2020 07 10 — Weeknotes
2.27 — starting our OKR journey…
Whilst this has been a four day week for me, having Friday off, it has been one where I have had to use some brain cells. We have had a couple of half day sessions this week with Their Be Giants, on our approach to Objectives and Key Results (OKR). We are working with them to introduce this way of thinking and operating within Digital & IT.
We have a huge amount to deliver for the Digital & IT strategy and I wanted to ensure that we have the culture within the team to ensure that we are able to deliver as flexibly and quickly as possible. OKRs seems the best approach to ensure that we have common understanding of what we were delivering together with the most effective way of making sure we delivered!
We had two sessions with Roger from Their Be Giants to go over why we are doing OKRs and what we wanted to achieve with them. It was a really good session but lots to think about, the what, the who, the how… We have a number of sessions with the team over the next month to get these reviewed and established. Was really exciting to get involved in something I haven’t done before and looking forward to moving this forwards.
On Monday we had our second Digital Strategy Member Board. This is the first one since the approval, by Cabinet, of the Digital Strategy, so was an opportunity to update Members with the work that has been carried out during the pandemic. It was also an opportunity to set the scene for our priority projects and our use of service design in the discovery phases of this work. All very much ensuring that we develop these programmes of work with our communities at the centre.
We also discussed what we are doing as a council for digital inclusivity, a really important theme that we are embedding into our work. The pandemic has put a focus on this as well and a number of projects happening to try and move forwards, including an allocation of 600+ laptops from the Department of Education — all good but a drop in the ocean of what is needed to ensure that communities are not excluded from the opportunities that digital could provide for them.
We have a fortnightly Show and Tell with everyone in Digital & IT, to go through the latest and greatest, we have been getting a team at each meeting to introduce themselves and present who the team are and what they do, and then a couple of the team tell us a bit more about themselves. This week was the turn of the Business Support Team — who started to rebrand themselves as digital plumbers (building on from Fixing the Plumbing) — loved it! It is really good to hear more about the teams and the people behind the teams, particularly as we are all at home! It was very entertaining, learnt lots about them and lots of chat around our first computers #commodore64rules…
One of the really nice things that I have started doing during lockdown is walking, to get out of the house and get some exercise (on top of the running). Who knew such places were in Crawley a few minutes walk from home. We came across the Gatwick Stream the other day — very pretty!
Tune of the Week: CAN’T STOP THE FEELING! (From DreamWorks Animation’s “Trolls”) (Official Video)
