Weeknote 23: week ending 10th May 2024

As ever, there is a lot happening this week. On top of work stuff I am fitting in an evening with Kacey Musgraves and attending Interesting 2024. Not sure which of these I am most excited about.

What Ive been up to

1. We held our kick off workshop with the Deloitte team reviewing our digital future operating model. It was a good session covering a lot of ground but there’s a lot more to do so this will be a real area of focus over the coming weeks both for me and the leadership team.

2. We’ve continued to iterate our resource planning and reporting model, getting to grips with PowerBI to better interrogate the data so it’s more meaningful for us when prioritising new work.

3. I attended a round table discussion organised by Government Transformation Magazine on public trust in digital services. Lots of discussion about what might happen next post-this administration.

4. We (me and the rest of the digital leadership team) have been drafting out individual and collective objectives for the coming year. Good to see the flow from our strategic objectives into the leadership team and into individual. The line of sight is encouraging.

What Im doing next

1. We’ve got our monthly review of performance measures and management information this week to keep us to plan.

2. We’re continuing to quantify (ie actually put numbers to our hypotheses) our future live service support model which will require us procuring some capabilities from the market to supplement our in-house teams. We’re having good engagement with the Evolve team to test our estimates with theirs.

3. I’m attending a cross-gov product leaders community meetup, the first for a very long time that I’ve been to. Looking forward to comparing notes with colleague across the public sector.

4. I’m a trustee of NASEN, the National Association for Special Educational Needs. We’ve got our quarter strategy and people committee meeting on Friday so a chance to context shift and provide support to such a vital organisation.

Weeknote 22 – week ending 3rd May 2024

Yet again a bank holiday weekend has lulled me into a false sense of security and I’ve missed my self imposed deadline of writing my weeknote on Sunday evening. I know I _should_ try and write the note at the end of a working week, not at the start of the next, but I find it useful to gain some perspective by leaving it for a few days. It also helps me to focus on the week ahead. Anyway.

What I’ve been up to

1. A good chunk of the week was invested in attending my first senior leadership awayday(s) in Birmingham. Only the second time I have been in the room with the wider SLT since I started at Homes England so a chance to meet some for the first time. An energy intensive couple of days, really productive and nice to feel part of a wider team of leaders rather than focusing just on my own area for once.
2. Getting better at forecasting money and people availability time has been a bit of a focus for me for the last couple of months. I’ve been keen for us to have better, near real-time, management information to hand so we can make more effective prioritisation calls. We’ve now got a good robust dataset to derive insights from and the digital business and assurance team have really bust a gut to get this work to a good place. We’ve still got lots to do (for example, better data presentation) but they have brought it a long way forward in a short period of time.
3. Related – we held our monthly digital portfolio group on Monday. Better MI is helping this checkpoint run more efficiently – its all connected.
4. We held our pre-market engagement supplier day as we look to the market to support and enhance our service delivery capacity in the future. We’ve now got a much better idea of what we need to source and what we need to do next to move this work forward at pace.

What I’m planning next

A four day week, so less time to do what needs to be done again. And a train strike. Again.

1. We’re having a workshop with the operational blueprint team from Deloitte to review the work we’ve done so far on future digital op model. We want to ensure our thinking is aligned as well as develop a plan to address our legacy estate modernisation plan
2. We’re in end of year reporting / setting objectives for the new financial year mode in the senior leadership team so I’m meeting with direct reports to agree priorities for the next year as individuals and collectively. I’m hoping all the other teams are on track for this work as well.
3. Two regular catch ups: one with the Evolve programme manager, one with my opposite number at DLUHC – both really important so ensure continued alignment of our work with theirs.

Weeknote 21 – week ending 26th April 2024

Weeknote 21 means that this habit is now officially a grown up, or something. My weekend has been mostly spent grappling with a failing freezer and trying to squeeze a bit more life out of it. After hours of defrosting, deep cleaning and reseating the door seal, nothing was working and it looked like the end. Then I noticed that the bottom hinge was wildly out of position. That screw that a kind member of my family found on the kitchen floor a few weeks back and had placed on the window sill suddenly zoomed into focus. Weeks of scraping ice and plumping up the door seal all for nothing. Two minutes with a screwdriver and the freezer is as good as new. Anyway…

What I’ve been up to

1. A busy week with travel to Leeds for the monthly digital leadership meeting. An over-optimistically crammed agenda but we managed to get through most of it, focusing on our forward plan of meetings and activities for us and the wider directorate over the next year, our financial forecasts, and how we manage the change demand requirements from our colleagues across the agency better.
2. Of course it was also Adrian’s final digital leadership meeting and we got a chance to say goodbye in person before he finished as chief digital officer on Friday. Adrian is completely saying goodbye to Homes England just yet but from Monday I (and therefore Digital) report into Kirsty our COO. Its a small change (only my management reporting line moves in practice) but its a significant change as we join a group that provides a large chunk of the corporate enabling functions for the agency.
3. In preparation for the change I joined the monthly COO senior leadership team on Monday to get some insight into how the group runs. Given the size its unsurprising that there is a large measure of reporting rigour which is reassuring.
4. I got a chance to catch up with Sarah, our head of delivery, whilst in Leeds and debate some of our ways of working. I missed Paul, our new head of user centred design, who is was in Liverpool for a communities of practice meeting. But I did get to meet him via the power of Teams on Friday and discovered we have a few mutual friends and a similar eye on the challenges and opportunities for UCD in Homes England.
5. I managed to meet two former Government Digital Service colleagues this week. Neil is CDO at the BFI, an amazing career move for a confirmed moving picture nut. Dave is CEO of DXW, a brilliant digital agency that specialises in helping public sector organisations deliver better services. Its great to take some time out and get some external perspective. Consensus was that its hard being a digital leadership in and around government right now for a variety of reasons. We need to stick together to help navigate the challenges we mutually face.

