3.12 — weeknotes — what a jam packed week — so ready for a 4 day week next week!
This week marks the anniversary of the start of the first national lock down and there were multiple chances this week to pause and reflect. It has been a hard year for all of us, it has certainly affected us all in different ways, directly and indirectly. But we have been able to achieve huge amounts individually and together, so really important to see the positives. There has been a lot of thinking and discussion this week over the future world of work programme, as it becomes less future and more of the here and now.
I am certainly starting to think about what the next 6 months holds, starting to think about the diary, about taking the campervan away and even some events in the summer, maybe?
We had our Mission Leadership team meeting this week — that’s all managers in Digital and IT. We had a focus on the world of work and firstly what we want to do as a team to ensure that we make the most of the new working and secondly what we need to do to enable the council to maximise the new ways of doing things. Was a really good session to hear so many ideas from the team. There is certainly no desire here to return to the old ways of doing things but one thing that came up strongly was to ensure that we continue to support wellbeing when returning.
The other thing we started to do at Mission Leadership was to start to shape the next quarters Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) — we have made some really good progress on these so far this year and I really like the way we are able to frame and measure the change. Not everything has been completed and I think at the start we were a bit over ambitious with some of our numbers on the Key Results — but we have made inroads into a fundamentally different way of delivering the service.
For the next quarter’s we are going to have a bit of focus on some of the basic information with our own Data and Processes as we are finding that we are having to spend more and more time on getting the right information or creating workarounds for processes and this isn’t right. So having a bit of focus on the basics that will then help us provide a better and more effective service as well as improve our customer experience.
Had the third Design Authority this week where we had updates from the one Hounslow setup of the new pillar work. This is how we are going to shape the delivery of the corporate plan and ensure we group the various projects and programmes. We also went through the new process for projects and initial ideas to ensure that we keep all the projects and savings ideas collated together. Was well received and I think it will be good to have that whole council oversight — but the proof of the pudding will be that we don’t over engineer the process!
Also had a meeting with Microsoft and Connected Places Catapult around our net zero neighbourhoods and smart city approach — was a really good conversation about the challenges and what we are trying to achieve. As always with these things it is knowing where to start that is the real challenge but we are getting to a place where we can start to do ‘stuff’.
I hosted the London and South East Socitm Region meeting on Friday morning. Wow what a packed agenda that was — wasn’t a moment to rest! From rapid elevator pitches and presentations from partners, an update from Martin Ferguson on the excellent research that Socitm are doing on Zero Trust, Dave Sanderson’s update on Socitm and everything going on there and finally the smart working journey that Southwark has been on.
Have been really good this week at the morning commute to work, I have managed to get out and get a decent walk every morning this week, the warmer weather has made a difference certainly and taking a coffee around helped as well. Whilst I have done this a few times a week it’s felt really good doing it every day this week and has really helped me stay on top of things this week. I even managed a couple of runs in the evenings as well — definitely a fan of the warmer weather!
Really has been a jam packed week this week!
Tune of the week (couldn’t be any more different from last week): Sam Smith — Time After Time (Live at Abbey Road Studios)
