A weeknote, starting Monday 1 May 2023
We had a thought provoking presentation from National Highways about their work on suicide prevention around the strategic road network. It led to some interesting discussion about where and how our teams might be able to play a role through our interactions with some of the people who sadly fall into the key demographics. I share two resources here from that conversation, one aimed at professional drivers in conjunction with Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and the other a 20 minute suicide awareness training from Zero Suicide Alliance (ZSA). I’ll also include here some thoughts from a very close friend on spotting the signs. Suicide is devastating, but also preventable.
This piece on collaborative leadership by Jane Maber has helped me reflect a little on my personal leadership style which is highly collaborative. The wrap up really resonated with me:
Collaborative leadership is an attitude-based capability. Rather than stemming from the ability to traditionally consult and influence others to gain buy-in, it’s based on a fundamental mindset (we’re stronger together than we are apart), way of being (trust, respect and humility) and aspiration that’s shared among the group.
It made me think about how I’m approaching the work of joining dots between different teams involved in insight gathering and helping us all have a greater impact. That mindset of being stronger together is a fundamental belief for me, and helps ride out those points where there isn’t consensus.
Thinking about that work to move to more insight and evidence driven decision making it was really interesting to read A Radical Proposal: Put UX Research In Charge by Jared M. Spool which I picked up via Indi Young on LinkedIn. I’m not sure we’ll get to that position, but working with people in various teams to create the environment and processes where research and data insights can inform product/service decisions is a really exciting place to be.
I found this article about innovation in HS2 insightful in terms of how the race to net zero is having an impact and driving innovation. Really interesting to see how that is manifesting in terms of things like the use of 3D printing and Artificial Intelligence.
Pleased to see Nik Coleman making good on last week’s public declaration to weeknote for the first time. Look forward to reading more reflections in coming weeks :-)
Have you implemented GOV.UK Notify in services outside of the UK? If so you may be interested in this opportunity to get involved in a community of practice with people from other countries who’ve also built services using it. It’s a key tool in some of the services my team works with every day and helps us get important messages out to people which help them and other stay safe on our roads.
A bit of quiet reflection
It took me a while this week to recover from my recent run in with covid, but eventually my energy levels returned and I found myself thankful to have only suffered mild symptoms although it slowed me down. A walk across a corner of our village green I rarely visit pressed that point home as that shady quiet corner is dedicated to those we lost through the pandemic.
