7.8 — weeknotes -Laptop free zone? (almost)

Stayed in Hounslow on Tuesday of this week as was in Hounslow House on Tuesday and Wednesday and enabled me to get into central London on Tuesday evening — I know I have said it before but a 45 second commute to the office is very much needed sometimes.

A joint CLT / SLT on Tuesday morning where the focus was very much thinking about the next 18 months or so. What we need to do, what the financial challenge is, how we align service planning and priorities into the next 18 months.

Some of the new Print and Post arrangements went live this week, so the team were looking at making sure these were working as expected — other elements go live next week — spend some time this week on the closure report and ensuring the next steps and embedding it into business as usual is understood.

Wednesday was one of my Management Team meetings, so we, as usual started the day off in Wetherspoons — always a good and needed start to the day.

As always with our days together we covered a huge amount of ground. Reviewed our service plan, roadmap, savings, budgets — reviewed some of the approach for procurement of contracts — staffing. We also reviewed in depth a number of our key projects and programmes and a few bits of remedial action to be taken. Can be hard to carve a day out the diary but we managed it pretty well. We didn’t quite manage by ambition to be a laptop free zone but there are still a number of plates that need spinning. So sometimes it cannot be helped but it’s so easy to get distracted and not be in the room — so something for me to think about for next time!

Local by-election on Thursday in two wards so attention to that for some of the team — I managed to avoid getting too heavily involved this time.

And some sunshine to end the week! As well as some home ‘baking’ — a Biscoff cheesecake was amazing!!

Tune of the week: Lady Gaga — Abracadabra (Official Audio)

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