Weeknote 04
Second week of new job (I’ll stop counting soon). Last week was fluffy pink clouds. This week was more of a rollercoaster veering between questioning all my life decisions and feeling like I’ve totally got this. The truth is somewhere in the middle of course.
What I’ve been working on
Continuing my 1:1 meets with people across the organisation. I continue to be impressed with how lovely and welcoming and talented everyone is.
Spent my first day in our London office which was really nice to see people in person and put proper faces to digital faces. Enjoyed having some time on the train on the way home to get a little bit of work done. I do miss regular train travel for that reason.
More client facing work this week:
- I attended a bunch of really fantastic kick off sessions that really helped me get up to speed with two of our teams work on elements of Local Plans - visualisations and site selection. I’m hoping I feel in a place to talk about the what and how of what we’re doing. A good test of my confidence of getting up to speed with things.I am so here for good documentation, it’s made getting up to speed with things a dream.
- Watching and observing how the teams work; ways of working and getting a feel for the shape of things
- Thinking about what governance we need, where and when. With the aim to keep it all as light-touch and low impact as possible.
- Thinking about what artefacts we need to create to minimise the need for everyone to be in every meeting for every thing.
- Evangelising for Product Decisions Records to be part of our way of working on Local Plans. Which also meant I got back in touch with Ellie the week before when I couldn’t find her blog post. And I dug out the PDRs she did on Report MI to use as examples.
Next week I want to focus on:
- Roadmapping for the rest of this year
- Getting the governance in place
- More handover and working out how our two Project Directors and I work together.
- How we make sure our four teams and the client teams can come together and work even more efficiently. We’ve got some really crunchy stuff coming up.
- Meeting the wider leadership of the Digital Planning team at DLUHC. Looking forward to seeing some familiar (old, sorry) faces.
What I’ve been thinking about
Wales.
I still have a burning desire to help shift the dial in digital in Wales. Starting to think about how I can help in my new role on the outside to support the good work that’s happening already; how I can agitate from outside to push things further and faster. And yes, how I can help my new employer to build on and grow what they are already doing in Wales.
I’ve been supporting on a bid in Wales as well. I think I need to craft a “Working in Wales” deck and start socialising some of that. It IS different. There are different things to be aware of.
Watch this space...
What I’ve been watching
Our pace of watching For All Mankind has slowed with Season 4. It’s taking some getting used to and into the flow with - so many of the old characters are gone and there are a lot of new faces to get used to. All this plus I’ve been too exhausted this week.
But it was also the week of new Queer Eye and I’ve been comforting watching the first few episodes of that.
What I’ve been reading
Still deep in onboarding and project documentation. I’ve still not managed to read a word of fiction or much else.
But I did read this fantastic blog post on Welsh Language content and testing from Nia Campbell working on Lasting Power of Attorney.
It’s great to see the trio approach to bilingual content design that Heledd and her team at Natural Resources Wales pioneered getting attention on a Westminster service. More of this please.
Also really important that people are starting to recognise that more people are starting to recognise you can’t just translate content. The context has to be right or it just doesn’t work and people won’t use the service. It’s exciting to see usability testing in Welsh starting to happen.
What’s blooming
We’ve moved out of arctic tundra into another rainy season. But the snowdrops are really starting to come into their own now.
Who’s betting
...on how long it will take before Jukesie and I properly meet to talk about actual work and our new jobs. I’m 2 weeks in now and....