Weeknote 22 – week ending 3rd May 2024

Yet again a bank holiday weekend has lulled me into a false sense of security and I’ve missed my self imposed deadline of writing my weeknote on Sunday evening. I know I _should_ try and write the note at the end of a working week, not at the start of the next, but I find it useful to gain some perspective by leaving it for a few days. It also helps me to focus on the week ahead. Anyway.

What I’ve been up to

1. A good chunk of the week was invested in attending my first senior leadership awayday(s) in Birmingham. Only the second time I have been in the room with the wider SLT since I started at Homes England so a chance to meet some for the first time. An energy intensive couple of days, really productive and nice to feel part of a wider team of leaders rather than focusing just on my own area for once.
2. Getting better at forecasting money and people availability time has been a bit of a focus for me for the last couple of months. I’ve been keen for us to have better, near real-time, management information to hand so we can make more effective prioritisation calls. We’ve now got a good robust dataset to derive insights from and the digital business and assurance team have really bust a gut to get this work to a good place. We’ve still got lots to do (for example, better data presentation) but they have brought it a long way forward in a short period of time.
3. Related – we held our monthly digital portfolio group on Monday. Better MI is helping this checkpoint run more efficiently – its all connected.
4. We held our pre-market engagement supplier day as we look to the market to support and enhance our service delivery capacity in the future. We’ve now got a much better idea of what we need to source and what we need to do next to move this work forward at pace.

What I’m planning next

A four day week, so less time to do what needs to be done again. And a train strike. Again.

1. We’re having a workshop with the operational blueprint team from Deloitte to review the work we’ve done so far on future digital op model. We want to ensure our thinking is aligned as well as develop a plan to address our legacy estate modernisation plan
2. We’re in end of year reporting / setting objectives for the new financial year mode in the senior leadership team so I’m meeting with direct reports to agree priorities for the next year as individuals and collectively. I’m hoping all the other teams are on track for this work as well.
3. Two regular catch ups: one with the Evolve programme manager, one with my opposite number at DLUHC – both really important so ensure continued alignment of our work with theirs.