way is the cracked eggs.

In compliance, we see this constantly.

Disruption and change can feel uncomfortable for people and for businesses. It’s happening every day, some changes are just bigger than others.

Take AI. Its introduction into financial services is change at real speed, arguably one of the biggest shifts our industry has faced in decades.

New tools, new risks, new governance questions, new ways of working. It’s a lot of eggs to crack!

But the businesses that get this right aren’t the ones who avoid the mess they’re the ones who plan for it, manage it thoughtfully, and keep sight of the omelette they’re actually trying to make.

So…what’s your omelette?

And what eggs are you willing to crack to get there?

At Create Solutions, we help firms navigate exactly this kind of change, clearly, calmly, and without the jargon.

Whatever your “omelette” looks like, we’re here to help you crack the right eggs.

Written by Karen Shenton.

Regular readers of Tales from Wonderland will know I have a habit of finding compliance lessons in the most unexpected places – a stowaway mouse, a dodgy roof, a caravan winter. Today’s tale is a bit closer to home, and it’s one I’ve been putting off writing for a while. Not because I didn’t have anything to say. Quite the opposite, I had too much to say, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to say it out loud.

But here goes: I’ve been through the menopause. I’m on HRT. And I don’t mind admitting it – in fact, I think we need to talk about it a lot more than we do.

Curiouser and Curiouser

If you’ve ever read Alice in Wonderland, you’ll remember the bit where she drinks from the bottle marked “Drink Me” and suddenly nothing about her body behaves the way it used to. She shrinks, she grows, she cries an entire pool of tears, and everyone around her is far too busy with their own nonsense to notice she’s having rather a wobble.

Honestly? That’s the most accurate description of perimenopause I’ve ever come across, and it was written in 1865.

There was the White Rabbit energy — “I’m late, I’m late!” — except it was me, standing in a meeting, having completely lost the thread of what I was about to say, brain fog rolling in like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, there one second and gone the next. There were the Mad Hatter’s tea party mood swings, where I went from perfectly calm to ready to flip the table over one lukewarm cup of tea. And there were the “growing and shrinking” moments too, except mine came with a hot flush at 3am and a duvet that couldn’t decide if it was friend or enemy.

The difference between me and Alice, though, is that eventually somebody handed me a bottle that actually helped — HRT — and things got a lot less chaotic. But it took a while to get there, partly because, like a lot of women, I didn’t want to make a fuss, and partly because nobody around me was really talking about it either.

Why I’m telling you this

Here’s where the Wonderland tale meets the real world of insurance and compliance, because it always does eventually.

Around half of the workforce will go through menopause at some point, usually right in the years when people are at their most experienced, most senior, and most valuable to a business. Yet it’s still one of the things we’re least likely to talk about openly at work — up there with money and other people’s marriages.

That silence has a cost. Staff who are struggling quietly are staff who are more likely to leave, more likely to be signed off, and less likely to perform at their best — not because they can’t, but because nobody’s asked if they’re okay, or built a culture where it’s safe to say “actually, I’m not.” And if we expect our people to look after vulnerable customers with empathy and understanding under Consumer Duty, we have to start by looking after the people doing that job, because a business that doesn’t take care of its own staff will find it much harder to genuinely take care of its customers.

That’s exactly why we’re not putting a price tag on this one.

Join us down the rabbit hole — free of charge

We’re running a wellbeing session called Menopause Uncovered: Serious Talk, No Sweat — because we care about firms and their people, and because this is too important to sit behind a paywall. It’s an open, honest, and yes, genuinely fun look at menopause: what it is, how it shows up at work, how colleagues and managers can support each other through it, and why it deserves a proper seat at the table alongside every other wellbeing conversation we have.

Serious talk. No sweat. No judgement. Just an open conversation that’s long overdue.

If you’d like to book your firm and your team onto the session, get in touch with Karen Shenton at karen@createsolutions.co.uk or call 0161 870 6637.

Contact us or Book online

And if you’re going through it yourself right now — you’re not falling down the rabbit hole alone. Come and talk to us.

Stay tuned for more Tales from Wonderland…