Month: February 2024

Weeknote 12? That’s a whole quarter down (though it does include the Christmas break. Still…) . It feels like I joined Homes England a week ago and I still have lots to learn about the organisation. When I joined before Christmas I mentally set my first 100 days clock to start on 1 January, using the quiet time before the holidays to do some due diligence. That effectively puts me two months into my first 100 day plan. Plans and planning have been a bit of a theme this week.

What I’ve been up to

1. Led my first wider leadership team (WLT) day on Wednesday which included eight hours of train travel to get me from London to Newcastle and back (engineering works the day before prevented a smoother travel plan). I got a lot out of being in the same space as my managers for a day, some of whom I hadn’t met fact to face before. The focus of the day was on moving forward – agreeing our priorities for the coming year, how we are going to work together, delegating effective decision making. A lot to build on from the day, not least nailing down our top level roadmap to share with our colleagues across Homes England.
2. Digital future ways of working is a term that has widened in scope significantly in the short time I have been in Homes England. Originally it meant scoping our future procurement needs to support our digital services but it now includes the strategy, the roadmap, our annual business plan, our funding bid, our target operating model, our modernisation strategy and our future prioritisation model. A lot of connected pieces of work coming together at pace with tight deadlines to get to an agreed position by the end of March in time for the new financial year. This work is exhausting and I am really grateful to colleagues involved in shaping this work as we try to land this.
3. Part of digital future ways of working is understanding in more detail how the products being delivered by our transformation programme, Evolve, will be supported when they move into live service. I’ve invested quite a bit of energy in helping my team and the Evolve team to get to a common understanding of the tasks and the timelines so we can be prepared.
4. I’ve been trying to meet as many of our suppliers as possible to understand how we work together and how we manage our supplier base. I met with colleagues from Kainos and PwC this week and its good to get perspective from them (and a fair bit of history too).

What I’m doing next

1. I’m briefing our change executive committee this week on future service support (part of digital future WoW) to ensure they are up to date with our plans.
2. We have a Digital Executive Leadership Team (DELT) day on Wednesday. Its our monthly get together to review strategic issues and plan for the future. We are going to be spending a fair bit of time on risk management this time round.
3. Lots more workshops and sessions on various parts of digital future ways of working.
4. I need to get some quality time to get into the detail of the numbers for next years budget and be really crisp on the language I use to describe various proposed initiatives. I am still in the early stages of understanding how Homes England describe things and I am not sure colleagues always mean what I think they mean when describing things.

We are fairly motoring through February. Halfway down in fact. Half term is over, so (some) distractions out of the way.

What I’ve been up to

1. Last week was super busy (which week isn’t). In the office for four days and for some reason had 9am meetings each day which meant an actual rush hour commute each day. Haven’t done that in years.
2. We kicked off some high priority work to draw together our thinking on strategy, roadmap, business planning, future op model, support for future change initiatives and funding with a workshop on Tuesday which covered a lot of ground and generated a lot of questions. We are working on a v tight timeline to complete this work before financial year end. Huge appetite and enthusiasm in the room to commit to getting this done.
3. Had another session on the budgets we require for next year. This is partly informing, and partly being informed by, our emerging work on future operating model and target customer experience so its a little chicken and egg but its starting to firm up and look like a strong approach.
4. Four days in London meant some time was eked out to catch up with colleagues from across public sector digital. It was particularly great to get two laps of St James’ Park (and a coffee!) in with Matt Ballantine who is always good to bounce ideas off.
5. We nailed down an agreed working version of our digital strategy so that we can use it to start engaging with colleagues across the wider organisation and use it as the focal point for the high priority work mentioned above.

What I’m doing next

1. Wednesday is the first time all the managers in the Digital Directorate will have been together since I joined Homes England. Very much looking forward to meeting everyone and spending some time together. Also a little daunting when I’m used to seeing people in one inch squares on Teams calls. Lots of prep in advance of the day and hope we can make it a useful event for everyone who attends.
2. Leaning in hard on the work around next years funding requirements as the operating model work delivers at pace.
3. I have some time with colleagues next week to work through what the triage model might look like for requests for digital change next year. We want to move to a user centred service governance model but its easier said than done.
4. Getting into the detail of how we work with our transformation programme colleagues and how we will support digital products and services developed by them when they go live

Anything else to note

Yes! – I’m advertising a role in my senior leadership team – Assistant Director Digital Delivery and Architecture. Its a great opportunity for a digital leader to come and join the digital leadership team at a critical point as we shape the future of digital service delivery for Homes England. Please apply!

