A year of work in progress – day 18

Day 18 – 28 January 2014

When I worked for Spicers, Europe’s largest distributor of office products, I would spend a lot of time in continental Europe and I remember that a French colleague of mine would always struggle with the English phrase ‘every other’.  I’m not sure it translated well.  I thought of him this morning as it was time once again for our ICT presentations which we hold every other month.

They are short presentations with a mixture of PowerPoint, stories and video (when appropriate) and all of the team are invited to come along.  Because of geography and the needs of the business however we end up delivering the same presentation six times.  We have done these now for over four years.

Today Neil and I did three, two at Tanfield and one at County Hall.  I had to get to Tanfield early to rearrange the furniture in the ‘rest’ room.  The idea is to improve communications and keep everyone abreast of some of the key issues affecting our service.  On the agenda today was one of our ICT Way Guide Rails ‘Take responsibility and see the job through’ along with the move to Meadowfield, and update on optimisation, PSN and the first Digital Durham cabinet launch.  There was also an update on the people stuff but no babies to announce this time (we’re going through a dry spell).

The video ‘Leadership lessons from dancing guy’ went down well.

Between the second and third presentation I met with a company who provide drama based learning.  Management development is a constant requirement and we’re always looking for new things to try.  We have put an awful lot of effort into this over the last few years but these things take time while our standards are becoming more demanding and budgets become tighter.  At times it seems as if we are standing still but one of my managers pointed out it was a bit like my beard – if I’m seen every day there is no change but if I haven’t been seen for a month it is a noticeable difference.

Learning points for today:  First presentations are hard but you have it cracked by the third; Everyone likes pictures; Pick myself up, dust myself down and start all over again and; Beard analogies work.

Today’s enjoyment rating  9/10