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Not a “normal” week as I was away at a x-civil service residential course for new directors which was great but also meant the schedule was all over the place. I’m starting to get more reflective about these notes. They’re for me about what I am doing, rather than what we are doing necessarily. I think that’s a good thing and as the teams in Homes England Digital (including the senior leadership team) get into the practise of writing regular team notes I can use this one more to remind myself of my place in it all.

What I’ve been up to

1. Monday was largely taken up travelling to York and negotiating meetings on a train journey with lots of tunnels and other blind spots. The next two days were a chance to work with other new directors across the public sector, learn about common challenges, hear from some leaders who have navigated the leadership journey ahead of us, and practise some techniques to help us drive alignment within our teams. It was great, tiring, distracting but well worth it.
2. In and around the course I was busy with various members of my team trying to pull together various pieces of work: our developing strategy, next year’s business planning, our proposed procurement of specialist capabilities, our future operating model. They are all interconnected and its hard to be clear on the sequencing required to land all these various activities at pace.
3. Had a briefing with our transformation programme leaders on progress to date and plans for next year. Its critical we align our activities in Digital with their ambition and I want to invest some energy in getting us all to a better place.
4. Also had a first briefing with the team leading the Homes England digital blueprint work to understand how Digital fits into our vision for future ways of working.

What I’m planning next

Its coming thick and fast this week. I am in the office in London for a fair chunk of it (and trying not to get distracted by the fact that my family are also in London for half term and keep forgetting I am actually working.

1. Presenting to our Change Exec committee about how much money we might need over the next 12-36 months to deliver our ambition about tech modernisation.
2. Participating in a workshop to try and draw the strategy, op model, procurement options and funding requirements together.
3. Spending some time with business managers in my directorate on how we improve our risk reporting oversight and challenge function internally.
4. We’ve been piloting using some of the tools in Microsoft Teams to capture and track actions and decision making. We’re going to review how thats going with a view to cascading it across the directorate if its fit for purpose.
5. I’m guessing I will be doing some touristy stuff with the kids in the evenings as well to provide a decent context shift from the day time focus.

Anything else to note

Really like how others, including Neil and Dave, include links to things they are reading. I should do more of that. Here’s one that’s occupying my mind at the moment (ie how can I use this with my team): https://newwaysofworking.substack.com/p/decision-making-the-advice-process

Here’s another that I keep coming back to (h/t Mark Dalgarno) and also want to think about using: https://gamestorming.com/the-anti-problem/

and just like that, January disappeared in the rear view mirror as fast as it had approached.

What I’ve been up to

1. The focus of the week was the monthly digital leadership team meeting, a full day of business and focused sessions on priority issues. First time all the senior team has been together since Christmas due to holidays so great to get our heads together, in person and with the shadow leadership team (who are a great foil for us and hold us to account), to do deep dives on procurement strategy, our current risk reporting and how we lead by example by working in the open.
2. I think I’ve mentioned here before that we are encouraging all our teams to publish regular team notes internally to improve internal communication and awareness. It made me realise that these weeknotes, published on my own website, are very much a personal reflection for my own use primarily. Its equally important we get the regular senior leadership notes right in terms of priorities and successes as they really set the tone for the rest of the digital teams.
3. Starting to form in my head how we draw all the previous work on future operating models, ways of working, procurement, current and future live service support etc into one cohesive programme of work. The business needs certainty, we need to reassure them we can provide the right service to help them deliver. Still learning about this and uncovering lots of good work from the past that hasn’t had the chance to shine.
4. Went to a great event on AI in the public sector hosted by Faculty. Great to hear form others across wider government about how they are finding practical use cases for something that feels at times like another hype cycle.
5. Ive got a busy week next week attending the residential part of the course for new directors run by the leadership college for government. Theres been quite a lot of preparation in advance which has eaten into my time.

What I’m doing next

1. A good chunk of the week will be attending the course mentioned above. Which means…
2. Thursday and Friday will probably be backed up with meetings squeezed into my only two days of the day job this week.
3. We’re furiously working on finalising a substantive version of our digital strategy and roadmap for sharing with the wider organisation to give them clearer visibility of our priorities and ensure we are aligned with their expectations.
4. Lots of activity around scoping our future live services support model that I will need to catch up on when I’m back from the course

A week that started with a power cut thanks to Storm Isha which meant playing catch up with a bunch of people who were pencilled in for catchups on Monday morning. We’re approaching the end of the first calendar month of the year so its been a week of checking in on our priorities and thinking ahead to February.

