Weeknotes S1 Eps 7 Split Personality Disorder and #Monthnotes
So it’s been a while since my last weeknotes foray… A bit of time off for a well deserved break from work (not long enough!) combined with…
So it’s been a while since my last weeknotes foray… A bit of time off for a well deserved break from work (not long enough!) combined with a phrenetic few weeks in work culminated in a lack of creative head space.
Anyway, back to it and I’ll just pick a few key points from my recent history to touch on to ease back in gently.
As a bit of an executive summary the beginning of August was pretty low key in terms of excitement. Not to say it wasn’t busy, just bureaucratic, slow and frustrating! Second week was a holiday in Norfolk with the family… This was necessary and supposed to help me switch off and de-stress somewhat — however as fate had planned for me the car broke down and I transferred my anxieties from work based issues to ‘how do we get around/home’ based issues!!
On return back to work it was like I’d slotted straight back in to the chaos! This is fairly unusual for August in councils in my experience as usually this is slow month with holidays.. Not here though, I guess this is a sign of where a lot of authorities are at the moment and where we are in our shared services journey.
I sent out a tweet last week around how candid you should be in blogs and had some helpful responses notably from Ian Ames, Jake Morrison and Sam Villis. I am probably not brave enough with some things just yet but think will start being factual and straight up about the bad stuff as well as the positives as i think it important to understand collective challenges in our worlds. Also i am keen to describe how i feel about some of these things as know a lot of incredible public servants who are affected by anxiety and stress that working in the sector can bring. Despite this they continue to go over and above to deliver day after day.
On a lighter note, the ‘split personality disorder’ of #LocalGov also provides incredible positives and there are always a good deal of these to grab on to and I feel a responsibility as a leader to try and help identify opportunities to highlight these.
Something that affected me positively…..
Slightly out of my usual world but I was approached by my colleague Geoff Clark who heads up our housing (HRA) team. he had a fantastic idea around community tree planting on some of out HRA sites. We got together to discuss and came up wit a bit of a plan to try and progress this initiative — really as a voluntary piece but I have spoken to a few friends and colleagues who will give up there time to help out and from some of my old career colleague might be able to beg, steal or borrow some stock for planting… The aim is we start with a few suitable sites and begin dialogue with residents about the how/why and what and progress from there. there is real opportunity for some tangible benefits around community cohesion, environmental learning and fun for these type of initiatives and I’m looking forward to progressing.
Something that affected me negatively…..
Posturing, lack of collaborative dialogue/decision making and silo mentality….. These things are all too prevalent in councils usually by competing priorities with dwindling or lack of resources, poor leadership and more recently affected by staff churn. There has been a couple of situations which have been really difficult to manage recently and more importantly have undermined work that members of our team have been spending time and resources on and don’t help morale building. I sometimes let these things get to me but they are part and parcel of the way public sector is working in 2019 and is one of the main reasons I am so passionate to try and effect fundamental change in the way we work and deliver services. (whilst trying not exacerbate my anxiety to panic attack levels…) #MustRun #DrinkWine
One key achievement…..
Myself with my colleagues Caroline and Jane had a really positive meeting with our colleagues in both councils democratic services yesterday. This was part of a bigger plan to try an align the way we bring complex documents and policy's through both council committee processes which at the moment is really difficult and logistically hard with two very different processes.
This is something that is causing a lot of work for my team and huge amounts of duplication at a time where our resource is stretched.
With some key policy and strategy work coming through in the next 3 years not to mention the joint local plan it is imperative that we do everything we can to make the process more slick and ensure lead in time are adequate for officers and councillors to feel like they can be satisfied with having enough time to produce, digest and agree discreet projects and outcomes of the programme effectively and transparently.
Much work to do but colleagues were really keen to engage and we have kicked off with some early actions and discovery work to progress…. #Win
Reads…..
Re reading Tim Jackson’s ‘Prosperity without Growth’ revision. read this earlier this decade but if anything it is even more relevant now and his current work is profound and unavoidable if we are to even attempt to meet the social, economic and environmental challenges affecting us in our current world. You can find more about this here….
In other news…..
Couldn’t not mention the sport as I’ a big cricket fan and winning the world cup was amazing…. Shame the ashes aren’t looking to good!
Be back to #weeknotes now so keep an eye out….. Maybe a more candid style of reflection will emerge. Be good to hear others thoughts on this!
Big Love…..