Almost the end of September already?

Back at work after a couple of weeks proper holiday – as in away, doing other stuff, not looking at my phone or laptop. Or studying.

I can’t quite believe it’s already the end of September – the sun is still shining and in Utrecht, where I’m currently staying, things are opening up again.

So what happened this week — some highlights

• It took me a couple of days to recap what I’d missed, check my inbox and deal with anything that was lurking there. I worked my way steadily through things and gave myself permission not to do it all on Monday morning.
• Karim’s made good progress with a complicated but necessary procurement and it’s now out for suppliers to bid on. This is for specialist printing that we can’t do ourselves – the end of a lot of resident facing processes and which relies on ingesting data from different systems. It’s not glamorous or cutting edge but it is necessary and it’s an opportunity for change.
• David ran the programme squad session for the modern tools for housing programme – really useful to catch up on progress and on the key things we need to make decisions on over the next couple of months.
• Jane and I had a good planning session for the future redesign of the team – working out what the next most important things are to do, including how we summarise the feedback from all the listening and discussing we’ve done over the summer, and how that’s influenced our thinking.
• On Friday Nick and I spent some time thinking about all the strands of work his team is involved with or leading and how we’re going to manage them, given that Tom and Amy are moving into their new roles in the document evidence store product team. I’m delighted they’re doing that, it’s a great opportunity for them, and am well aware they leave behind a big gap in Nick’s team. But – we have plans, and I think we can make the most of some opportunities which is exciting too.

What did I read this week?

Matthew Cain wrote a great blog post on leadership in a digital age.

and I read this from Thea Snow, Rachel Fyfe and Lia Wolff on storytelling for systems change

Storytelling for Systems Change: Early insights from communities and storytellers