Weeknotes s01e26
The slump
I had a rubbish work week, including a day off sick — something that hasn’t happened in a while.
I achieved very little, and didn’t make much progress on the things I should be prioritising right now (corporate management information dashboards, and writing the data strategy).
I did get a bit of thinking time, and I worked through something that has been troubling me with the help of a sharpie, some A3 paper, Microsoft Paint, Twitter, and writing a blog post. So, not all bad.
Week in brief
Monday started with me meeting with Julie to talk about her work on capability. Hopefully I was a helpful sounding board.
We had a meeting with Emma (my Director), Jamie (fellow Head of X), Carrie (fellow Head of X) and Colin (product manager). Colin was talking us through the outputs from the discovery work on a ‘guide to procedure’. In overly basic terms, the prospect here is a new digital product about the rules of Parliament.
Colin was great, and the team’s work was really solid. I especially liked the audio clips from the research interviews, as they get the message across in a powerful and immediate way. Things were momentarily depressing when it got into the realm of ‘black box politics’, but then it turned around. Thrashing through the potential next steps with this particular group of people was rather exciting — there’s a diverse mix of skills and personalities that works well, and I felt like we could solve anything together.
I had a one to one with Emma. We spoke about Emma going to the Joint Investment Board in the middle of the week to talk about progress on the new website for Parliament. The Joint Investment Board is a big boss [1] meeting. My opinion is that there is an increasingly good story to tell here, but there is a definitely a theme of things taking a long time to achieve due to external factors and processes outside of the team’s control. And I say this despite things like procurement being far better than they have been in the past.
I went to see Peter (Head of Finance) about claiming expenses from my trip to North America the other week (see episode 24–1 and 24–2). We had a really good chat. I don’t get to talk to Peter that often.
I met with Robert. Always worthwhile. We spoke about progress on his objectives for the year, and his leadership of our work on search.
I did some customer support, including from the data@parliament.uk inbox.
Tuesday started with the team rally where I told everybody what was happening and that kind of thing. I handed out the rest of the White House chocolates to the team.
I cancelled our show and tell due to illness and absence.
I had a one to one with Mat.
I did some project reporting admin.
The main event for Tuesday was Laurence (designer) presenting the vision for search to a range of people from the team.
Laurence has done really great work here, and he wrote a good blog post about it last week too. This design work has put real meat on the bones of what Robert has been talking about for the past 18 months. In addition to that meat, Laurence presented some really compelling, really exciting possibilities for how users of our services might experience search in the not to distant future.
I felt absolutely rubbish all day. I went home and got into bed at 8pm.
I woke up at 7.30am on Wednesday, and I spent the rest of the day in bed.
On Thursday I felt very strange because I’d had so much sleep. I wasn’t sure whether to go into work or not, but decided to make the trip because I did feel much better.
I met with Julie. We discussed the fact that we are both Xennials, which goes a long way to explaining why we are so great [2].
We had the corporate management information dashboards team meeting. There’s progress being made, but as I said last week (episode 25) I’m not happy with the overall situation and I need to do something about it. I am just not sure what yet. I’m waiting for that lightning bolt of inspiration.
Corporate management information dashboards, eh?
It was Rebecca’s last day before going on maternity leave. So exciting! Rebecca has been fantastic in the 18 months since she joined as a graduate from Makers Academy, including getting a thoroughly deserved promotion and really taking a lead on establishing a new, more inclusive developer culture. It’s also been a tough period of significant organisational change, the toughest I’ve ever known [3], and that didn’t phase Rebecca at all. There will be a big gap in the team.
I caught up on correspondence.
I couldn’t really get going on Thursday and I think I should have stayed at home.
On Friday Ben’s blog post about data modelling was published. I recommend it. It’s really good to have Ben in the team, but his 3 month secondment is going to be over in a flash — I feel like we’re only just getting started.
I had a long chat with Ed about the Select Committees alpha work. There was some soul-searching. The wider team, by which I mean the whole directorate, has grown rapidly in the past 18 months and we are trying to work in new ways with a large number of mostly new people. There are teething problems to work through.
This gives me pause for thought. I’m really happy with how my data and search team is shaping up, but I need to think about my wider responsibility as a Head of X.
Full disclosure: I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about people not listening to me, but actually it’s my perennial failing that I assume people can read my thoughts.
