Week 6

Week beginning 10 October

A fair number of ups and downs this week. I didn’t shake off the side-effects of the Arsenal result until the end of the midweek Champions League game. In fact, on Tuesday evening I nearly missed my tube stop as I was thinking about the fine margins that separate a credible draw and a depressing defeat. In some senses, that set the tone for much of the week.

We began the week by agreeing how we would design a supplier opportunity to develop our Robotics Process Automation capability and then followed it up by pulling together some of the specifications that we’d need to help commercial colleagues determine the right procurement routes. It’s dived into that work because I thought I could be useful to colleagues so it was rewarding to see that we were able to make progress.

I spent some time over the weekend reflecting on what I’d learnt from a workshop to develop our technology roadmap goals. In essence, it was hard to do it from first principles when the workshop didn’t acknowledge commitments we’ve already made and without understanding the level of detail that the roadmap will be covering. So I drafted some goals to explore whether ‘working backwards’ gave colleagues a more tangible target. On Monday I took the same approach to considering how our Future Casework Tools programme would align to the Technology Code of Practice.

Both of these guided a really positive conversation with Michael, our Principal Architect. There were some areas where we’ve got different perspective, which we’ll need to work through together but most valuably, he also gave me some useful advice and feedback.

The Digital Demand Forum considered my proposal for a public blog to support developing our roadmap ‘in the open’. I only caught up with the conversation after the meeting, which felt slightly voyeuristic but helped me bring forward some ideas for how we could sharpen up our technical governance which I’d been holding back.

I was also prompted to commit to paper some of my emerging thinking about how we could think more boldly about the scope of our Future Management Information project. I did that to test where my thinking fell short and where there might be other people with a similar vision. The ideas were positively received, so now I need to figure out how we can take the next step.

The biggest event of the week was our Strategic Supplier Relationship Management meeting, kindly hosted, and informed by, colleagues at BEIS. The 360 feedback was really important and we used it to identify three practical tasks that we’re going to work on to strengthen the relationship. As ever, it’s difficult to match the size of the intervention to the scale of the challenge. So we’re going to work over a short timeframe to try and make progress – and I’m going to make more effort to connect with more of the team directly.

Towards the end of the week I was getting a bit concerned that I still haven’t identified a successful way to ‘make things happen’. I feel like I’ve tried a couple of different tactics and whilst they haven’t yet failed, they also haven’t exactly ‘worked’. But with a show & tell on our roadmap scheduled for Thursday and a burgeoning to-do list, I’ll head into the weekend optimistic for what I can achieve next week.

With a team away day, a visit to our Eastleigh Office and three strategic supplier meetings it would easy for next week to be driven by the diary. So I’ll need to commit to a couple of clear goals so that I can use my spare time well and reflect on whether or not the week has been successful.