Weeknote 8.2022

Just last week I was on holiday. It did actually feel like one. Little did I know that when I started reading Dresden by Sinclair McKay, there would be war again in Europe. Two years ago I heard the Army CGS say that global terrorism would look like a pimple on the nose compared to interstate conflict. The ability to look long yet deliver now, was a key theme of my week.

One of the big things I did this week was convene structured chats with team members to explore how we’re responding to the staff survey. The survey is a crucial annual temperature check of whether we’re working together well enough to respond to what residents need. There are changes we’ve already made and some more things starting so I needed feedback on whether these were right. 

We changed a lot, quickly in customer services as I started at the beginning of the pandemic. We’ve achieved some really big things which I assumed would take years, when I first got the job. But there are a number of things we’ve done which we need to keep reinforcing to make sure they stick (I talked earlier about how transformation remains dynamic not just an achievement). We need to work harder to discuss performance by taking a complete view. The unique ability to manage performance in real-time can lure us into actions that improve one thing only to create a problem elsewhere.

The second cohort of Link Workers completed their academy this week. This group has achieved some impressive outcomes for residents by listening to their problems and finding creative ways of brokering the support they need. It was particularly rewarding to spend time in my regular meeting with the Mayor – as our political lead – discussing the problems we tackled. Now we need to create the environment so that they can take the experience into the fundamental way they work so that the impetus doesn’t fade after the first experience. 

The recovery board had a retrospective this week (which I blogged about separately). One of the themes in this work is how we make the right decisions for now, whilst also looking at the longer term. Some of the biggest complexity associated with our work is navigating around things that were initially planned as tactical fixes or ‘quick wins’ which have become embedded through years of custom and practice. 

I had three conversations this week that helped me think differently about roadmaps. I’ve always been sceptical, frankly. Yes to a set of clear, mid-term outcomes. Yes to an immediate set of tasks. But articulating the route between those two points can be fraught with difficulty. But firstly, one of my peers said “you underestimate the value of roadmaps in showing staff that their area isn’t going to be forgotten”. And in a different conversation one of my team said “when you don’t have agency, a roadmap can help you look forward to when you’ll see improvements”.

I’m excited about next week. I’ve got three full days where I can focus on a single thing each day: we’re doing strategic planning on Monday, I’m at a conference on Thursday and Friday currently looks like a miracle. So there’s an opportunity to put some of this into practice.  Obviously it’s more likely that by midday on Monday I’ll be faced with so many different issues flying into the inbox that I’ll have forgotten all about it. But it’s nice to pretend.