Three Month Notes
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I know I have been AWOL from week-notes since Feb, but a lot of stuff has been going on that I didn’t feel I could share on here or that I didn’t feel was that interesting to everyone. So instead of just covering the last week, I will give you a quick synopsis of the last 3 months. Then I will try and carry on as usual with week notes from this point on (well perhaps not every week).
I am happy to report lots has changed since February, which is great and pretty quick, which I think is still unusual for the public sector, but please correct me if I am wrong, I have only worked in two public sector organisations.
I don’t know about you but the sunshine is making me very happy, I have never known us to have two sunny bank holidays in May. I also can’t remember having this much good weather to cycle in at weekends. I have also attacked my garden with hedge cutters, a chain saw and got a skip to fill up with rubbish which makes me very very happy.
What has been great….
We have moved to a new building on Whitehall. It is cleaner, closer to the action and generally a much nicer space to work, with breakout areas, a business lounge and plenty of meeting rooms. It also makes you do more exercise as you have to move around the building a lot more to find people. I was part of the team that made the move happen. Doing this work really hit home to me how fantastic it is to work as part of a delivery team, I hadn’t realised how much I had missed working in an actual team every day.
I did a presentation about my capability story at the Digital Government 2018 event. This was daunting and also very exciting.
It was lovely to see some familiar faces at the event and to catch up with colleagues that have moved on from PDS to different Government departments. I hope to be able to build on this now and be brave enough to do some more events as well as encourage others at work to present about things they are working on. The organisers also gave me a new job title, which I think suits me down to the ground.
I organised a workshop with external facilitators for our Senior Management Team. We focused on agreeing our PDS Challenges for the next 18 months. If you are able to, I totally recommend getting people away from the office for this type of event. We were shacked up in a cool attic in Farringdon, with the sun beating down and plenty of tea/coffee/water and biscuits/fruit available to aid creativity. It was exhausting but also very productive. Next workshop will be about “how” we achieve these challenges. These workshops are also giving me the chance to reiterate how important my capability work is in helping PDS to achieve these challenges. Although in the last few months the importance of Capability has already been noted….YAY!
Linked to this I have driven forward work on all the transformation activities happening across PDS. I have got all 12 activity Leads together in the same room, on the same page and thinking about creating a transformation backlog which we then prioritised together, out of 60 epics, we have 6 must haves. This is a huge step forward in thinking about how we manage it, resource it and raise the profile of it and how we start to make a difference internally in PDS.
Another week notes meet up has been scheduled for 7th June. Well done Dan. The group has grown too….I expect double the amount of people for this one.
After listening to feedback from staff in PDS, I have been working with Kerrie Steer in HR to create a new mentoring framework, where people can choose an internal or external mentor to help them with personal or professional career goals. Over a couple of weeks, I sporadically talked to people external to our organisation that have offered to mentor out staff in their free time, so interesting to hear about peoples career journeys and what they feel they can offer our staff. Big thanks to Rosie Hatton who put me in touch with most of these people. Kerrie has also arranged some mentor training, for internal staff that would like to become a mentor.
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I have run workshops to drive thinking around different areas of capability building with teams across PDS. I did one with the Heads of Profession in the Portfolio directorate and HR on developing roles and how to make the learning process and progression process more consistent across all developing roles. I also ran a workshop to focus a directorate on planning out Learning & Development needs for their teams. This has been really useful for our HR team and to focus minds on what skills we need in our teams to be able to deliver what we need to.
I have a workshop on talent management planned. I want to work with leaders in Digital Development to ensure we all agree on what we mean by it, it’s importance, get some ideas on what our immediate and longer term challenges are and how we might tackle those things. Anyone got any thoughts on how to make this a great workshop? How long should it be? I think doing something over a couple of sessions would be good.
I went to a Digital Data & Technology show and tell, it was great to meet so many people across Government working on capability.
What was a bit challenging….
The move to the new building also had some challenges. I did jobs that are not part of my usual skill set. Measuring spaces, desks, walls…..looking at desk layouts, desk ratios ….. working out where printers should go, if floor boxes should move, trying to find compromises between spaces and teams and it was hard! Doing something that doesn’t come naturally can be exhausting.
I applied for a job at PDS (a promotion) and didn’t get it. This is the third time I have tried to progress to the next pay band and failed to do so. It hit hard this time, but after beating myself up…a lot, I have come out the other side a lot stronger.
I echo what Sam says in her week-notes this week. Lots of people are leaving and it is unsettling. I know it is completely normal, that people that joined 18 months ago are now moving on and we should encourage people to develop in their careers but it also feels like we are stuck on a recruitment rollercoaster that never stops and that change is ever apparent.
Understanding the whole GDPR thing and my role as a contract manager. I will just leave that there.
In non — working life
Health has been up and down, I have been off the rails a bit regarding sugar and I totally think this has been a contributing factor to my health woes….when I feel a bit bad/confused/worried about the world, I turn to food, and in the last couple of months it has been back to sugar, mainly in the guise of chocolate and wine. I haven’t had many Chai lattes though, so that is one blessing and it definitely saves you money when you don’t frequent these popular coffee establishments! I hope to get back on the no refined sugar diet soon….when things have settled down (ooh so cryptic!).
I haven’t had a proper break/holiday since Christmas. I am really starting to feel it. If you know me well, you will know that this is not normal for me, I always have holidays planned in. This year has been tough, so no going away holiday planned until August 2018 at the mo….hopefully this will change.
In cycling news I have been doing really well. I have achieved what I set out to achieve in terms of getting better going up hills. The reason I know this, is because I am getting personal records and sometimes top ten cups on Strava on uphill segments. This is epic for me. Thanks Louise for the continued support and kudos.
I still haven’t managed to do a ride on my own at 18mph yet, I have done 17.5mph, so nearly there, my excuse is that it is far too windy in Bedfordshire and I go backwards most of the time. I have managed to do 20mph average whilst out on a ride with my husband towing me along at the front, I nearly died but I did it. Amazing what you can do, when you really push yourself or channel your negative thoughts. He was hardly even breathing though…. But I must not compare, I must not compare. I feel another cycling related blog post coming along.
I have read two terrible books since I last wrote some week-notes…..The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel and The Betrayals by Fiona Neill, I am also reading Good me, bad me by Ali Land which is slightly better but not actually that good. Mostly I have been reading travel magazines courtesy of The Sunday Times and Lonely Planet. Not sure why I torture myself so!
I have been watching Deep State, Ray Donovan Series 5, Vikings Series 3/4 and also a National Geographic series called One Planet. I have also started working my way through the Marvel movies with my stepson (well the free ones on Netflix) which I just love. I love that he loves watching movies! He turned 13 on the 24th May….arrrggghh, which leads me onto that fact that I have started to really worry about my age recently, which is really unlike me. I think it was when one of my work colleagues told me he was turning 23 and I realised that I am old enough to be his mother and I had a slight meltdown.
