2020 10 23 — Weeknotes
2.40 — a day in Hounslow House
I can’t believe we are approaching the end of October already, although I probably said that at the end of last month I do appreciate. November is already looking to be super busy, we are going to need December to recover I think.
I started the week hosting one of our Hounslow Leadership Group sessions, the first one I have hosted for a while and I had forgotten just how stressful they can be. Was really good to see people and as usual some great conversation, speakers and groupwork. However, we were about 20 mins in when I realised that I had no idea of what the timings for the 2 hours should have been, which meant that I was frantically trying to think about what we were doing and how we were going to fit everything together. In the end it all worked out well but wasn’t Plan A that is for sure. I am sure no one noticed but lots of frantic work behind the scenes to make it all work!
I spent the day at Hounslow House on Thursday — was nice to get out of my four walls and see colleagues. It remains a very safe environment, wasn’t hugely busy but there was a steady flow of people to the service desk. I wandered down the high street to grab a coffee and was quite surprised just how busy it was.
I went to there to have a wander around the building with Mandy, Assistant Chief Exec and Alison, who is working with me on a whole range of Digital and IT things! One of those things is the Future World of Word! Working with Steve, the Director of OD, we are spending some time thinking about what the future holds for Hounslow in terms of how we will work in the future. But we are also spending some time making sure that we support colleagues during this immediate time working at home.
The original architects of the building had produced some plans and thoughts based on our emerging vision and we had a wander around the building with these, thinking about how we can use the future vision to help with the next few months. One example of this is reconfiguring floors from banks of desks to work at, to a more collaborative space — spaces with bigger desks for project work and meetings, long tables, innovation spaces and so on. Hounslow House is already an amazing building and it is really exciting how we can build on that to make it even better for staff and our residents alike.
The transfer of Leisure services continues to take a lot of our time this week, we have a week to go before the services officially come to the council, lots to do in that time! In part making sure we have the right services that will enable the council to start to open buildings and then looking at the future as well. From an IT viewpoint we are essentially rebuilding the infrastructure around these halls and centres — from networks and hardware to applications and users. So lots going on here with some good deadlines to focus the mind. 😊.
I had a Socitm Board meeting on Friday and we went through a range of topics — really good to be part of and I feel like I am slowly starting to get my head around things. One of the things we were talking about was how we ensure that our conferences stay valid and useful for our members. Lots of things to think about here to ensure that we continue to make them relevant — especially where there are so many online conferences currently.
We launched our Digital Festival Hounslow this week as well into the organisation and via Twitter and LinkedIn. This is going to be great (and hard work). We have some great speakers and events over the month on a whole range of subjects and an opportunity to bring colleagues together and maybe even have a bit of fun — especially timely as the clocks have now gone back!
Tune of the Week: Kylie Minogue — I Love It (Official Audio)
