Month: March 2024

A four day week always looks attractive on paper but the reality always turns out into trying to cram five days of work into the four. And so it proved this week after taking Monday off to spend time with the family.

What I’ve been up to

1. We (Amanda S, Simon S and me) started interviewing candidates for the Assistant Director role (vacated by Ronald on Wednesday). We’ve seen three, all high quality with much to bring to the role, with three more to interview on Monday. We hope to be able to make a decision quickly and minimise the disruption to the team.
2. The work on designing our future operating model is hurtling towards its end. I say end but there will be much work to do once we wrap up the initial scoping and recommendation phase at the end of March. We held a workshop on Wednesday with most of the “heads of” to help drive this phase to its conclusion. Future op model is part of the suite of workstreams that together point to how digital will look and operate in the future. It includes our digital strategy, business planning and options for funding future change work. I’ve spent a lot of time with colleagues this week to ensure we are covering the right areas and driving the progress forwards.
3. I attended the CDDO service assessment ratings training to brush up my service assessors skills and find out more about the changes the centre are bringing in to service assessments (briefly they are moving from either MET or NOT met to a traffic light system).
4. More risk work – we held our monthly risk review meeting. Its only the second one so we are still finding our flow but we are definitely moving this work forward now which is great.
5. I attended our monthly digital portfolio group to check in on delivery progress and hear how work leads are getting on.

What I’m doing next

Its another four day week so I can expect it to be busy.

1. We’re finishing off the interviews for the assistant director role.
2. I’m updating the change executive committee on future digital ways of working.
3. I’m having a readout session with the suppliers who have been leading our future operating model thinking and design.
4. Lots of monthly 121s to check in with colleagues and make sure we are aligned. This soaks up a lot of time in the diary but is critical as we move forward.

Anything else to note

My trip home this weekend resulted in success. The mighty Magpies beat local rivals Salisbury 1-0.

Energy wise I’ve found that weeks tend to ebb and flow. One week I seem to make a lot of progress and burn a lot of energy doing so, the following week nothing seems to move forward and I’m recovering from the week before. This week was frenetic, definitely a flow week but more chaos flow.

What I’ve been up to

1. We had over 45 applications for the assistant director, delivery and architecture role (currently held by Ronald for a few more days) so whittling that down and settling on a shortlist was difficult as the field was impressive. As usual, when the panel came together there were a one or two obvious candidates for the shortlist but on the rest it took some time for us to come to agreement on who should make the cut. But we got there and interviews begin next week.
2. Back to Ronald, Tuesday night was an opportunity for the digital leadership team to say thanks to him for all his hard work over a meal and a few drinks. Its always nice to get together socially and take stock of where we are and what we are up to. Ronald leaves this coming Wednesday (20th) so all thanks again to him for his contribution.
3. Now we’ve agreed our draft digital strategy, and the roadmap work continues to develop, I’m starting to meet with executive leadership team members and other stakeholders to explain our priorities and get their feedback. This week has been all about setting those sessions up so that everyone gets briefing on this important work.
4. More meetings about our future operating model and how we move from where we are now to where we want to be, especially future live service support. A lot of this is predicated on finding the right funding model. to give us the extra capabilities we need. A work in progress.
5. On Thursday I spent some time with my trustee hat on at the board meeting for NASEN. Different sector, different funding model, different size and culture of organisation. But lots of similar conversations about people, governance, funding and forward strategy. Helpful to remind myself that nothing is unique in business.

What I’m up to next

1. A short week for me. Today (Sunday 17th) is St Patrick’s Day so tomorrow at home its a bank holiday. I’ve made the mistake before of not taking the day as leave and then had family running around me while I tried to work. Not so this year. Back Tuesday
2. We’ve got a(nother) digital risk review session. Slowly we are building some critical maturity around how we use risk to inform and manage our business. This is hard but good.
3. We have a workshop on our future operating model options on Wednesday. Its always good to be together in the room working through this and hearing others’ opinions.
4. Interviews for the assistant director role kick off later in the week.

Anything else to note

1. Next weekend I am meeting with some old school friends for a bit of reminiscence of our school days. On the Friday evening we are all off to see the mighty Big Country in concert (a blast from the past of school discos) and the next day off to see the mighty Magpies play a match for the first time together in over 30 years. Sorry Newcastle colleagues, not the premiership behemoths but the lowly Southern League try hards from my hometown.

This week has been a week of organisational archaeology. You know – when you start to dig deeper and deeper into the corporate vaults and you uncover magical artefacts from the past that have been mysteriously buried but which explain a lot. Its not exactly ark of the covenant stuff but context is king, and when you are still relatively new to the organisation its really helpful to uncover documents that help me to understand why decisions were made previously. Hoping to use my new found knowledge going forward as we design our future strategy and operating model.

