A year of work in progress – day 64 (Flow)

Day 64 – 7 April 2014 and day 6 of the A to Z Blogging Challenge.

We need to think more about flow. Work should flow through our organisations. Ideas and opportunities should fall like rain and gather in streams and rivulets before coming together in a mighty river, sucked to the sea by the gravitational pull of the customer.

In other words things should flow in an order. In a service industry we should be demand led. Customer and consumer demand should create the pull that causes the flow. Like dominoes, one should follow another.

We often focus on the big things yet flow isn’t always about these. Big things have a momentum of their own and they can take care of themselves. It is often the little things that get in the way and stop us from doing our jobs. They are like rocks in a stream and they need to be removed.

Think of that babbling brook. It makes a noise because it has to work. The water jumps over rocks, crashes into boulders and drags through grit and gravel. But ole Man River, he just keeps rolling along.

We’ve set ourselves a challenge to dredge the watercourses of our work and improve the flow.

Each of the Senior Project Leads is going to take it up with their team and identify ten to twenty things along the lines of ‘I find it difficult to do my job because.’ The rocks have to be definable and relate to process, procedure, technology etc. and not be related directly to personnel. (It would get very messy otherwise.)

Each Senior Leadership Team member will bring their teams ‘rocks’ together and identify commonality and agree a team list. The SLT will discuss the outcomes before bringing them back to the Senior Project Leads where actions will be agreed and allocated.

I’ve started to read ‘Success Intelligence’ by Robert Holden PhD which offers essential lessons and practices from the world’s leading coaching programme on authentic success. It talks about the difference between busyness and effectiveness. Steve leant me it.

This morning I completed a task started back on day 37 which was to take the Portfolio Holder around each of the main sites where we operate from. There are too many to do in one session. We had Digital Durham world headquarters near Spennymoor and County Hall to go in eight separate rooms. It’s good to visit the teams where they work and get a picture of how it all hangs together. It also gave me the chance to try out the new pool cars.

In the afternoon we held the core group and I gave an update on PSN, Digital Durham and the core systems. We have a list of projects to get on with for the year ahead and we just need to get them signed off at the next Strategic ICT Group.

Learning points for today: He must know something, but he don’t say nothing; you can get wooden hats (but wood you want to wear one?) and; no one is safe.

Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – not too many laughs about.