Week Notes S1 E1: And now for something completely different
Originally published on Medium on July 13, 2018.
Let’s give this a go….
Long time lurker, first time writer. Impressed by the openness of the #weeknotes movement and the level of self awareness it promotes. Since I’m currently stuck on a train commuting between Devon and London it seems prescient to use the time more effectively than catching up on my latest Netflix binge, plus:
A. My weeks go by so fast that they tend to blur into one, so hopefully a retrospective will help with that.
B. I keep thinking I need to improve my writing ability, yet never really get anywhere with blogs.
C. By capturing highs and lows, I’m hoping to leverage this to focus more on the stuff that keeps me motivated.
So onto #weeknotes 1…
Devon at it’s best
A day working from home for life admin and local meetings, yet I managed to escape to the beach for a quick lunchtime swim which reminded me why Devon is the centre of the world.
Followed by the slow train to the big smoke; unfortunately the single biggest obstacle to the county attracting the sort of dynamic companies and hence dynamic people it would take to kick start the local economy again.
Yet it give me time/headspace to read and write so it isn’t too bad. This journey was mostly taken up with documenting all the ‘off the books’ consulting work i’ve been up to recently for my boss. I’d like to say this was for the good of the business but actually its mostly because when I meet interesting people with interesting challenges, I can’t help but offer help and advice.
Silos asking Silos for help to help Siloing
One truth of Government is its so frequently a demonstration of a ‘high resiliency’ organisation; that is, you could chuck almost any team out of the building with zero notice and I’m pretty sure that within 48hrs the slack would have been taken up by other functions delivering at least the core value of the original team.
It was demonstrated this week working with analysts to streamline their workflow and help them comply with new data policies. Somewhere in tangled web of management chains, the business had totally missed there was an entire function to helping teams make the change (let alone two separate service design/UX functions).
Unfortunately it’s a sad truth that management consultants can pocket large fees for limited effort just linking up siloed teams; I wish it wasn’t the case, I really do.
“Don’t worry there’s a project for that”
A second truth of Government is the utter faith in governance and process to put things right. Case in point this week were some excellent ideas from a BAU team on improving a process. Now the changes in question would be undertaken by this team in any case, they are empowered to improve themselves, their processes and their value on their own recognisance and they’d touched base with most of the other stakeholders before coming to us….
Yet they still expected us to give them the direction, process and approval to the very thing they’d spent weeks considering beforehand.
Anyway…… Yes, thats a good idea, yes you’ve done everything you could have done to validate it, yes…… go get on with it!
Just because a project has been setup to improve a function, doesn’t mean all effort has to be directed through the project. Yes, tell us about it but we’re here to help you the customer, not vice versa.
Ethical considerations
Following on from meeting the amazing @gates_sj of DCMS fame on the GDS Data Science Ethical Framework we’ve been working to get it pushed up the agenda with the right people.
For the first time this week it seems to have really gained traction with beginnings of questions on how it might be integrated into processes, adapted to our context and linked to existing data governance.
#Londonlife
Great week for #Londonlife kicking off with taking a colleague to #Wimbledon where with incredible luck we were offered Centre court tickets to watch Jamie Murrey and is partner get kicked out. Fantastic match and even more so given it my colleagues first visit to the tournament.
This was quickly followed by the front row seats to the RAF’s 100 Year flight on Wednesday and the English teams [redacted] performance at the World Cup.
Lastly I nabbed last minute tickets to see part 1 of Robert Harris’ Imperium and wow what a performance it was with McCabe’s Cicero especially impressive.
Current Reading
Still making slow progress through ‘Thinking fast and slow’ and ‘Sapians’. Generally find energy levels too low when I get home for ‘serious’ reading unfortunately.
Current Listening
The wonders of Spotify Discover Weekly gave me ‘The Cat Empire’ this week which has been on a loop since, and also rediscovered the ‘Electro Swing’ genre to put a spring in my step.
Right; Devon ho now for a weekend racing bikes at the Southern Enduro on Exmoor, wish me luck ✌️