Getting on the plane

Thursday afternoon diary has landed more favourably than expected, so an opportunity for a quick weeknote. It's fair to say a reasonable amount has changed since last time around. For those not in the know, I'm moving onto pastures new at the start of July. After six and a half years, it feels like the right time for a change, but I will also be sad to leave SCW.

The England football squad was also picked this week, so we found out who is making it on the plane. I'm looking making it onto the plane myself next week, for a chance of some sunshine!

Who did I speak with?

I had a good couple of days in London this week. One as part of some consultancy work SCW is doing to support some IT Service Model design at a large trust. I was also invited along to contribute to the review of the Cyber Target Operating Model for ICBs/ICSs that has been drafted by NHS England. Both days were very enjoyable. Seeing a name tag with my "to be" organisation made things quite real and it was good to catch up with my new CDIO. It was also good to bump into John from my ENHT days.

Today, I spoke with Lucy from our GP Payments team, as this is our last day working together. Lucy is off on maternity and I'll have left the building by the time she returns. It's been a pleasure working together for the past couple of years. Lucy has done a great job on our CSU collaborative and it was nice to grab some time today to reflect on how well things have come on.

What did I enjoy?

I really enjoyed the service model work that I've been doing. I took the approach of documenting what I thought the team needed, rather than what I thought they might hope I would write. The catch up went really well and what I have recommended is less controversial than I had anticipated. I really appreciated a speedy peer review from Sam on this work, which was really helpful and kept me honest on some areas where I still had some old school thinking. It's also given me an opportunity to get a bit more under the hood of ITIL v4, which I've not spent a huge amount of time looking at if I'm honest. Of course, there's a lot of commonality with V3, so I wasn't hugely uncomfortable with things.

I also enjoyed putting my trustee hat on this week. There was a very packed agenda for our summer standards meeting. I was delighted to hear about some terrific ofsted reports. There were a few things that came up where I was pleased to provide challenge and contributions on. I am slowly starting to get my head around the acronyms! It was also great to welcome a potential trustee, who was observing for the day. I can see them being a real asset to HCAT.

What was hard?

I'm a little behind where I wanted to be with my handover, which I'm finding frustrating. My colleagues have been amazing and taken things on, as well as taking some opportunities to put their own stamp on things I had put some foundations in place for. However, my aim for the end of this week was to be handed over and to then have June as a month where we can work out where the gaps in handover/knowledge are. I'm not too far away from my ambition, but it would have been nice to have it properly tied down.