Week 26
Subdued - is how I’d describe this week. Partly a mix of family/personal stuff, and partly having started the week a little under the weather and ended it with a COVID vaccination.
Work
Research interviews and synthesis on my main project continues, though I’m one of many hands covering it so it didn’t completely trash my calendar this week. The synthesis session reminded me that I’m best at, and enjoy most, the drawing out of insight, the pattern-finding, the sense-making. And so the very end of the week saw me pulling together (from our user research and wider evidence) some inclusion profiles we can use to keep those most likely to otherwise be excluded from our service at the front of everyone’s minds. Reflection: I’ve colleagues who are *astonishingly* good at running user research interviews, and working alongside them I’ve concluded that I’m just not as good with people as they are. This is linked to my desire to get better at connecting with others - I’m not saying I’m sh*t with people, but some of my colleagues are absolute naturals at building rapport and managing even the most challenging of interviews. It doesn’t come so easily to me. I’m much better at sensemaking and storytelling.
In contrast, I started to hit my stride on identifying assumptions and risks, planning and structuring work to come, and mapping out best-guess back-office journeys and capabilities. We’re doing this to drive up momentum - our approach pushes us to start with a hypothesis or a prototype so we can test and learn and iterate quickly. Reflection: this is what I love about design - that we make things more tangible in order to (a) catalyse engagement with choices and possibilities; and (b) move beyond speculation and expert overanalysis by actually exposing those choices, possibilities and experts to reality. Just as no-one need argue whether the capital of Slovenia is Ljubljana when Google exists, many arguments in the service design space can and should just be resolved by putting a prototype in front of someone. The challenge now is to remember this whenever I feel we’re spending more time disagreeing with subject-matter experts folks on something than we would have spent testing it. This includes arguing about operating model and org design (elements of which can also be prototyped and tested, don’t forget).
I ran a session on Spending Reviews, for colleagues. I spent a decade in the Treasury at the start of my career (including through changes in Government), so I know quite a lot about public spending processes, scrutiny, fiscal events and the like. Reflection: I know quite a lot about this. But I’m aware that a decade has passed since I worked there and things will have changed. I did my homework, checking back with colleagues who’ve only recently left, so I didn’t misinform my colleagues. But while doing my homework I struck by how very opaque Treasury processes are. I do hope the new lot have an appetite for significantly more transparency.
I designed and ran an induction session on agile user-centred ways of working - essentially running new arrivals in the client team through our what our “start small, test and learn” approach means in practice. I used the best case study I could find to bring it to life - but it was a colleague’s, not my own, which I declared at the start of the session. At the end someone who’d worked on that programme told me that you wouldn’t know I hadn’t worked alongside them because I’d so effectively described their journey. Reflection: when the original storyteller isn’t available, I can do a bloody good job of it in their stead. It takes preparation, practice - and the chance to hear the story told by others a few times (so I can capture the small details that really make the difference). We should do this more intentionally - grow our cadre of storytellers, so that our collectives stories spread further and live longer than they otherwise would.
Personal
There was an election. We have a new government. I’m struck by how different my optimism feels compared to the last time Labour won back power. I remember feeling ecstatic, in 1997. As a kid from a Scottish coal-mining community, whose parents were still bitter about the poll tax, the change in government felt truly momentous. I don’t feel that way this time. I’m still optimistic. I’m pleased. I’m relieved. I’m feeling an (albeit slightly subdued) excitement at the potential that comes with any changing of the guard. But I’m not elated. Reflections: a quarter of a century later, and slightly grizzled from the reality of making change happen in public services, I probably shouldn’t be surprised I feel this way. But I am. The optimism I have now is a realistic optimism - one founded on a belief that things can be better, but there’s a shedload of hard work we need to put in to make it happen, and that we’ll fail plenty on the way there. I guess this is who I am now. I miss elation though. It feels good.
I had a COVID booster on Friday. There seems to be a bit of a mini spike and I don’t want to get ill. When I told my mum, she told me she decided to not have the booster because “if you ask the nurses at the hospital, they say that you can’t trust it, that you’ve no idea what side effects you’ll suffer five years down the line”. This is my clinically vulnerable, regularly on-deaths-door Mum, choosing not to protect herself from a known current risk to her health (one that would be fatal for her) - because the anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists have managed to make it into her Facebook feed. I’m beyond livid. Reflection: none. Because I just can’t crack open all those emotions right now.
My own kids: the eldest has won a prize or award for History at her school. Next week she receives it - and her 13th birthday is a few days later. She has just announced that she doesn’t want any presents this year because she already has everything she needs. Awwww. Part of me is imagining some sort of dramatic metamorphosis of my darling history geek midweek, werewolf-style - but maybe it’ll be closer to Harry Enfield’s Kevin-the-Teenager? My youngest in contrast is climbing trees, acquiring scratches and bruises on every limb, and living her best 10yo life. She ran a colour run yesterday - so today I have the pleasure of repeatedly washing the clothes she wore to see if they’re remotely salvageable. Though she’s already asked to go shopping for more clothes. Reflection: only on how much I love these two, and how I find myself regularly fascinated at how very different they are. I’m sure most parents feel this way. Doesn’t make it any less fascinating to me.