Dan’s Weeknotes 2022–08–01
Hi there. Hope you’re doing ok.
Writing these late on a Monday evening. Don’t want to let the habit lapse. How much can I do in 20 minutes?
Feel like I’m slipping. Where or into what I don’t really know. Just not getting through as much as I’d like. Motivation lower than I’d like. When did I last have a break? Like, a real one. Some rest. Often I feel like there’s no real rest to be had, do you know what I mean?
So on the motivation I think it’s about the team doing really well and that’s satisfying, but I’m not happy about my own individual contribution. I think there’s something about wondering if what I’m doing is having enough of an impact. Maybe feeling a bit like some things are happening and I don’t know what they are — a perennial problem in a large organisation. Also I seem to be facilitating many workshops.
Not all workshops are equal of course. On Monday I ran one with 70 people from the Network of independent local Citizens Advice. I mentioned that I’d be doing this the time before last. It went well and I got some good feedback. My internet dropped out for 5 minutes three quarters of the way through which was sub-optimal. Kicked out of my own call. But anyway. Just creating the space for people to share issues that they’re experiencing related to delivering advice services is worth it. The realisation that situations are shared, and identifying opportunities to improve and support.
Now I have to write it all up. Not sure where to start if I’m honest. There is a great deal of material to sift through on 3 different Jamboards. I asked for help and somebody from the Network volunteered. That’s lovely.
There really was some good feedback, and thanks and praise. Makes you feel good.
Things to work on are really selling the “why?” and putting even more effort into explanation and preparation to get everybody on the same page. This is one of those communications things where you need to push it to the point where it feels a bit ridiculous. I thought I’d covered the “why?” and the explanation of the “how?” well, but I could have done more because it wasn’t unanimous. Really spelling out what you’re going to do in return for an hour of peoples’ time is the thing I need to keep in mind.
Elsewhere I had a good retrospective with the team. I wanted to focus on our regular routines which are all new since the start of the year. Seems like they’re working well for people.
And Josie (Senior Data Analyst) did a team show and tell looking at an internal assessment tool. The thing I liked about this was that although it’s a fairly complicated process you can really see how decisions can be informed by data, and presents an immediately visible audit trail.
Last, attendance at the ‘Start the week with data’ forum I started for the senior leadership team is slowly dwindling. That’s frustrating. The carrot of fascinating insight¹ is definitely there. I’m missing the stick of mandatory attendance. Or maybe it’s just entropy. Or maybe it’s the workplace equivalent of not having the “I want to get seen at the club” factor.²
Don’t get me wrong I am actually annoyed about this, and not because of my ego. I’ve had some great unsolicited feedback about the value of this forum from a variety of colleagues. We’re talking about stuff that everybody at this level should be aware of and understand. It’s shared context. It’s purpose. It’s the basis on which to act through understanding the situation and conditions that you’re in. That’s the point of the work.
If you build it they’re not just going to come. So I need a new approach. This forum is already a pivot based on changing circumstances, so time to iterate again. Why’s it only open to that senior leadership team? Egregiously quoting myself almost immediately this applies to everybody, right?
It’s shared context. It’s purpose. It’s the basis on which to act through understanding the situation and conditions that you’re in. That’s the point of the work.
Hey that’s nearly 30 minutes. Writing is run when you get into it, eh?
Footnotes
¹ The insight is fascinating of course but as I hope I’ve said before it’s not about trying to be interesting
² Hey that’s what I could do. I could have a gatekeeper to the video call who decides whether somebody is worthy of joining. Artificial scarcity!
Also
This new song by Vieux Farka Tourè and Khruangbin is rather good
