2020 08 12 — Weeknotes
2.31 — the one with the heat…
I know it is a very British thing to complain about the weather, too hot, too cold… never happy… but it has been a hot week this week and even had to spend some time trying to reduce the temperature in the fish tank :-)… All a bit bonkers but it has been really nice to see the sun, but probably a bit nicer to see the rain and the impressive thunderstorms!
We had our LOTI All Member workshop on Monday, really good to hear about the plans for year 2 of LOTI, there are lots of opportunities for really making a difference here. Spent some time with Eddie on Friday as well discussing how we link the activities in Hounslow to the work that is currently taking place. Again lots of opportunities here. Was good to hear from colleagues across London on some of the covid-19 recovery projects, including some that had won MHCLG funding.
FutureGov gave an update to CLT on Tuesday on the outcomes based reviews that we are doing across the Council to help the #1Hounslow transformation programme. We are early in the programme, only just coming into sprint 2, but already a lot of activity has taken place, impressive over what is usually a relatively quiet period. The programme has been set up, interviews with the majority of senior managers and a number of workshops with staff and managers from across the council. There are more sessions over the next few weeks and we are starting to join up the various threads of work to boost the #1Hounslow programme. Exciting times…
Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, in all the heat, I actually had to use my brain in our OKR workshops with There Be Giants (TBG). These are starting to change from theoretical to actual things that are important to us over the next 12 months. As a management team we worked with TBG to think about the things that we need/want to achieve, thinking about the outcomes we want to achieve and the detail underneath. We then started to craft these into the objectives (this was where my brain really started to melt), I certainly realised that crafting an excellent and meaningful Objective statement is harder than it looks. Getting there now, but a fair bit of work to do, we have a couple more workshops next week to progress.
Also spent a fair amount of time progressing our reshaping of Digital &IT. We have a lot to do to deliver the digital strategy, recovery and #1Hounslow so we need to ensure that we have the capacity and capability to do this (also one of our emerging OKR objectives — these things are almost planned!!! :-) )
This week we completed our Children’s Discovery project with FutureGov, they have been looking at how to improve the outcomes for children and families in the borough when then get in touch with us or are referred. This is aligned with some work around data for the team and both projects looking to make a significant impact. This is the first in the new ways of working for the council and really pleased how it has gone. Just need to read the report now and think about what’s next…
I needed to do a couple of tweaks on the LGA report that I was part of for Northampton, so had to turn that around relatively quickly, but we received some really positive feedback on the work Good to know that it was useful and well received by their Chief Exec.
Friday I had a relatively quiet day with only a couple of meetings in the diary, which gave me a lot of time and space to catch up, made me realise (again!) that I need to have the time in the diary to actually do some work, so have taken some steps to carve out more time in the week to be focused on the delivery.
Tune of the Week: Adele — Hometown Glory — https://youtu.be/BW9Fzwuf43c
