Week beginning 30 August 

It’s properly the end of summer now. The weather helped reinforce that it’s time to return fully to work. And last week was a fun enough holiday that I neither resented that nor had a broken night’s sleep in anticipation. But I did go through my diary and identify something each week to look forward to.

I spent the first day back in the office. It wasn’t much of an occasion- just video calls and hopping between screens – but it felt a useful way to re-establish a working mentality.

I was particularly excited by the customer services leadership team away day. The very words contain enough to make others shudder. But with the new structure starting to take shape I wanted to get the team together so that it felt like a new start. For those who were promoted there was a danger not enough changes – particularly with other roles still subject to recruitment. I also wanted to share with the team some of the techniques that I’d learnt to practice through responsible leadership.

The agenda was overly ambitious – and I was nearly thwarted by the trains being cancelled. But I got there and we got there, covering the meat of the day and still avoiding the 5.30pm close that I’d threatened.

We had a different style of session with the IT management team to establish the next level of detail on our future shape (more PostITs, more jargon). We’ve done a significant amount of activity since we published our first ideas and now need enough time to do that justice and enough urgency to keep folk with us.

I had a bit of a scramble in what spare time I had, to move forward the goals for the fortnight but the discipline remains positive. Unfortunately, there are a number of tasks that went on my list in early August and are still glaring at me. Most are important rather than urgent but two knotty things in particular need more care than I’ve been able to give.

Two in-person workshops and three trips to the office left me sitting in front of the TV on Friday night wondering when my family last felt this mysterious. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Next week promises less glamour – although a trip to a pensions conference is more exciting than it may sound, even if it does focus on cyber security. We also need to progress our proactive outreach pilot – one of the initiatives I’m most invested – before it gets too close to the great boiler switch-on in housing repairs. But more prosaically, I returned from holiday determined to get out of bed when my alarm goes off – and failed each morning. Must do better next week.