Weeknote 13: week ending 1st March 2024

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.