I get frustrated when I hear third-hand [4] tales of discontent, or when teams get in a worry loop about things that really don’t matter, or when I hear the same tired misconceptions floating around like miasmic fart facts.
And, to be brutally self-aware, when people are ‘getting it wrong’ I am reluctant to put the effort in to rectify the situation because it is hard to argue the toss with new people. I don’t like arguing in general, and my mental energy reserves are limited.
I need to change though. In addition to corporate management information dashboards and writing the data strategy, I think I need to be more ‘present’ with other teams. I realised Emma has been suggesting this for some months too (she is wise), so I need to act on it.
I drew a picture.
I had an appointment in the afternoon that took me out of the office for a couple of hours. The journey there and back gave me time to do some writing in my head and in my small orange Rhodia notebook [5].
I’m a deliberate person, so if I write a blog post about icebergs and tapas it’s not because I am seeking attention or have lost control of my faculties. This was my first step to addressing the teething problems in the wider team [6].
As an aside, I have to write 12 blog posts excluding #weeknotes by the end of March 2018 (see my annual objectives in episode 18), and I also have to demonstrate that they have influenced people (or something), so it was good to write this post because I’m keeping up with the necessary pace.
It was interesting to me that the picture I drew of ‘the iceberg of delivery’ was relatively popular on the Twitter, particularly when my intention was to discredit the situation it describes. When I was comfortable enough to start blogging about work (fairly recently — just the last couple of years) my posts tended to describe a problem fairly well, but failed to suggest how it might be fixed. I’m still a bit weak on my constructive conclusions I think, but I’m really trying not to just whinge about how bad everything is in public.
I hope next week at work is better.
#CultureDan
Other #weeknotes-ers include updates outside of ‘the day job’ and I like the practise, so in this new regular section I’ll do the same. I’ll try to keep it short though, because my posts are rather long already.
Listening: The new Oxbow album ‘Thin Black Duke’ is pretty good. I bought a Neil Diamond album from a charity shop and had ‘Forever In Blue Jeans’ as an earworm for a few days. After getting the ‘OKNOTOK’ reissue I went on a Radiohead tear, particularly ‘Kid A’ and ‘In Rainbows’. I think ‘In Rainbows’ is their best album. Finally, I’m getting lots of mileage out of this Kompakt mix if I’m trying to concentrate in the office, this week included.
Reading: ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ by Thomas Pynchon. It’s over 900 pages long so it’s going to take me a while yet. So far I’m not enjoying it as much as I thought I would.
Watching: I saw ‘Logan’. I thought it was fine. Easily the best of the Wolverine solo movies, but that’s not hard — the bar is low. Stephen Merchant was great in it. I watched ‘Blade Runner’ for the first time in years. It was brilliant. I enjoyed ‘Joy’ as well — featuring great performances, Jennifer Lawrence in particular.
Also: I really enjoyed Dame Hilary Mantel’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4. The last one was this week.
#MeetingWatch
I am the Head of Data and Search, so it is essential that I really like spreadsheets. This week I was looking at my spreadsheet of meetings data. I am contracted to work 36 hours a week, and from a quick calculation I noticed that I’ve worked an additional 36 hour week so far in 2017.
This is nothing compared to many colleagues, let alone many people in the wider world of work. I’m not going to get that phantom work week back though. What did I achieve in that time? This week, feeling generally dissatisfied with everything, it feels like I achieved nothing.
I realise that collecting data about meetings isn’t as engaging as collecting data about cake, but when I finally sit down to sift through this meetings data I have a hunch that the conclusions will be more valuable than those I drew after two years of making cake for the team every week.
My main regret in the project so far is not putting enough effort into it at the beginning. I feel that I’ve already changed my personal meetings culture for the better just by thinking about it every day and collecting the data, but I can’t prove it.
In other news, I got stuck in a revolving door once this week. Magic is real!
[1] ‘Big boss’ is my term for people who are important, senior decision-makers in the organisation. I use it to avoid the problematic words ‘important’ and ‘senior’
[2] I take the definition of this ‘micro-generation with the cynicism of Generation X and the optimism of millenials’ with a pinch of salt, but I stand by my assertion that Julie and I are so great
[3] I have worked at the UK Parliament for a very long time
[4] The chip on my other shoulder is that nobody ever comes to talk to me about their problems
[5] Please, #weeknotes magic, I would like an endorsement deal from Rhodia notebooks
[6] “Yeah, yeah. Whatever, tapas guy”
