Day 33 – 18 February 2014
I thought I’d get the train in this morning but when the announcement came over the Tannoy that it was at least thirty seven minutes late arriving at Morpeth I decided to give up and drive in. Thankfully I had my old friend Mr Laptop with me and so my use of the waiting room was not entirely wasted. I try to use public transport whenever I can but when these things happen it’s difficult to argue against the car. Needless to say this got me off to a great start.
My first meeting didn’t help much either. It was a Q3 performance meeting and while overall performance has not been bad it has not been as great as it has been. I don’t know whether it is us or whether the others are catching up! (I should insert a smiley here). We have a lot of plates to spin and inevitably some will end up on the floor. Actually it wasn’t too bad a review.
Next up was the regular Customer Focus board which had an interesting insight into the new Council website as well as an analysis of the public facing telephone numbers across the authority. It is incredible the level of detail that is coming out of the Mitel system we put in last year. Having moved from fourteen different systems to one means that meaningful data can be gathered and we are starting to see our organisation in a new way. Big data anyone?
After lunch I met with Kim, Head of HR, to talk about the LA7. I mentioned the combined authority when I went down to O2 last week. There are plans to plans to create a supra-authority with the seven councils in the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) coming together to address transport, skills and inward investment. These have ICT written all over them. Kim has been asked to pull together any people issues but my interest is twofold. Firstly the low level issues of who looks after the new authority with their kit etc. and a much higher level issue of the role that ICT will play in the future of the region. ICT skills will underpin inward investment and job creation and, in my opinion is essential in putting the North East on the map of global competitiveness.
Last thing we had a round the houses conversation about Out of Hours (number 5 in my ten things I’m going to do in 2014) at the Core Group. We don’t have anyone on call but every so often things go wrong and we are expected to fix them. Finally we agreed which of the things we do are critical and all I need to do now is to find the money.
Learning points for today: The shirtless dancing guy is right and the first follower is so important and; Yesterday may turn out to have been a momentous occasion;
Today’s enjoyment rating 7/10 – The train got me off to a bad start.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 