What I’m planning next

1. Its my first senior leadership away day in Birmingham on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve only been in the same room with (most of) them once before so I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with colleagues from across the wider agency away from the day job.
2. We are working hard to nail down our finance forecast for the new financial year. We’re reviewing the revised position tomorrow to give us a bit more clarity on what we can and cannot fund.
3. Steve and the digital outcomes team have been refreshing the emerging digital operating model work that started last autumn and I’m aiming to share that with COO colleagues this week.
4. The monthly digital portfolio group meets on Monday. I’m chairing this one. Its getting better each time we run it.
5. We’re holding a supplier day as part of our pre-market engagement as we look to suppliers to support and enhance our service delivery capacity in the future. This is particularly important for the products and services being developed by our transformation programme as they require some skills that we either don’t have, or don’t have enough of, in-house.

Anything else to note

A few articles that have been making me think in the last week or so, all from the top value John Cutler:

On quarterly delivery cycles: TBM 280: 2-6-4-1

On magical companies not being quite so magical: TBM 281: Stop Chasing Unicorns

On continuous improvement: TBM 284: Why Aren’t We Talking About Continuous Improvement?

Weeknote 20: week ending 19th April 2024

Its finally warm (and dry – its Ireland) enough to walk outside in t-shirts, go for bike rides and cut the lawn. Got all three done this weekend so son number two cant complain the grass in the field is too long to kick a ball around in. So that was good.

What I’ve been up to

1. We met as a whole digital functional team on Wednesday. The big item was the announcement that Adrian will be leaving at the end of April, a couple of months earlier than expected. That puts the spotlight on me stepping up to be director of digital / chief digital officer. So lots of questions, change is always worrying, and lots to work through as we plan for our future reporting to the chief operating officer, Kirsty.
2. The news actually broke on Tuesday morning, right before our virtual wider leadership team meeting (all those who are managers) so conversation there inevitably focused on “what next”? Few answers as yet other than I’m now the digital lead. We did get time to talk about end of year appraisals and our plans to make meetings run better.
3. We’ve pretty much nailed down our digital delivery roadmap now with a bit of visual tweaking to be done. It follows our business plan closely. Next step is to share it more widely with colleagues across the business.
4. A fair few conversations about how we _practically_ embed user/service orientated thinking into our work with colleagues across the agency. Badly needed, not easy, a priority for the new financial year.
5. A fair few serendipitous conversations about our using the digital leadership team of microsoft Loop to co-create meeting agendas, capture notes and allocate actions. Seeing some real interest in wider adoption.

What I’m up to next

1. We have our monthly digital leadership team on thursday. This month its in Leeds so looking forward to visiting the office there for the first time and meeting digital and other colleagues who work there.
2. Undoubtably the main topic of conversation is going to be “what are we going to do differently as part of the COO area”, and related expectations. Lots to agree as well as one final hard Paddington stare on our roadmap and priorities.
3. Its my first COO senior leadership team meeting on Monday. It will be good to spend time with the other directors in this part of the business and find out what is vexing them.
4. Got a bunch of overdue catch ups this week, including with old friend Neil Williams. Its really helpful to take a step back and reflect on work with colleagues working elsewhere in similar roles.

Weeknote 19: week ending 12th April 2024

(forgot to press “Publish” on this last night but better late than never)

A looooong week with travel and and extended stay in London for part of the weekend. Took in a gig with my wife which made a nice change and largely managed to keep her away from the shops!

What I’ve been up to

1. Tuesday and Wednesday was up to Newcastle to participate in the people survey action plan workshop. Its the largest group of colleagues I have been in a room with since joining Homes England and it was a great opportunity to hear from others and experience the energy in the room. Really gratifying to be amongst people with a shared purpose of making things better.
2. While I was in Newcastle, ran a short workshop exploring better ways of working. We used Mark Eddleston’s new ways of working canvas as a guide and, while we weren’t able to cover it all, generated some good ideas on improving working – namely better meeting etiquette and using Microsoft Loop to generate agendas, meeting notes and capture actions.
3. As a management team we ran a session examining the recommendations from our recent digital target operating model work. Not many surprises but good to have hypotheses checked. The hard work is with us now to turn the recommendations into actions and move this work forward.
4. The briefing sessions with executive leadership team members have been an opportunity to get feedback but also pick up some niggles and actions which I now need to follow up. Its really good to hear what is bothering leaders and consider how Digital might be able to help with these problems.

What I’m up to next

The diary looks pretty crazy this week but its a shorter week at least for travel.

1. We’re trying to nail down the roadmap this week so we’ve got absolute clarity on what we _think_ we are doing whilst we engage with the wider Agency to check our assumptions *and* wait for budgets to be confirmed.
2. We have a wider leadership team meeting on Tuesday. Virtual this time, so shorter and more focused on management issues but we will also be covering the roadmap and strategy work that has been going on.
3. Our digital all staff meeting is on Wednesday. An opportunity for us in the leadership team to update everyone about whats going on as well as hear from others about what they are up to.
4. We have our monthly risk review board on Tuesday. These are starting to develop their own rhythm and help us to mature our approach to managing and reporting our risk.
5. Lots of business change sessions filling in the gaps in my diary as we develop business cases for critical work over the next year or so.