A weeknote, starting Monday 18 January 2021
Planets starting to align
This week many of the conversations I’ve had have connected some dots either for myself or others in a way that I think leads us to some interesting places.
It was good to connect with my cross-government peer group for our monthly Heads of Design meetup. As always there are common challenges and the group is great for sharing approaches and helping each other move forward. Some good discussion about professional development in our teams, and right at the end of Friday I got word that a Level 6 Service Design apprenticeship is moving further towards reality. A good way to end the week.
I talked in a previous note about sharing work in progress and I did more this week with colleagues from our project and change teams. I’ve highlighted a gap in our knowledge and I’m exploring ways to visualise it in a way that helps us make effective decisions. As ever, good to get input from others and stretch my thinking further.
We held a dry run of our live assessment which is happening next week. We invited colleagues from outside of the team, and also from other government agencies to join us as critical friends. Their feedback was immensely useful and helped us refine our messages and content. It’s the first full assessment for any of the team so although we’re feeling well prepped I’ve also got enough nervous tension to keep me on my toes. I’m looking forward to helping the team tell a positive story about our service and will be very interested in the feedback we get after the assessment.
I met with our new CEO this week along with our whole senior leadership group and then more informally in a coffee morning event with other colleagues from across our organisation. It’s fair to say I’m really excited about her level of interest in service design and user research and can’t wait to see where that interest leads.
Emotional state: Nervous excitement tempered by homeschooling…
