A year of work in progress – day 24

Day 24 – 5 February 2014

On the way to Newcastle yesterday I was listening to a play on Radio 4.  They have some very good stuff on and it always amazes me how the radio manages to paint pictures with words. 

The play was called Test Case and was about a man who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and who had gangrene in his foot.  His doctor advised him that he should have it amputated otherwise there would be a strong chance that he would die but he was adamant that God had brought him into the world with two feet and that is how he was going to go out.  The question was who had the right to decide on what is best for the patient.

The point of my telling this story is that a doctor was sent to see Albert, the patient, to assess his ability to be able to decide.  He asked him questions to test his cognizance of the situation.  What the doctor was interested in was not the decision he had come to but the thinking process that he went through to arrive at it.

I was still thinking about the email from the customer we had let down and realised that it was exactly this which had upset me.  It was not the decision we had arrived at it was the thinking process that was flawed.

This morning was the first opportunity I had to vent my spleen as it was the Project Leads meeting (again) and I used this story to express how disappointed I still was.  All businesses let customers down from time to time but we need to ask is this because we messed up or because we didn’t think things through.

Yes customers do strange things, they don’t always understand and they want you to deliver to their timescales but they are the lifeblood of any organisation.  Try running without them.  After all we are all customers of other businesses and all I am asking is that we treat others as we would wish to be treated ourselves.

The next stop was something new.  It was the first time that we had tried taking the whole of the Senior Management Team to meet with their equivalents in another service.  Culture and sport was the chosen team.  The plan was to give an opportunity for each of us to get a better understanding of how we can help the other.  It turned out to be really enjoyable and interesting.  The hour we had set aside passed in a flash and we agreed to meet again.  We talked about technology but realised that what we needed to start with was an understanding of what was important in their business model.  We’re planning a visioning session next to talk about values, outcomes, flow… and then systems.

Well worth doing and it’s a model we should try elsewhere.

By the time I post this I will be hopefully driving back from a Digital Durham presentation to the Teesdale Action Partnership Broadband group.  We are about to start the roll out of superfast broadband proper and need some help in improving take up.  I’ll be visiting most of the Area Action Partnerships over the coming weeks to tell them when and where to expect the improvements.  I must confess that I was a little apprehensive about tonight’s meeting which may adversely affect tomorrow’s enjoyment rating.  Let’s hope not.

Learning points for today:  Indoor sports are different from outdoor sports and; Smartphones are hard for some people (understandably) and we shouldn’t just assume that they know what to do.

Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – Only having to start this morning the way I did has taken the gloss off.