Weeknotes 2022, part 4

Tales from my week. 13th — 19th August 2022

Highlights

• Two members of our team collate a monthly newsletter, and following a recent away day where there was a collective sense that we needed to celebrate success more often and recognise our colleagues’ contributions, they included a new dedicated ‘thank you’ section. It was encouraging to hear all the great work that’s going on across Rapid Response, and I hope everyone mentioned is now entering the weekend with a spring in their step

Go team! (Alt: The cast of ‘Glee’ stand in a circle, put their hands in centre and then raise them)

• We’re midway through a design sprint, ably facilitated by our new Head of Product. This is a new experience for me and I’m excited to see how next week goes, and hopeful that trusting in the process will yield lots of new ideas
• We are trialling a meeting-free hour in the middle of the day. I’m aware there are pros and cons to this approach, but for now I’m enjoying having time to take a breath. For two consecutive days I’ve managed to take a short walk at lunchtime, which is a small but significant change which I would like to make into a habit

• Flowers are back in rehearsal after our summer break. The band sounds fantastic and raring to go ahead of the British Open next month

My view from the bandroom. Directly in front of me are the metal bars of a vibraphone and a music stand. Behind my stand are the back row cornets, then front row cornets, then our conductor.

• I spent three days at Guthrie and Ghani in Birmingham at a sewing retreat. It was wonderful (and a massive luxury) to have the time to commit solely to my hobby, and I managed to finish the construction of a blazer I cut out in March, with just a few hand finishing details to do

Left: The shop front of Guthrie & Ghani. It’s a stylish black and white frontage with beam details and large square windows. Centre: A nearly completed pinky-purple single-breasted wool blazer on a mannequin. Right: My fellow sewers from the retreat. There were eight participants and two tutors, including the shop owner Lauren Guthrie

Challenges

• I’ve been frustrated at work about things that wouldn’t normally bother me. Wrestling with our travel booking system for an hour on Thursday wound me up, and that sour mood has continued into Friday. I think it’s the effect of the ‘holiday hangover’. I’m going to have a clean break this weekend, no work emails or Slack messages, and try to reset for next week

The GIF I needed this week… A series of shapes expand and contract slowly with the caption ‘breathe in, breathe out’

• Summer holidays have highlighted the need for us to think more carefully about knowledge management and handover. Some queries have crossed my desk this week that I know it would take someone else mere seconds to answer, but in their absence I have had to pick through lengthy email chains to find the information

The Week Ahead

• I’m at a family reunion this weekend, which has been delayed two years due to covid
• Early next week we’ll be continuing our design sprint
• In addition I’ll be thinking about how best to document our progress in the programme so far, both as a high level narrative/story to share with new starters, and at a detailed data/systems level to contextualise future work
• On Tuesday we have our regular UKGovcamp organisers catch up. This is the time of year we have to start making big decisions (e.g. virtual vs. in-person, venue) for the following January

A snapshot from UKGovcamp 2020. A number of participants are standing and reading a wall of colourful post-its, which comprise the schedule for the day. Photo by Nigel Bishop. There are lots more nostalgic govcamp photos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/groups/ukgovcamp/