2020 01 17 — Weeknotes
2.2 — the one where I got to visit Chiswick
I met a couple of people last week that had actually read my weeknotes which is really good to hear, and that they are ‘useful’ for people. They are certainly useful for me, I use as some time to reflect upon the week and what I could have done differently. Admittedly one of the people that had read last weeks was my Mum who then spend 10 minutes making me correct my grammar and spelling mistakes — so I better take more care this week!
Whilst I am now four months into the role, I am still having a number of introduction meetings with people across the Council. It is still good, whilst I now know and have met a lot of colleagues, to have some time carved out in the day to sit down and chat one on one about what’s going on in their area and how we are able to help.
Monday
Monday put the flexible working to the test again and worked at home enabling me to go to the Dentist! Sometimes it would be nice not to have such good technology that enables me to do such things! Had a number of these intro meetings via Skype, which actually worked really well, able to have some really useful and detailed conversations.
We also had our weekly Digital Management Team meeting on Monday morning. We are continuing to work through the results of the Customer Satisfaction survey we did before Christmas and Nick is pulling together the action plan, linking this to the emerging Digital Strategy and preparing something for the next all Digital Managers meeting and the Hounslow Leadership Group. Some really interesting themes coming out which will then enable us to plan our next 6 months based on what our users have told us.
Tuesday
We ran another session as part of the Digital Strategy co-design with Peter’s area of the Council. He is Exec Director of Housing, Planning and Communities so a wide range of services. An important part of these design sessions is getting everyone to think about the outcomes that we are trying to achieve, not just the solutions, and also then to start to tease out what the Council needs to deliver over the next 6, 12 and 36 months. Was another useful session.
Wednesday
With so much going on and so much we need to move forwards across the Council at pace, we have spent a bit of time thinking of the resources needed for the digital strategy/ service design, core technology and the cultural/skills side of things too.
Wednesday saw Franco Degan joining us to assist with the Digital Strategy, digital governance and set up of service design in the Council. We spent a fair amount of time on Wednesday and Thursday going through where the Council is in terms of Digital and where we are going! I managed to start to fill up his mailbox with lots of information to get him up to speed.
Really pleased to have him on board, to move things forwards. Lots to do and enough to keep him busy… :-)
Thursday
I spent the morning out and about in Chiswick, took some time to visit other areas of the Borough but also to meet a local digital company, Difrent, and have a discussion with them about what they are doing in the world of Digital. One of the most random introductions to a company ever, Ben and I follow each other on twitter and he was involved in the recent fire at a hotel in the Borough. Led to us having a conversation…
I was really impressed by the approach and the range of projects that they were delivering across a range of clients. I was also reassured that a number of things they were talking about as important to get right — we have already started on at Hounslow. Lots to think about here…
Thursday afternoon was a debrief over the recent election, the election team got everyone together to see what could be improved for future elections. All in all it went really well but always room for improvement. We came away with a number of areas where we can help improve things for the team and customers alike for next time!
Tune of the Week: Bit of a random one this week, but who doesn’t like a mashup!
Best of 2012 Pop Mashup | Call Me Maybe x Payphone x Wide Awake x Starships | Anthem Lights
