Time: the most precious commodity

Week 19: 9-13 January

I’m just old enough to believe, fervently, that time is the most precious commodity we have. Given the right conditions most other things are replaceable. It’s also, often, the thing that’s least visible. I ran the Battersea Park half marathon in 1:33 on Saturday which was not my fastest – but just enough reward for my spasmodic preparation. I then broke my toe on Tuesday.

Amazon has a concept of one way doors: decisions that are irreversible and two way doors that are easily reversible. I believe that the longer it takes to do something, the more it becomes likely to be a one way door. For example, if I’d run on Tuesday before I broke my toe, I’d have recorded extra miles this week. The challenge with time is that it’s often the least visible risk (like kicking a chair leg whilst wearing socks).

One of the advantages of my role at the CPS is that with a more specific remit and a smaller team I do, at least theoretically, have more time to play with (albeit in an organisation which is still new).

I’ve been thinking about that for three more substantial reasons this week:

1. It’s been at the heart of some of the more challenging issues that I’m trying to resolve at the moment. On the upside, I’ve had a couple of good conversations where, at the very least, we’ve been able to identify that the underlying reason for the frustration is just a different prioritisation of what matters
2. I haven’t used my time particularly well. There are a couple of things which have been important to me this week but where I’ve not done them as well as I could have done because I’ve moved on in my mind rather than challenged myself to work out how they could be better
3. Given the above, I might gain more solace from recognising things that benefit from more time so that I don’t try and force the pace on everything out of frustration at a few things

There have been plenty of positives. We have agreed a business case for how we provide secure internet access over the next 18 months in near-record time. We had a really positive discussion at the Change Delivery team away day about their needs from a technology platform. And we did some important work to map out the project landscape for a programme I’m leading to ‘Ensure Service Continuity’ – practically, deciding what happens to 23 applications that are provided for by a contract which expires in mid-2025.

The technology strategy and roadmap is one of the things that will benefit from more time. The current draft has 30 commitments of various sizes for the next 18 months, some of which are already planned. But there are a handful of bigger ideas which do need debate and experimentation if they’re to be meaningful commitments. We’re currently designing a set of initiatives to ensure these have the time they need to move from being buzzwords and concepts into shared commitments.

At the end of the week we also got the more detailed breakdown of the results from the Civil Service people survey which was conducted late last year. The results are fine overall but there are a few things that really do need attention.

So, I’m making slightly fewer commitments next week:

1. To have three good conversations with colleagues to understand better how to respond to the people survey results
2. To prepare thoroughly for the best possible initiation for the Technical Design Authority
3. To complete the documents necessary for the launch of our Applications, Databases and Infrastructure Management procurement – aka maintaining and supporting CMS