This morning I had a general meeting with all of our colleagues working in the Committee’s Directorate for Human Resources and Internal Services. This is one of those ‘back room services’ par excellence – many of the colleagues are invisible to our ‘clients’ (by which I mean our members, of course)  and yet the work they do – generally of a very high standard – is absolutely indispensable. The meeting was part of a series I am holding with all of the specialised services of the Committee’s administration, primarily to thank everybody for all their excellent work, but also to give colleagues the chance to enter into a dialogue about their work with their Secretary General, for one of the advantages of a smaller institution is that the hierarchy can be (and should be) relatively flat. The good atmosphere in the Directorate is legendary, which is why I have chosen to illustrate this post with a photograph of the directorate’s recent ‘away day’ – those smiles say it all.