Month: April 2024

Weeknote 21 means that this habit is now officially a grown up, or something. My weekend has been mostly spent grappling with a failing freezer and trying to squeeze a bit more life out of it. After hours of defrosting, deep cleaning and reseating the door seal, nothing was working and it looked like the end. Then I noticed that the bottom hinge was wildly out of position. That screw that a kind member of my family found on the kitchen floor a few weeks back and had placed on the window sill suddenly zoomed into focus. Weeks of scraping ice and plumping up the door seal all for nothing. Two minutes with a screwdriver and the freezer is as good as new. Anyway…

What I’ve been up to

1. A busy week with travel to Leeds for the monthly digital leadership meeting. An over-optimistically crammed agenda but we managed to get through most of it, focusing on our forward plan of meetings and activities for us and the wider directorate over the next year, our financial forecasts, and how we manage the change demand requirements from our colleagues across the agency better.
2. Of course it was also Adrian’s final digital leadership meeting and we got a chance to say goodbye in person before he finished as chief digital officer on Friday. Adrian is completely saying goodbye to Homes England just yet but from Monday I (and therefore Digital) report into Kirsty our COO. Its a small change (only my management reporting line moves in practice) but its a significant change as we join a group that provides a large chunk of the corporate enabling functions for the agency.
3. In preparation for the change I joined the monthly COO senior leadership team on Monday to get some insight into how the group runs. Given the size its unsurprising that there is a large measure of reporting rigour which is reassuring.
4. I got a chance to catch up with Sarah, our head of delivery, whilst in Leeds and debate some of our ways of working. I missed Paul, our new head of user centred design, who is was in Liverpool for a communities of practice meeting. But I did get to meet him via the power of Teams on Friday and discovered we have a few mutual friends and a similar eye on the challenges and opportunities for UCD in Homes England.
5. I managed to meet two former Government Digital Service colleagues this week. Neil is CDO at the BFI, an amazing career move for a confirmed moving picture nut. Dave is CEO of DXW, a brilliant digital agency that specialises in helping public sector organisations deliver better services. Its great to take some time out and get some external perspective. Consensus was that its hard being a digital leadership in and around government right now for a variety of reasons. We need to stick together to help navigate the challenges we mutually face.

What I’m planning next

1. Its my first senior leadership away day in Birmingham on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve only been in the same room with (most of) them once before so I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with colleagues from across the wider agency away from the day job.
2. We are working hard to nail down our finance forecast for the new financial year. We’re reviewing the revised position tomorrow to give us a bit more clarity on what we can and cannot fund.
3. Steve and the digital outcomes team have been refreshing the emerging digital operating model work that started last autumn and I’m aiming to share that with COO colleagues this week.
4. The monthly digital portfolio group meets on Monday. I’m chairing this one. Its getting better each time we run it.
5. We’re holding a supplier day as part of our pre-market engagement as we look to suppliers to support and enhance our service delivery capacity in the future. This is particularly important for the products and services being developed by our transformation programme as they require some skills that we either don’t have, or don’t have enough of, in-house.

Anything else to note

A few articles that have been making me think in the last week or so, all from the top value John Cutler:

On quarterly delivery cycles: TBM 280: 2-6-4-1

On magical companies not being quite so magical: TBM 281: Stop Chasing Unicorns

On continuous improvement: TBM 284: Why Aren’t We Talking About Continuous Improvement?

Its finally warm (and dry – its Ireland) enough to walk outside in t-shirts, go for bike rides and cut the lawn. Got all three done this weekend so son number two cant complain the grass in the field is too long to kick a ball around in. So that was good.

What I’ve been up to

1. We met as a whole digital functional team on Wednesday. The big item was the announcement that Adrian will be leaving at the end of April, a couple of months earlier than expected. That puts the spotlight on me stepping up to be director of digital / chief digital officer. So lots of questions, change is always worrying, and lots to work through as we plan for our future reporting to the chief operating officer, Kirsty.
2. The news actually broke on Tuesday morning, right before our virtual wider leadership team meeting (all those who are managers) so conversation there inevitably focused on “what next”? Few answers as yet other than I’m now the digital lead. We did get time to talk about end of year appraisals and our plans to make meetings run better.
3. We’ve pretty much nailed down our digital delivery roadmap now with a bit of visual tweaking to be done. It follows our business plan closely. Next step is to share it more widely with colleagues across the business.
4. A fair few conversations about how we _practically_ embed user/service orientated thinking into our work with colleagues across the agency. Badly needed, not easy, a priority for the new financial year.
5. A fair few serendipitous conversations about our using the digital leadership team of microsoft Loop to co-create meeting agendas, capture notes and allocate actions. Seeing some real interest in wider adoption.

What I’m up to next

1. We have our monthly digital leadership team on thursday. This month its in Leeds so looking forward to visiting the office there for the first time and meeting digital and other colleagues who work there.
2. Undoubtably the main topic of conversation is going to be “what are we going to do differently as part of the COO area”, and related expectations. Lots to agree as well as one final hard Paddington stare on our roadmap and priorities.
3. Its my first COO senior leadership team meeting on Monday. It will be good to spend time with the other directors in this part of the business and find out what is vexing them.
4. Got a bunch of overdue catch ups this week, including with old friend Neil Williams. Its really helpful to take a step back and reflect on work with colleagues working elsewhere in similar roles.

(forgot to press “Publish” on this last night but better late than never)

A looooong week with travel and and extended stay in London for part of the weekend. Took in a gig with my wife which made a nice change and largely managed to keep her away from the shops!

