Cloudy with a chance of IKEA meatballs - Weeknotes WC 6th March 2023

Slightly late out this week - I transposed these on Friday night but didn't get around to finalising them until Monday AM. My weekend was dominated by multiple trips to IKEA, which was incredibly frustrating - but also a whole other story.

Who did I speak with??

I met up with James and Rob from Mastek this week to discuss our tech review for CQRS. The work is going really well and we have picked up some new ideas as well as affirming many of existing ideas about how we might take things forward. I'm really pleased with the draft outputs that I've seen and we can't wait to get going with the full report and then push on with the next steps.

I met with Ben Cook From Evolution this week for an interview, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Ben asked some great questions, and I waffled on as normal. You can find the link to that here.

As usual, I had a number of catch ups with colleagues internally across tech roadmap, internal improvement and strategy work.

I met with Andy and James about the work we're doing with their work on their GP IT strategy, which we'll kick off soon.

What did I enjoy?

I enjoyed the "social media for pro's" session that our comms colleagues put on this week. It was great to speak with some enthusiastic colleagues and share some ideas.?Dhini and Kate did a great job arranging.

I received my new mobile device this week with a fresh install of intune. I'm pleased that this project is getting towards the end point and I can't wait to start to roll that out to some other organisations that we work with in time.?It was quite a smooth journey once I'd referred back to the guidance I had already been provided - a good old PICNIC (problem in chair, not in computer).

I also enjoyed a coaching session that I gave this week, it was the first session and I think we came away with some really useful and practical next steps.?

What was hard?

I had some feedback this week on our strategy document, which gave some useful perspective on some key aspects. It was clear that there are some conversations that we need to follow up and also some elements that we need to reposition.

On reflection, there are some things here that I need to think about:

• Some of the narrative needed to be taken from a slightly different perspective to have the desired impact across all stakeholders
• I should have been more challenging and pushed harder on a couple of things

It was really useful conversation and I'm glad that we had it, but I did feel a lot of personal ownership for the strategy. Having to acknowledge that it isn't perfect is always difficult. I was incredibly grateful for the way the challenge was posed. It clear and direct, whilst being respectful at the same time - values in action.

What did I learn?

I read some useful articles/blogs this week:

Technology Chiefs Seek Help Wrangling Cloud Costs - WSJ

This is reflected in what we have found from our economic analysis, so I was smiling and nodding as I read. The adoption of cloud is a deeply personal journey for each organisation and it's a complex decision. I should probably do something that articulates the journey we went on.

Weeknote: 6 to 10 March 2023 – Matt Edgar writes here

It's really interesting to see a view from the inside of such a big change. I'm really impressed with how open Matt continues to be through what is a very difficult time.