A year of work in progress – day 56

Day 56 – 26 March 2014

I’ve started to read ‘Fluent in 3 Months’ by Benny Lewis (Benny the Irish Polyglot) with the promise of tips and techniques to help you learn any language. I’m still persevering with my Dutch but progress has stalled even though I’ve been through the CDs twice now. What I really need is to meet with someone who can speak the language. Any takers?

It’s management Wednesday again but this time with the added bonus of the Extended Management Team with all the Heads of Service and Directors. We pulled the start of the Senior Management Team meeting forward by half an hour to try and fit it all in. SMT was from 9 – 12, EMT from 12 – 2 and Resources Management Team (RMT) from 2 – 5.

I’ve been talking about changing the name of the SMT from management to leadership for some time and today we gave it a go. As Henry Ford said ‘If you think you can or you think you can’t you’re probably right’ so we just need to get one with it. If we want to lead as opposed to manage then we should start by believing that we can.

I’ve changed the calendar entry, amended the agenda and wrote (or rather typed) Leadership on the top of the minutes (Pam is still away, eight days now and I’m having to keep a record of the meeting). It will be a while before SLT rolls of the tongue.

Bob started us off with a Virginia Mason like story. I won’t give the detail but it involved the NHS trying to save money and a DonJoy knee brace. The net result was a £500 loss.

Keeping minutes while trying to chair a meeting is very hard and, to be honest, not practical especially when we had finance, audit and two other guests so I need to have a think next time Pam is away. (Alternatively we could just not let her go away.)

I provided cake.

Over lunch we had EMT. The Council of the Year award was on display and apparently we have also won the National Car Park Prize for our park and ride scheme. It was referred to as the Oscar’s of the parking world. We nearly won some other awards as well but nothing could overshadow the big one – El Gordo!

There was a lot of talk about our financial position and organisational development strategy. The Rural Community Broadband fund got a mention as did the beard (several times).

It was interesting that the projector was playing up and the two presenters carried on regardless. Every couple of minutes a dialogue box would appear in the middle of the screen saying ‘Check the air flow’. Perhaps we could do away with the presentations altogether?

Finally Paul chaired RMT and all went well.

Learning points for today: Can you have a room for improvement in Council of the Year?; there is however, no room for complacency and; you can be tempted by the pen of another.

Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – 8 hours of back to back meeting is not to be recommended.