A week of networking and starting the prioritisation of the work.
What did you experiment with?
I took the long list of projects that we could work on and made my recommendations on way forward based on our newly formed mission statement.
Writing the mission statement was interesting. We did it by slack in the end, I was asking questions, and both of us were coming up with options. We got to something I think is quite good in the end. We’re waiting for feedback, but I’m hopefully I’ll give us some guidance to focus on some work over others and be able to use it to frame our success.
What was hard?
I’m in a team that’s not yet set up as a multi-disciplinary team. So I find it hard when people don’t understand what my role is or how we need to have more designers and user researchers to deliver good things. This is the uncomfortable feeling of changing culture and experimenting with how things can be done differently. But I believe it’s worth trying things in new ways so while these conversations are hard, it’s good that we’re having them, and I’m learning loads and having my thinking challenged too.
I was meeting a senior leader, and I’d naively assumed I’d just go along and chat about stuff, but by talking it through with my director beforehand we made much more success of it by writing a report and sending that around beforehand and then focusing on decisions. We wrote the report together with minutes to spare, it was a real learning curve of working with senior folk.
What did you enjoy?
I went to two events this week that were really good for getting to know more about the evidence and data world that I’ve entered.
I’ve also got a good enough handle on the projects and where they might go next, it was cool that
What did you learn?
Learned loads about data science and how it can be used in central government. I had a blast networking with people, it reminded me that I do like meeting new people and making connections between bits of work.
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation?
I went to three events this week, firstly seeing the fascinating work that bellingcat do. It’s such important work to hold people to account, uncover the truth
I learned about open Geoinnovation at their January meet up. It was fascinating to hear how different people.
What are you looking forward to next week?
I’m really hoping that next week I’ll make progress on delivering some of the projects we’re working on. Firstly be able to be clear with the team about what they need to be working on, and be clear with stakeholders about which projects we will and won’t be working on.
Looking forward to going into the office again and seeing the team, I really do enjoy being in the same space as people and also feel we achieve a lot more and understand each other a lot more that way.
What are you reading?
Sarah Drummond’s Service Frontiers 001: The Robots are coming, a fascinating long read that gets into the background of how technology changes and then explores what futures could look like and what we should be doing about it.
Jaskiran Kang’s note on her reflections on 2022, moving into 2023. I keep meaning to have a go at identifying my core values so that I can stay strong to them.
Summary
Written on Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon.
