Week notes 27–31st March

After a week of grey and rain, it’s nice to be writing this with the sun beaming into our kitchen. We’ve just come back from exploring Sherborne Park Estate, a National Trust down the road which we’d never heard about (thanks to Devon for the recommendation).

This week has been another mixed bag, I started the week off feeling more positive and settled. I’ve started to think of the work I’m doing as being more long-term and therefore have felt less threatened by some of the more immediate work being done, acknowledging that the two aren’t mutually exclusive - they can happen in parallel but one doesn’t mean the other isn’t still useful and valuable. It’s easy to take the path of least resistance when implementing change, and some of the work I’m doing isn’t going to be done overnight, so in the meantime, I’m shedding a light on some of the things which maybe could be improved and we’re figuring out ways to make those things clearer in the short term.

I think in some ways, I’ve also got to get better at having fewer expectations about what the ‘outcome’ might look like. This tweet also spoke to me this week.

Other things that have been on my mind

1. Related to the above, on Monday we spent some time working on a RACI for project team roles and responsibilities — whilst at the same time acknowledging the shortfalls of RACIs. I cited this recent blog post from John Cutler which is well worth a read. With all that in mind, — it’s been a useful exercise to surface some conversations we need to be having about roles and responsibilities. I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes next.
2. In parallel, I’ve been documenting our approach to developing a Torchbox delivery playbook. Inspired by the GDS service manual — we’ve got a good format and plan for this and I’m excited to start getting the teams tasked to work on it. I’ve also started building some pages on our intranet which have also been useful in helping me familiarise myself a bit more with Wagtail
3. On Wednesday I had a call with one of my clients where they shared some valid feedback about things we could do to make her job easier on the project. Although easy to rectify and minor, I took the feedback to heart as it all tied back to delivery in some way. I shared with some other people about taking feedback personally and lots of other people said that this was something they also found difficult, having shared with a few close friends — I liked these responses

“I try to think that I wouldn’t claim all the credit for a project win so I shouldn’t claim all the credit for problems either”

There’s a horrible truth that I still struggle with and that’s everything always seems to come back to delivery. Even the tech stuff. We can’t be accountable for it all we have to share that load but it’s so difficult because it will always seem like delivery is at fault…

Also reminded me of the GDS mantra “the unit of delivery is the team” and this great quote from Tom Loosemore

4. I had a great session with my manager earlier in the week, unpacking some meaty challenges around the topics of flexibility, autonomy, and ownership. So many of the things we’re working on are interconnected but it made me feel really excited that nothing is off the table and although we may be some way off from being able to implement some of these changes the appetite and enthusiasm are definitely there.

5. To balance the feedback earlier in the week, I ended the week with some lovely feedback from my manager. It’s easy when you get more constructive feedback to think you’re doing a terrible job but when you look at the bigger picture and in this case the impact on my role on the whole system i.e. that it’s having a positive impact on what can be achieved elsewhere in the business — it helps to look outside of yourself and realize there’s so much more at play.

When I shared a summary of my week with another friend, holding both the criticism and the praise in balance, he replied

Let’s give that the 90% of the room, and 10% to the disheartening part if we have to decide the balance of the week.

I’m looking forward to a couple of 4-day weeks and an upcoming trip with a friend to Bologna. Before that though, plenty to be getting on with two pitches and one internal agile training session, and more besides I’m sure.