A weeknote, starting Monday 17 July 2023

Ending this series of weeknotes the way I started back in February with a bit of a double week catchup. Various work and personal events and some illness delayed things for me over the last couple of weeks.

I had thought that writing about two weeks should be pretty easy as I’d captured various things that had caught my eye as normal, and I’ve been to a big event so should have plenty to talk about, but it’s actually been a challenge so pull things into some coherent order. Feel like my brain could do with a bit of defragmentation.

• Really interesting to see how BT are training people in service blueprint mapping. In my experience service blueprints can have so many benefits, very much as Jeanette Clement describes in Improving communication and efficiency with service blueprint mapping.
• Also interesting to see this take from Coco Chan on how to have an impact with design when the conditions might not be the most conducive — Minimum Viable User-Centred Design
• Had a great discussion with our Lead Service Designer exploring potential measurement of our upcoming apprenticeship programme. Really great to be able to get into the detail of how something will work and figure out how we’ll know we’re on the right track.
• I’m pleased I created space to attend Civil Service Live in London. With 330 session, 1000 speakers and almost 7700 delegates it was a busy event. It was great to be there with some of my team, some of whom were experiencing it for the first time. I enjoyed catching up face to face with colleagues from other departments and getting that extra sense of connection that you don’t get remotely. I saw Defra talk about the use of virtual reality which looked very much like Your Home Made Perfect applied to flood defences. I learned about the thresholds at which COBR meetings are activated, what the agenda looks like and who plays the leading roles. I found out more about how parliament works including part of the journey that a bill takes as it is developed. I reinforced my existing reading and knowledge development around behavioural insights, and I’m looking forward to the application of that in some upcoming discovery work with my team in one of our services.
• So great to see the impact of colleagues called out in this case study — Saving £137,000 a Year While Increasing Performance Using Amazon Cognito with DVSA
• Are you solving the right problems? by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg talks about one of my favourite activities — framing problems. In my last few jobs this has been part of my role, whether explicit or implied. It’s an activity I enjoy and one that I look forward to at the start of any new piece of work as well as iteratively exploring as the work unfolds over time.
  In times where efficiency savings need to be surfaced and taking broader end to end service perspectives is helpful, making sure you’re focused on the right problem is a key capability that we need in our teams. I’ve written in the past about using external stimulus to help expand perspectives about a problem and the related solution space: Inspire different thinking by visiting a parallel world.

Over the last couple of weeks I’m really pleased that I’ve managed to make time for some creative activity. A short turn around was needed to make the woodpecker for my mother-in-laws birthday, and the wren and toucan were requests from friends — all enjoyable and part of the brain defragmentation process…turns out it’s full of birds in there.

Reflections on weeknoting

I restarted writing as a way to help me process the various things I’ve been reading in the context of my day to day work. I also wanted to try working in the open a bit more, I really value being able to read other people’s weeknotes and see into their world a bit and find out what is inspiring them. So sharing a mix of short reflections and links to the content that’s influenced my thinking has been my approach.

Has it helped me process things? Yes, and it’s also given me a something tangible to come back to in future when I want to check in with myself.

I’ve also had a really positive response from people who’ve taken time to read, so thanks to all of you who’ve given me a thumbs up (or equivalent), and to those of you who’ve engaged and contacted me directly or even been inspired to write your own weeknotes — it’s been a real honour to have prompted you to take action, please keep it up.

Now it’s time for a summer break. So this is the end of this series, but I’ll be back towards the end of summer with more reflections. I’ll have a bigger team and some new challenges, so plenty more things to explore!
Thanks for reading.

Full weeknote archive — All the notes in one list.

Exploring Service Design — Collections of books to inspire thinking and action in how services are designed and run (affiliate link)