What I’ve been up to

1. We held our regular all staff call this week. I think these sessions are important to ensure everyone gets an update on what is going on. But its really hard to get a temperature check in the post-covid world when we are rarely (or ever) all physically in the same place together. Its made me think that we need to do some work as a leadership team on how we facilitate key get togethers when we are based in different parts of the country and for people to feel they are getting value from them.
2. We had another go at refreshing and optimising our risk register. Its definitely getting better as we focus on using the register as a business tool and justification for our strategic decisions.
3. We signed off our draft digital strategy. I will publish it here when I get a chance, together with a bit of the background to how we got to where we are. Next step is to start engaging more widely across the organisation with “opinion havers” to make sure our proposed direction chimes with their expectations.
4. We had a workshop (and several conversations) about our modernisation and decommissioning plans. It moving in the right direction but, like everything else, the business needs us to move faster. These things are never easy!
5. Participated in the first cross-agency heads of profession session which was a chance to spend a little time away from the day job. Really good to hear lots of passion and energy.

What I’m planning next

1. We’re shortlisting for our Assistant Director Delivery and Architecture role this week and hope to interview before Easter. Ronald, the current holder of the role leaves next week (and confusingly his leaving do is this week. We are nothing if not consistent in poor sequencing of activities!).
2. We’re starting to nail down our business plan and budget for next year as the new financial year looms. Again, the sequencing isnt great as we are trying to land our digital strategy, roadmap and future procurement model. All of which need funding that might not all be in the business plan (yet).
3. Speaking of the roadmap, we ran a workshop a few weeks back with team heads to develop version 0.3 of our roadmap. We have just about completed that so the next step is to start to socialise that more widely, with the strategy, for agreement.
4. We’re midway through our target operating model work and Steve, who is leading it, is off on holiday for a few weeks from the end of this week. So lots of check ins with him and the team doing the work before he goes to make sure we are all in agreement what needs to be done and what they need from me in his forthcoming absence.

It was a bit jolting on Friday to realise I have now been with Homes England for three whole calendar months. That’s an actual proper quarter of a year. What’s changed? I’m reminded of a quote from James Duncan along the lines that the pace of change feels glacial to those trying to effect the change in an organisation while at the same time feeling relentless to those affected by it.

The digital future ways of working umbrella is a case in point. Its real slog to create alignment, be cognisant of internal deadlines for planning processes, and do the _actual_ work yet when I start to engage with colleagues on my thinking the feedback is along the lines of “this is moving fast”. It doesn’t feel like it, even though it needs to deliver promptly.

What I’ve been up to

1. The big event this week was our monthly digital leadership team meeting. A whole day is a significant investment in time and energy so its important we get it right. I’m conscious that I am crashing an established meeting and trying to squeeze out as much value as possible but I think we’re seeing the value of getting the regular business out of the way first and then deep diving into areas that need more of our time later in the day. This month we covered: risk, how we can work more closely with our transformation programme, the results of our staff engagement survey and what we do about it. We were joined by our shadow executive leadership team who are a great sanity check on our work and how decisions made in our lofty towers affect the people doing the do.
2. On digital future ways of working I’ve been starting to meet with colleagues in the wider organisation to test my proposals for our future strategy and operating model, taking feedback and tweaking the deck I am building to use as a discussion tool.
3. I’ve also been heavily leaning into the finances and how we might fund our future operating model. A regular challenge in these first three months is language and definition of terms. I think I’ve now started to unpick “what you mean when you say that thing” which has clarified some thoughts about what I need to do next.
4. Met with a fellow survivor from Defence Digital (hello Jo!) to lick wounds and compare notes on our new roles.
5. Like most weeks I have been heavily reliant on Helen, our digital PMO business partner, to keep me sane and focused on the priorities. Thanks!

What I’m doing next

1. I’m tempted to say “more of the same” but thats not a great answer
2. We have our monthly all staff call. Looking forward to hearing from colleagues about what they are up to
3. We have a big challenge around decommissioning / modernisation of our tech estate. Our head of architecture, Angela, and head of software development, Jon have been getting their heads together with colleagues to understand the detail better and what we do about it. Looking forward to finding out more about this.
4. Homes England are pushing hard on establishing professions and job families in the organisation. I’m the designated head of DDaT (or GDaD as it is now called) and all the heads of profession are coming together at the end of the week to agree next steps.
5. In a sympathetic nod to Neil, I have _another_ risk review workshop on Friday as we try to make our risk register sing better and be more explicit about our challenges and what we are doing about it.