Weeknote 14: week ending 8th March 2024

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.