Weeknote 2024.38

I was reminded this week that how you deliver results matters and enables long term outcomes as well as short term outputs.

Saturday

A cold start as I set out from Tower Hill to Rotherhithe with the Lea Valley Friends Ramblers, lots to see, including the 122m Lürssen superyacht Kismet at anchor off Shad Thames. This week’s picture is one of a series I took on the walk, with the same yellow leaf against a variety of textured backgrounds.

Sunday

Today’s walk from Catford to Catford via Blythe Hill, Ladywell Fields and Mountsfield Park. Excellent views of the Canary Wharf, City of London and Croydon towers. I took the Overground down from Whitechapel rather than going into Central London, so climbed Blythe Hill three times, on the way from Honor Oak Park to Catford to start the walk, then on the walk, and then after the end of the walk on my way back to Honor Oak Park.

Monday

A meeting free morning so I took the opportunity to review and update the various planners we use to share activities across teams. While most of the activities are due in the next month or two, we are steadily extending our planning horizon, and there are now tasks listed up to the end of the financial year.

A good discussion about a large piece of work we need to progress next year. Colleagues were suitably excited and awed by the scale of the endeavour.

Tuesday

Another discussion about another potential project, smaller, but vitally important to the team who adopted digital early and now need to replace the technology installed some time ago. They can’t retreat to pen and paper. Or even Excel spreadsheets.

Wednesday

Lots of overlapping meetings so I ran up the stairs and arrived out of breath just in time to welcome colleagues to our celebratory team lunch. We were celebrating both the significant savings achieved through rationalising our mobile phones and migrating them to a new contract, and even more so the way so many people from across the service had contributed to the work.

Thursday

An early start for a team meeting. A varied agenda of things we need to progress now and forward thinking for the rest of the year and beyond. Then straight onto a project board meeting for one of our larger endeavours and then onto a session with colleagues to explore how we resolve a long running issue, resulting in a difficult decision.

Some correspondence about another massive piece of work we need to shepherd into delivery. We are sometimes seen as blockers to these big investments, and need to find better ways to explain its not that we don’t want to do the work, just that it can be too easy to start projects, and asking the right questions at the outset increases the likelihood of success in the long term.

Friday

Good learning today, starting with a discussion with another local authority that’s slightly ahead of us on a major endeavour. We picked up some very practical pointers and will meet up later this year with others to continue our learning.

Other than that, a day of moving backwards and forwards between quite general discussions and very precise discussions. Sometimes every word matters. One of the lectures I attended at Warwick Business School some years ago spent the entire 90 minutes exploring the meaning of the word “of” in a statement.

Track of the week

Big Jet Plane by Angus and Julie Stone, a sibling outfit from Australia, I think now London based. Other versions are available; however, this is the original, and still the best. https://open.spotify.com/track/3HedB2EwVAj5MAx8xFE1ea?si=89100f8d050149d1

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