What I’ve been up to

1. Had my first (virtual) session with my cohort on new directors course run by the leadership college for government. We’re meeting in the real world in a few weeks time so this session was a chance to get to know each other and compare roles and challenges. Key takeway – manage your energy levels.
2. Had a really productive workshop with our risk and assurance colleagues to uplift our risk registers, make sure they are accurately reflecting our biggest challenges and how we are managing them.
3. Some good thinking and activity in support of our digital comms colleagues – planning around how we prioritise work with our GOV.UK presence, separate websites and intranet.
4. An excellent session with the Digital Outcomes team to refine our offer to the business and how we can land service ownership as a concept and an operating model.
5. Planning and preparation for our monthly digital leadership team next week. The first time we will all have been together in the same room since before Christmas, a lot to catch up on and some meaty sessions to get through (including a risk challenge session, our future live services / operating model and annual business planning).

What I’m focusing on next

1. Continuing the huge push on recruitment and skills. Lots of training opportunities being proposed and an assistant director role being advertised next week amongst others.
2. Welcoming back Steve Railton to the leadership team after an extended break. Need to bring him up to speed on what we have been up to in his absence.
3. The monthly leadership team mentioned above, likely to generate lots of activity.
4. Lots of sessions about future live services support, both before, during and after the leadership team day. This work is rightly consuming a lot of focus at the moment.
5. I’m attending what sounds like a really interesting event about building generative AI-powered digital public services. Keen to find out what we can learn from others in this space.

All weeks are more or less busy. The trick is to try and focus on the priorities and not get distracted. Which is hard. This one flew by. Not least because GovcampXL

What I’ve been up to

1. Now I’ve been here a full month proper the regular meetings are starting to flow around again. So it’s been useful to take stock on what I discussed at introductory sessions a month ago now I have a bit more context. Quite a few of those this week.

2. We held our monthly digital all staff and I talked a little about the work I have been leading on our strategy and roadmap. We’ve now shared it with all our staff to get their feedback. I also talked about the plan to introduce teamnotes across the organisation to help us communicate priorities and successes better.

3. I’ve had to take draw breath on how we are engaging with the market to procure some live service support skills that we will need in the near future to ponder what our future lives services model will look like, options to get there, and what the wider business needs to know about our plans before we plunge head first into the activity.

4. Kept the energy going on recruitment to fill our key vacancies, including one of our key leadership team roles – assistant director of digital delivery and architecture. Interested? Advert imminent but ping me if you want more details.

What I’m focusing on next

1. My chief of staff has been doing some great thinking about how we drive the momentum using key meetings and external deadlines during the month to drive decision making and reporting. We’ve got another session to discuss this week.

2. Taking part in my first session for new directors run by the leadership college for government. Looking forward to meeting the rest of the cohort remotely before we meet for a residential course in a few weeks time.

3. Running a workshop to sharpen the definition on our digital proposition development offer with the great digital outcomes team. Looking forward to getting stuck into this.

4. Attending my first change portfolio executive meeting so looking forward to seeing how that operates.

5. Another workshop later this week to take a good hard Paddington stare at our risk registers to make sure we’re tracking the right things and managing them properly. 

Other things worth mentioning.

1. Did I mention Govcamp? 16 years is a long time. So many people. So much positive energy. So many new and old faces. Great conversations. Much inspiration. A lot to follow up on. So little time.

2. Car situation now sorted. One (big) less thing to worry about.

A busy week. Those who were lucky to extend the Christmas holday until the end of last week are now back so the meetings, emails and asks have all exponentially increased. Also the car is kaput so have had the distraction of finding a new(er) one.

What I’ve been up to

1. Consolidating all the feedback for the draft digital strategy and roadmap from team managers in my directorate. Some really good suggestions and questions to get us to a better version that we can share more widely with the directorate as we hone it over the next few weeks.

2. Getting all team leaders to think about team level priorities for this month so we can improve communication across the directorates by getting into the regular habit of writing and publishing teamnotes.

3. Ramping up recruitment activity to fill some key capability gaps. We have an ambitious plan to recruit at pace but it needs sustained energy from the leadership team who are all very busy all the time,.

4. Held our monthly digital leadership team meeting. We covered some really good discussions around recruitment, communicating better our spending plans and the strategy. We are experimenting using the Teams meeting notes to capture and allocate actions.

5. Caught up on the new website and few other business engagements. Partly to help sustain the momentum on these projects but also to help me understand better what are offer to the wider business is and how we might productise that a bit better.

What I’m doing next

1. A busy week meetings wise, including our monthly digital all staff call. Looking forward to the chance to hear from the wider directorate.

2. Meeting the wider team leadership network for the first time. looking forward to us all getting together, especially as the draft digital strategy is taking shape.

3. I have a workshop to try and streamline the business meetings and information flows between them to help try and optimise our time better and ensure the right people are present to make the right decisions.

4. Some supplier meetings to understand better how we work together.

5. Next Saturday is Govcamp 2024 (so Govcamp 17?). Really looking forward to attending in person for the first time in quite a few years.