Not a “normal” week as I was away at a x-civil service residential course for new directors which was great but also meant the schedule was all over the place. I’m starting to get more reflective about these notes. They’re for me about what I am doing, rather than what we are doing necessarily. I think that’s a good thing and as the teams in Homes England Digital (including the senior leadership team) get into the practise of writing regular team notes I can use this one more to remind myself of my place in it all.

What I’ve been up to

1. Monday was largely taken up travelling to York and negotiating meetings on a train journey with lots of tunnels and other blind spots. The next two days were a chance to work with other new directors across the public sector, learn about common challenges, hear from some leaders who have navigated the leadership journey ahead of us, and practise some techniques to help us drive alignment within our teams. It was great, tiring, distracting but well worth it.
2. In and around the course I was busy with various members of my team trying to pull together various pieces of work: our developing strategy, next year’s business planning, our proposed procurement of specialist capabilities, our future operating model. They are all interconnected and its hard to be clear on the sequencing required to land all these various activities at pace.
3. Had a briefing with our transformation programme leaders on progress to date and plans for next year. Its critical we align our activities in Digital with their ambition and I want to invest some energy in getting us all to a better place.
4. Also had a first briefing with the team leading the Homes England digital blueprint work to understand how Digital fits into our vision for future ways of working.

What I’m planning next

Its coming thick and fast this week. I am in the office in London for a fair chunk of it (and trying not to get distracted by the fact that my family are also in London for half term and keep forgetting I am actually working.

1. Presenting to our Change Exec committee about how much money we might need over the next 12-36 months to deliver our ambition about tech modernisation.
2. Participating in a workshop to try and draw the strategy, op model, procurement options and funding requirements together.
3. Spending some time with business managers in my directorate on how we improve our risk reporting oversight and challenge function internally.
4. We’ve been piloting using some of the tools in Microsoft Teams to capture and track actions and decision making. We’re going to review how thats going with a view to cascading it across the directorate if its fit for purpose.
5. I’m guessing I will be doing some touristy stuff with the kids in the evenings as well to provide a decent context shift from the day time focus.

Anything else to note

Really like how others, including Neil and Dave, include links to things they are reading. I should do more of that. Here’s one that’s occupying my mind at the moment (ie how can I use this with my team): https://newwaysofworking.substack.com/p/decision-making-the-advice-process

Here’s another that I keep coming back to (h/t Mark Dalgarno) and also want to think about using: https://gamestorming.com/the-anti-problem/

and just like that, January disappeared in the rear view mirror as fast as it had approached.

What I’ve been up to

1. The focus of the week was the monthly digital leadership team meeting, a full day of business and focused sessions on priority issues. First time all the senior team has been together since Christmas due to holidays so great to get our heads together, in person and with the shadow leadership team (who are a great foil for us and hold us to account), to do deep dives on procurement strategy, our current risk reporting and how we lead by example by working in the open.
2. I think I’ve mentioned here before that we are encouraging all our teams to publish regular team notes internally to improve internal communication and awareness. It made me realise that these weeknotes, published on my own website, are very much a personal reflection for my own use primarily. Its equally important we get the regular senior leadership notes right in terms of priorities and successes as they really set the tone for the rest of the digital teams.
3. Starting to form in my head how we draw all the previous work on future operating models, ways of working, procurement, current and future live service support etc into one cohesive programme of work. The business needs certainty, we need to reassure them we can provide the right service to help them deliver. Still learning about this and uncovering lots of good work from the past that hasn’t had the chance to shine.
4. Went to a great event on AI in the public sector hosted by Faculty. Great to hear form others across wider government about how they are finding practical use cases for something that feels at times like another hype cycle.
5. Ive got a busy week next week attending the residential part of the course for new directors run by the leadership college for government. Theres been quite a lot of preparation in advance which has eaten into my time.

What I’m doing next

1. A good chunk of the week will be attending the course mentioned above. Which means…
2. Thursday and Friday will probably be backed up with meetings squeezed into my only two days of the day job this week.
3. We’re furiously working on finalising a substantive version of our digital strategy and roadmap for sharing with the wider organisation to give them clearer visibility of our priorities and ensure we are aligned with their expectations.
4. Lots of activity around scoping our future live services support model that I will need to catch up on when I’m back from the course