What I’ve been up to

1. Tuesday and Wednesday was up to Newcastle to participate in the people survey action plan workshop. Its the largest group of colleagues I have been in a room with since joining Homes England and it was a great opportunity to hear from others and experience the energy in the room. Really gratifying to be amongst people with a shared purpose of making things better.
2. While I was in Newcastle, ran a short workshop exploring better ways of working. We used Mark Eddleston’s new ways of working canvas as a guide and, while we weren’t able to cover it all, generated some good ideas on improving working – namely better meeting etiquette and using Microsoft Loop to generate agendas, meeting notes and capture actions.
3. As a management team we ran a session examining the recommendations from our recent digital target operating model work. Not many surprises but good to have hypotheses checked. The hard work is with us now to turn the recommendations into actions and move this work forward.
4. The briefing sessions with executive leadership team members have been an opportunity to get feedback but also pick up some niggles and actions which I now need to follow up. Its really good to hear what is bothering leaders and consider how Digital might be able to help with these problems.

What I’m up to next

The diary looks pretty crazy this week but its a shorter week at least for travel.

1. We’re trying to nail down the roadmap this week so we’ve got absolute clarity on what we _think_ we are doing whilst we engage with the wider Agency to check our assumptions *and* wait for budgets to be confirmed.
2. We have a wider leadership team meeting on Tuesday. Virtual this time, so shorter and more focused on management issues but we will also be covering the roadmap and strategy work that has been going on.
3. Our digital all staff meeting is on Wednesday. An opportunity for us in the leadership team to update everyone about whats going on as well as hear from others about what they are up to.
4. We have our monthly risk review board on Tuesday. These are starting to develop their own rhythm and help us to mature our approach to managing and reporting our risk.
5. Lots of business change sessions filling in the gaps in my diary as we develop business cases for critical work over the next year or so.

Easter’s over, the chocolate eggs are largely eaten, and the run of four day weeks is over until next month. As much as I love a shorter week I tend to find them disruptive to working patterns and end up trying to cram five days work into four. So while its nice to have had a bit of family time just as spring proper arrives I am also glad to get back into the groove.

What I’ve been up to

Last week included:

1. Our monthly digital leadership team meeting. Unusually I was “dialled in” while everyone else was in the room which demanded a bit more concentration than usual. We covered a lot of ground, including facing into the new financial year and arranging better, more regular high value face to face events with teams to encourage stronger team building.
2. Reviewing progress and setting our priorities as a leadership team for April. We have to report to the board and CEO on the progress Digital has made in March so I’m looking forward to going through all the team monthnotes for March for source material in the next few days.
3. Talking with colleagues to think about how we better resource and schedule our workload. Partly so we have a clearer view across the directorate about what we are doing, partly so its easier for us to demonstrate the value we bring to the wider agency.
4. Its coming up to end of reporting year so I’ve been organising my 360 degree feedback as well as ensuring direct reports are ready for the various meetings, forms and reports that will need completing over the next few weeks.

What I’m up to next

1. I’m off to Newcastle on Tuesday and Wednesday. The main reason is to attend a staff engagement event following our annual staff survey, listen to members of my teams’ views about how we improve our working environment and general satisfaction.
2. I’m taking advantage of being in our Newcastle office to run a workshop on new ways of working. We have done a lot of thinking and tweaking of working practises to improve how our meetings run, how we report and decision making authorities. This article by Mark Eddleston about the new ways of working canvas looks like a good opportunity to bring some of that thinking together.
3. I’m starting a series of short briefing sessions with our executive leadership team about our digital strategy to sense check it and ensure we are aligned.
4. Steve is back after another break snowboarding in the alps so there will be a lot of catching up about our future operating model work that has continued in his absence.

Anything else to note

More than a little bit excited to be seeing Novo Amor for the first time at the Roundhouse next Friday evening. His new album is sublime.

Funny how a couple of four day weeks (including a four day weekend) mess with the internal clock. Completely forgot to write and publish my latest weeknote and its Tuesday already. So we made to the end of quarter one, or the end of quarter four if you are following the financial calendar.

What I’ve been up to

1. We finished interviewing shortlisted candidates for the assistant director vacancy and have made a verbal offer. Once the role has been formally offered and accepted I will let you know who the successful applicant is. It was a really strong field with a diversity of skills and experience but the panel was unanimous that there was one stand out candidate. V excited for them to join us as soon as possible.
2. I had a briefing from TPX impact on the research project they have been running about our future target operating model and how we, Digital, set ourselves up for success in the future. I’ll be sharing the output from the work with you soon. There’s lots of recommendations to take forward and thanks to everyone who helped shape the work.
3. As it was year end there was some manic last minute activity to unblock proposed contract extensions and renewals which took up a bit of time.
4. I met with the digital outcomes team for an update on how we are proposing to pilot a service ownership model for digital communications.
5. Had a musical reminiscence session with Vic S around bands we have loved and seen live which lifted the mood a lot at the end of a hard week.

What I’m planning next

1. We have our monthly digital leadership team meeting on Wednesday. We are a little depleted at the moment with Ronald gone and Steve still snowboarding in the alps but still have much business to discuss as it doesn’t ever pause.
2. We will be reporting on our progress against our March priorities and setting our April priorities as a leadership team. A reminder to all team leaders that you should now as a minimum be providing your monthly update for March in the team notes Teams channel.
3. A rake of catch ups with the various heads of practice to check in and ensure I am up to date with their work and they get the chance to quiz me or escalate stuff they need support unblocking.
4. Meeting and briefing our new project manager, Russell, who’s joined us to lead our work around procurement of additional live service support capabilities.