A year of work in progress – day 15

Day 15 – 22 January 2014

There are two difficulties in writing a daily blog:  Finding the time and enthusiasm to keep it going and; Making sure you don’t repeat yourself.  There is a third, to keep it interesting but that may be a step too far.  Whilst there is always something new going on and lots of variety, local government, like most businesses operates on a series of cyclical events.

It’s Wednesday again and so it is a management day.  This time it’s a free-form discussion where we agree the topics on the day.  No reports, no agenda just meaningful discussion.  Each of the SMT managers brings something different to the team which is why it works so well and so when one of them is off, like today, the dynamics of the conversation change.

Three main topics were covered.  Accommodation is always an emotive subject.  We covered what we really needed to have, where we need to be, how people work and how we start to become a much more flexible and agile service.   We had lots of courageous conversations, everyone chipped in and we got there in the end. 

PSN was next (see day 8).  We still have a lot of work to do and will have for some time to come yet it is important that we balance the need to move the business forward with some of the remedial actions to be done.  There are a couple of communications opportunities coming up and we can use these to get the story across.

Although we talked about a lot of other things the last big issue was how we trade.  Our business is widespread and very varied and requires a different type of attention to our corporate work from time to time.  What was most pleasing was that the team were as one in agreeing that we need to keep developing our business.

After lunch it was my turn to be present at the Senior Project Leads meeting.  They are the group that report to the SMT.  They meet every week and one of the SMT attends to give and get feedback.  This week we tried videoconferencing so that not everyone had to travel.  The technology was a great success (it has really matured) with a three way conversation going on yet you lose some of the nuance that you get when people are in the room.  It was weird trying to talk to the people I was sitting next to and the people on the camera. 

I’ve got a day off tomorrow.

Learning points for today:   Dragon voice recognition software doesn’t cope well with fruity language; Videoconferencing has its place and we need to persevere; Screw Fix Direct is coming to Consett and; Every day is like Christmas for Lee.

Today’s enjoyment rating 9/10 – A couple of twisted emails took the gloss off.