It’s been a week of trying new things, and seeing what works, and using data to test what we think we know. Another busy week, but one where I managed to mostly get my diary right*.

So 6 (great) things that happened:

1. I worked with Joe, the data scientist in our team to a) write up the main results of our ICT survey and b) define the first few questions we’re going to ask of the data we’ve got — so that Joe can do some amazingly clever things to visualize the answers. I’m so grateful to be working with someone who’s really expert in what they do — and I’m learning loads from him. The data team generally are doing awesome things — check out this blog post from Sandrine:

https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/

2. We ran the second service assessment — this time on a service we’re building to manage repairs. It went well — the team were confident and engaged, the assessors asked pertinent questions, and provided good feedback. The team (Unboxed and Hackney working together) have done regular, informative and open show and tells which has really helped. I think the team felt that it was a positive experience (at least that’s what they said when I asked . . .) Last week we ran a service assessment on our managing rent arrears service— you can see the report here. Next week we’re going to run a reflection session to see what we’ve learnt so far, and generate ideas about how we might improve how we’re doing them. We have 3 more service assessments in the pipeline, and I’m keen that we iterate and reflect as we go.

3. I met up with Richard McLean which was awesome. A brilliant chat about all sorts of things governance and culture related which has inspired me to think more about how we’ll know if our approach to governance is working. Sadly I didn’t get to see Dan Barrett and Sam Villis at their meet up, poor co-ordination on my part 😦 .

4. I spent some time on Friday working on the intro course on Agile, Lean start up and user centred design that Matthew Cain and I are collaborating on. We have our first 8 participants signed up, and we’re running it for 3 hours on 3 consecutive days, testing our assumption that busy people can commit to that stretch of time each day. Whilst doing some research for it I found Taiichi Ohno’s ten precepts, which really appealed to me:

You are a cost. First reduce waste.

First say, “I can do it.” And try before everything.

The workplace is a teacher. You can find answers only in the workplace.

Do anything immediately. Starting something right now is the only way to win.

Once you start something, persevere with it. Do not give up until you finish it.

Explain difficult things in an easy-to-understand manner. Repeat things that are easy to understand.

Waste is hidden. Do not hide it. Make problems visible.

Valueless motions are equal to shortening one’s life.

Re-improve what was improved for further improvement.

Wisdom is given equally to everybody. The point is whether one can exercise it.

5. Hidayat, Emma and Sam organised and ran a marketplace stall alongside ICT colleagues as part of the Chief Exec’s roadshows — we’d sort of thrown them into the deep end as they’ve only just started with us, and they did a brilliant job. We also used the opportunity to support Good Things Foundation #getonlineweek and to talk to colleagues about their use of Google (we’ve rolled this out across Hackney Council over the summer).

6. We had several great show and tells this week – including one from our IT security colleagues all about the work they’re doing to keep our systems and our data secure and safe and one from Ayup and London Borough of Kingston about their work on social prescribing.

What I read this week:

Two blog posts from Matt Edgar — both of them about asking the right questions, and empowering teams to ask them too.

“the moment we start prescribing policies and freezing repeatable business processes, we limit the capacity of those involved to add the human value that comes from being, well, people-centred in the first place”

https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/
https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/

This from Coco Chan about #silentcamp was excellent:

https://blogs.hackney.gov.uk/hackit/

And also this from Giles Turnbull — great advice:

*right = balanced, paced and time to think between meetings. And time for exercise built in which is really important to me, to enable sustainable effort.

https://media.giphy.com/media/3dpxgEyysyRVkGmV5B/giphy.gif

Quite a week — where lots of things happened*, and some things didn’t because I had to let them go . . .

5 (great) things that happened

1. Mike Bracken came to talk to us — brilliant talk, really engaging and inspiring. There were some great questions from the team — and encouragement from Mike for the work we’re doing. Our design team have done a fantastic job of inviting external speakers, running pop ups and talks this week, including an accessibility pop up where staff can experience what it’s like to access online services with a variety of access issues. I particularly liked the creative taping of buttons to Hidayat’s fingers to mimic mobility problems. (Hidayat started with us this week as one of our two delivery apprentices — it was great to welcome him to the team.)

2. I went to #mapcamp2018 along with my colleague Kameel. We split the day between us — I was there in the afternoon which meant I got to hear great talks by the awesome Janet Hughes, Dr Sal Freudenberg and Danielle Haugedal-Wilson. It was inspiring stuff — and as a result Kameel and I are planning to try some Wardley mapping together.

3. I’ve been working with a small team over the last few weeks looking at our use of mobile data, and how we might use agile methodology and user insight to inform our future contract management and procurement. It’s been brilliant working with them all — this week they did a presentation to the rest of their colleagues about what we’ve done, how we did it, and what we’ve learnt. I know they were all nervous — and they did a fab job. Loads of great questions from colleagues — and a chance to share our work with each other.

4. I had a great call with Katie and Joash from Amazon Web Services (AWS) about the support they’re offering for our apprentices — there are loads of great ideas which we’ve focussed down into three main areas: support in building a digital career, job shadowing with AWS, and mentoring/skills workshops for women (building on work they’re already doing around diversifying talent in tech).

5. We had our regular leadership team meeting which was an opportunity for me to explain my thinking about how we might approach contract management and strategic procurement. I’m planning to use a discovery focus with a small agile team for a key contract each month so that we better understand the user needs, our current data and processes, and the commercial landscape before we think about procurement. I think this is the right approach — but we’ll only know when we’ve tried it a couple of times.

1 (great) thing that happened that I missed

Dan Barrett and lots of other brilliant weeknoters met up in Bristol. I’d had it in my diary for ages but a combination of work things plus domestic ones* meant that, in rare moment of diary sensibleness, I had to let go of it. I really missed being there though.

https://media.giphy.com/media/7L9FYvnh467YI/giphy.gif

What I read this week

This thoughtful blog post from Cassie Robinson. who’s moving on to the Big Lottery Fund from Doteveryone. She’s awesome – one of the first people I met in my previous role, super supportive and insightful.

View at Medium.com

Following my post about Governance so good, people prefer to use it several people tweeted/messaged me about further blog posts and articles that I hadn’t seen yet (thank you!): including this one from Kent Aitken from Canada’s Public Policy forum

View at Medium.com

What I learnt this week

I learnt quite a bit about Wardley mapping — and am inspired enough that I’ve signed up for the online course from Leading Edge forum.

I’ve also started a night class at City Lit in Dutch** — this week was about numbers and I thought I’d share this wonderful video which was part of the course material. Clever and engaging . . .

*not all of it work, and included flooding and emergency building work

** when One Team Gov Netherlands is ready to go, I’m there ready to help them.