I enjoyed the constraint of last week’s ‘5 things’ format so I’m doing it again. It helped me to not mull too long over all the details of the week, and hone in on the highlights.
I usually write my notes on a Friday night, but last night I fell asleep and woke up over 12 hours later. I knew I was tired but not that much… Hence it’s now Saturday morning and I’m writing from a coffee shop near my opticians, where I’m waiting for an optical dispenser to become available to talk about some new frames. Is there anything better than new glasses? I don’t think so. They’re my favourite accessory.
5 things that happened
- Our user researcher and business analyst ran me through the work they’ve been doing on problems across our service. They’ve done a fabulous job of categorising everything and linking it back to primary research, so as and when we come to tackle each there’s no guesswork. Since their research was so thorough it sparked conversation and further questions to explore and we only got through half the list, so we’re going to resume next week, and hopefully get into relative priority/urgency of problems to add to the roadmap.
- I spent a day in Birmingham meeting one of our new starters. We had a lovely conversation over coffee, and learned that we have a common interest in theatre. I also managed to grab informal chats with an interaction designer and a content designer who work in other teams across MHCLG who happened to be in the office that day.
- We said our goodbyes to two members of the team – one who’s moving to a new role in MHCLG, and another who is moving to their next rotation of the fast stream in another department. We’re dispersed across the UK so an in-person leaving ‘do wasn’t possible. Instead I hosted some virtual leaving drinks which were extremely fun, with delightful conversational tangents such as the UK’s favourite ice cream and beaver bombing.
- We had a reassuring call with cyber colleagues, in which it felt like they were genuinely trying to help us rather than block our progress. I’m keen to continue this productive working relationship and I wish more governance processes were like this.
- Attended my first opportunity assessment (we use a slightly adapted version of this assessment canvas whenever we’re considering a substantial bit of development work). As I understand it, the team has found this a useful framework to ensure we’ve thought through the problems, considered the merits and risks of different solutions, thought through how we communicate with users etc – all the things we need to do to thoughtfully and successfully make a change to a live service. It was a lively discussion, and I’ve asked to see some more scenario modelling (including what will happen in scenarios we haven’t specifically designed for to check we don’t inadvertently break something) which we’ll pick up next week.
5 things I’ve been thinking about this week
- Taking advantage of some space in my calendar to think. Sometimes this looks like sitting at my desk and digesting emails or papers from policy colleagues; sometimes it looks like standing in my kitchen and thinking aloud while pacing with a cup of coffee; sometimes its sketching some in a completely new environment that gets my creative juices flowing. My diary is likely to get busier in September as colleagues return from holiday and want a piece of my time, and I need to protect this space.
- Asking just enough questions. Something I really appreciated about my previous Director is that they didn’t ask many questions but the ones they asked were well-considered and helped us think about our work in a new way. This left me with a sense that a) we were being listened to, b) they trusted us with the detail and c) they weren’t interested in micromanaging or dictating what we should do. It was great, and I’m trying to emulate this practice.
- My energy levels have been all over the place this week. We’re in 4x weekly band practice ahead of the British Open, and I’ve had a couple of disrupted nights sleep for no reason. I definitely needed the weekend (see previous note on 12 hour sleep) and the opportunity to reset.
- Who do I still need to meet? Most of my relationship building has been organic over the first few weeks – other people have reached out and asked for my time, and I’ve said yes to most of those requests, so I can get to know colleagues working in this space. But there are important people I haven’t met yet, and I suspect I’ll need to be more active in making those first meetings happen else time will drift away without me noticing.
- Connecting with primary research. I love user research, and regularly tell people how much you learn from a short session, how much more powerful the messages are when heard in people’s own words rather than through an interpretation lens, how someone’s experience is so much more than their interaction with our service etc. I couldn’t attend our research ‘live’ this week as I had calendar clashes, but I managed to catch the recording.
