4.04 — weeknotes — how is it February next week already?

A looong but really productive week this week. I’ve said a couple of times about the importance of diary management and taking breaks etc . Well I really failed that this week. Three times this week I ended up having lunch at my desk during meetings. I did turn my camera off, no-one needs to see me eating my salad! That said, I have been pretty good at going to the gym or a commute to or from work, which has helped . But I am looking forward to next couple of weeks where I am actually getting back out and about. It’s really needed.

You can tell that it was one of those weeks as I didnt get to write these weeknotes in the week, and now that it is Sunday, they are not going to be the longest in the world either.

We kicked off the week with the Design Authority. Another mix of ideas coming through and a meeting that I thought was going to be relatively straightforward, wasn’t. A huge amount of challenge and details to think about. Actually at this meeting, not much was formally approved to go forwards without further work, more connection with other projects and so on. Whilst at the time it feels like we aren’t progressing, on reflection, I think it’s a good thing, the whole point of the meeting is to make sure that we need to do the right thing in the right way.

I had such great feedback about our Digital Community Experience Board on Wednesday. “Favourite meeting of the week” and “that was blooming brilliant “ (I am paraphrasing)… We have moved from theory to delivery, or at least starting to. Its a great program to really transform how we manage and run our transactional services as well as align with our approaches to prevention and data — and almost everything in between. Will be able to pull a number of different ambitions together

Given that this is an election year we are taking some time to review the One Hounslow approach and programme. So much of the programme has been set up and lots moving into the delivery phase of work so now is a good time to review, join up and think about all the different elements and moving parts. We had 2.5 hours on Thursday and went through the programme line by line and pillar by pillar — lots of joining up, consolidating and thinking about what else? Over the last week I had been thinking about the governance that we need for the programme and scribbled lots of things down that I managed to cobble together into something that at least we could throw around a little bit more. Really good to be moving this fowards — more over the next couple of weeks.

Finally, you can tell the weeks where I haven’t been out and about much, as the selection of photos that I have to use in the weeknotes is poor or even non existent. This week no exception but managed to take a few cool pictures on the commute home on Friday of this week. Need to be better in the future.

Tune of the week: Don’t You Want Me (Hooj Mix)