4.03 — weeknotes — probably being a bit too harsh on myself?

I have been in a couple of meetings this week where colleagues, inside and outside the organisation, have said to me that they read and enjoy my weeknotes. Generally, I assume that no-one reads these and it is just a good end of week activity for me to reflect on the week. So this week it feels like there is added pressure…

First full week of the year, done and mostly survived as well. Thanks to working at home I also managed to survive the week (very easily actually) without the car, but also good to have it back, meant I could go back to the gym on Thursday.

All this week I have been on a Productivity Course (15 mins at the start and end of each day) run by Happy, who also run our Level 7 Management course that I am doing . Was a really good course and learnt lots of new approaches to making me more productive and procrastinate less. I think it will be the combination of a few of the techniques that will actually start to make a difference.

My favourite one is the Pomodoro technique — setting a timer for 25 minutes to focus on a single task and then have a break. Just the action of setting a timer on my phone made me focus more. My biggest challenge still (and for many) is the amount of meetings we continue to have — need to try and find the balance again for some space to work. An action for next week (perhaps the week after looking at the diary….)

Started the week with a briefing from MS on the insights across the organisation through Viva — so much information and insights to think about there — so interesting. Again lots to think about, and timely as well as we are really starting to drive the adoption of Office.com.

Tuesday, after some time at Board, was the next of the Level 7 course, another really thought provoking session around cultural foundations. We had Lisa Gill, who produces the podcast, Leadermorphosis, speak to us about her thoughts on new ways of working focussed around self managing workforces — some really interesting and challenging things for us to think about.

Our monthly Hounslow Leadership Group meeting on Thursday, another good session — lots of content (probably a bit too much on this occasion). But good to see colleagues and discuss the development of the recovery work as it moves forwards. The economic wellbeing of the Borough and our approach to community wealth building was the focus. Also on Thursday had a really good update the the PMO and Business Relationship Teams on everything going on — progress being made but lots to do.

At the end of the week, given the changes in the Government guidance we took a short paper to Gold on what this means for the council. Now that the work from home guidance has changed we will return to: come into our buildings with purpose, from the end of the month. Care needed in the communications around this to ensure that it doesn’t come across as the date when you must come back to the office.

I think on a number of occasions this week I have been quite harsh on myself. I do try and push myself and the team and indeed have high aspirations for the organisation in the work that we are doing to transform. On a number of occasions this week I felt that certain things / conversations / meetings etc haven’t really hit the mark (no pun intended). But was actually given some really good feedback this week that I was probably over thinking / analysing — it was worded more direct than that — but was very grateful for the feedback — has made me think about a range of things this week as we move the changes along.

The homemade latte has certainly helped this week…

Tune of the week: Now, heard this on the radio earlier on today and OMG, what a blast from the past! One of those that you will either love or hate — let me know! Josh Wink — Higher State Of Consciousness (Official HD Video)