4.16 — weeknotes — The answer to better one to one conversations? Cake!!

Nice four day week this week. Easter weekend was lovely and really managed to switch off and actually packed in quite a lot over the weekend — entered into the Easter spirit as well (new favourite thing, fake grass table runner!). Including a wedding reception on the Thursday evening (at a location where Ada Lovelace once lived — how cool!), garden centre, a BBQ on Saturday and even went to the gym a couple of times.

But back to work with a bump. Tuesday of this week I had the next session of my Level 7 course where we went through the overall framework of the assessments and the expectations of the assignment at the end of the course as well. Certainly is lots to do and think about with the course and the work outside the classroom time. Note to self to get some time in the diary to ensure that I am doing a little bit more outside the formal sessions.

The election is fast approaching and attention is really starting to focus on the preparation and the running of the election. Wednesday, after a morning at Hounslow House, went to Redlees Centre in Isleworth where the elections team are based and had some election count training.

Went and had a coffee catch up with one of the team before the training and was really nice to have a 1–2–1 without Teams involved. The coffee and chocolate cake is certainly nicer :-). It made me reflect that whilst working at home is great, and you can do everything remotely, it is better to have those more strategic conversations or where you are trying to solve some thorny / difficult issues, face to face — over coffee (and cake!). Another note to self — more cake! (more face to face 1–2–1s)!

The training was great — scary just how much of it you remember from one election to the next. Always slightly different from one to the next as well, but good to get a refresher and I am now ready to rock on 5 May! Whilst there is a hell of a lot of tech involved in the election it is reassuringly paper based…

Rest of the week was preparation for a number of presentations over the next couple of weeks, more 1–2–1s with the team and preparing the service plan, OKRs and objectives for the year. Great meeting on Thursday afternoon hearing updates on the projects, programmes and pipeline for digital — so exciting!

Tune of the week: Heard a couple of times this week — classic Spin Doctors — Two Princes