Dan’s Weeknotes s07e13

Weeks ending 2020–09–18 and 2020–09–25

Oh, hi

I don’t know man. Life seems like at lot at the moment, and at the same time not very much.

I’ve done ok with forming a few good habits recently, but writing my weeknotes on a Friday or Saturday isn’t one of them. So, this is two weeks in one post.

What was good?

• Team spirit seems really good at the moment. It’s been great to have an influx of new people. Plus there is lots of good work going on across the group, much of it new.
• It was good to catch up with Sam, as always.
• There was a series of workshops looking at lessons learned from my organisation’s Covid-19 response. It was nice to hear recognition for the data trends work we’ve been doing.
• I surveyed users of our operational dashboard again. It’s been a few months since I did it last. It’s interesting to see that the usage patterns for the product have clearly changed. Also I am a big fan of actionable insights, and the survey has several of them. This will help us develop the next iteration of our data products.
• So great to follow John Amaechi on Twitter. Why didn’t I do that before?
• This article was relevant to several of my interests:

Molecular Gastronomy and the Masculinization of Home Cooking — Lady Science

• I had a phone call¹ with Tracey for a piece of consultancy work she is doing. It gave me the opportunity to talk through what I’ve been working on at Citizens Advice, particularly in the past six months. Afterwards I remembered how good it is to talk to peers from outside your organisation. Talking through the work reminded me that things have been achieved. I think it’s easy not to get that same sense of achievement from within your organisation. External networks can bring that valuable “oh wow, that sounds great” perspective. A big reason to put a bit more effort into looking sideways than I have been. Thank you Tracey!
• Speaking of which, I’ve started conversations with some of the folks at the ONS about harmonising demographic data which is really promising. Great opportunity to learn and not reinvent the wheel.
• And related to that, I had a good meeting with Mandeep (head of equity, diversity and inclusion) about EDI data. There’s a real opportunity to help the organisation meet its goals, and help improve the quality of discussion and understanding. And it’s a marathon, not a sprint.
• Tom (chief analyst) and I presented on the analytical framework for forecasting demand we’ve developed (see episode 2) to the Operational Management Team meeting². I thought the quality of discussion was really good — it felt like just the right thing, stimulating thought and action through our data work.
• I had a constructive one to one with James (my boss) where he was receptive to and supportive of some work I had done and helped me by pointing out the next steps for it.

What could have been better?

• Why are Mondays hard?

Cyd Harrell is also finding Mondays hard

• I wasn’t well, with a virus³ caught from my kids. Totally predictable with them having gone back to school. But being a bit run down, combined with some rather tricky non-work life circumstances, made for a tough couple of weeks. Some of the team met up in real life and I had to give that a miss which was a shame.
• I had to drop out of the latest weekly data dashboard meeting at the last minute due to non-work life circumstances. This was doubly annoying because we were going to record the meeting and post it in a new Workplace by Facebook group we’ve created. The idea is that people who can’t make the meeting will still be able to catch up on the latest trends. Big thanks to Kat for the expert help with this. But yeah, it didn’t happen.
• I’m never satisfied with the amount, quality, and accessibility of documentation. I’ve felt particularly dissatisfied in the past couple of weeks. It’d be so great to have a technical writer. And a librarian.
• I mentioned habits at the beginning of this post, and beyond habits I realise I just don’t have a good enough routine. I’m going to have to work on this, particularly with it getting darker earlier. Even just getting out of the house before I start work would be an improvement.
• I am feeling for my colleagues living in shared housing who have been working at home for the past six months in sub-optimal conditions. The narrative I experience about working from home seems to assume privileged conditions like mine — like a spare room for example. And sure it’s been tough when the kids were around but that was comparatively temporary. Long term majority working from home isn’t going to suit many people, particularly in London.

What are you looking forward to next week?

• Interviewing on Monday. Fingers crossed.
• Retrospective with Cat (delivery manager) and Tom.

Thanks for reading. Hope you’re doing ok. Stay safe. Fight racism.

Footnotes

¹ Phone calls are so underrated.

² This is a group of directors from the operational part of Citizens Advice.

³ A virus, not the virus.