Weeknotes 23
Busily ploughing on, with an unexpected rooftop jolly
This week was pretty busy. For a change. Things seem to be flying in all directions but I’m mostly able to handle them. Powered on by that lovely weekend of NAP last week.
What did I get up to?
Well, I worked from home for 2/3 of a day twice — until I had to go into the office mid afternoon. I missed my colleagues but I’m better able to focus. Its still constant meetings, via Skype, but I can work in the edges of them and during a bit better. And I saw an actual robin feeding from my bird feeder. My whole family seem to have a bit of a bird watcher thing going on so I got to join in with “I saw three blue tits and a robin today”.
Hmmm #springwatch over…
I cycled to work twice this week which was awesome! There’s something about getting places under your own steam which is 💪.
And my certificate came in from the HR qualification I spent the last couple of years doing in the evenings (Post Graduate equivalent). Really pleased I’ve got that ticked off and finished.
One Team Gov Breakfast
A lovely big group this week – twenty one people, twelve Gov depts!
We talked about how you address the silo mentality in the Civil Service. That it’s about explicitly incentivising it – because currently none of the structures ask you to work outside of boundaries, if anything you have to push to do so. And where you focus on outcomes, that helps you think of people who work towards the same thing, not just your own measurements.
What if feedback from people outside the dept was included in your end of year performance assessment?
And what if we valued softer things beyond performance?
I liked one comment; “People arent bad leaders, they’re just busy”. Definitely. I’m not my best when I’m rushed and flippant.
We, like politicians, often make more short term focussed decisions because term we move around between different roles; a known side effect of (effectively) stopping the in-role pay increments and only increasing pay through promotion.
There’s a them vs us perception about departments – that all the departments do something different but fundamentally we’re more similar than we seem to think we are.
And of course there’s the regular moan about how our systems keep us separate; like finding contacts in other depts!
And of course, finding people and sharing experiences is one of the reasons we, One Team Gov, and breakfast exist.
Interestingly I had a conversation later in the week about siloes where the reply was “but sometimes siloes are useful to get things done”. I realise he was talking about the benefits of being a dedicated team, but I’m not convinced that that means you can’t look around and collaborate with others.
Our next topic was “Managing risks when being open” which felt apt for many of us. It really became a conversation about blogging about work, which many of us do, and is inherently tricky in Government. We thought you needed either senior coverage or, to be bold and take the risk. Which led into an interesting conversation about risk. We talk about risk all the time at work: the “Daily Mail Risk” i.e. what is this going to look like if it ends up on the front cover of the Daily Mail, how could this be spun to make us/the Minister/the Dept/the Government look bad, the FOI Risk – are you potentially exposing something which will result in requests for information from journalists and the public before we’re ready to talk about it (and there’s a whole load of ethics about whether you should do), and the risk that we say something contrary to Government Policy and risk our positions as neutral Civil Servants. So inherent in blogging about anything are a whole load of risks that we manage every time we post. But then I think that’s true every time we do anything – if my assessment of risk and my judgment is inaccurate, then when I speak externally, when I speak in meetings internally, when I advise my team, there’s going to be a problem. So for me, it’s not about “do you trust me to blog?” it’s “do you trust me? Do you trust my judgment?”. If I’m not accurately assessing the risks of what I post, then it’s not a problem limited to blogging.
I do think it’s a specific context though, and that with both blogging and Twitter, it’s worth watching and seeing what is safe to talk about online in a very open and potentially reactive environment. In the same way you practice before giving advice in Parliament, you have to be informed to assess the risks.
So when it comes to blogging we thought:
- Get someone to trust you
- Evaluate: what’s the worst thing that can happen. And mitigate
- Ask: Is it interesting? Is this a blog worth reading?
- Start small
- And this last one is often my advice. People are often scared about the theory, unnecessarily. So, bearing in mind all the above, especially applying sensible caution, seek forgiveness not permission
What’s the risk of not doing it? The risk of it not working? What is the opportunity cost of not working in the open, sharing what you’re doing?
We worry about talking about unfinished work incase it ties our hands, but not talking about it and sharing is risky too, that we do the wrong thing, miss opportunities to do a better job. And so we have to carefully manage what we talk about and how, and avoid it becoming a headline. And perhaps doing this more often could change the responses to it?
And finally, we asked “What is an inclusive service?”. Easily accessible and open to everyone? Designed by a representative group? And we asked whether our group is representative. We found out we mostly went to university — which isn’t entirely surprising in the industry — and we debated whether our educational backgrounds are markers of our diversity, because there’s loads of other ways we are all different and have had different backgrounds.
We talked about how a truly inclusive service would capture more than practical access needs, but consider extra choices, about how people actually live their lives — that sometimes you have your hands full with children or caring for parents, and that you’re accessing a support service when you’re already highly emotional. And so considering the state of the user when accessing a service.
Government, especially, has a responsibility to get this right. And other service providers do think about this too — we talked about Citizens Advice as an example.
We need to think in diverse ways. Asking “can I challenge you on that?” is so often seen as a bad thing — but how do we encourage people to think beyond their biases and norms? Formalise it? ask in interviews ‘when was the last time you challenged someone?’.
Managing yourself
One of the great perks of my job is spending time with senior leaders and getting to hear their perspectives on things. This week I sat in on one such discussion — particularly focussing on the pressure to deliver. The ‘do more with less’ cliche that’s dominate government for a while. It can end up feeling like its just work harder and harder — more hours and pack it all in because you’ve got fewer staff and the needs of your customers/leaders/users are greater.
The Boss Man speaking to these senior leaders is very down to earth. Definitely calls a spade a spade. And probably tells you a story about the time he was down a manhole. It was really refreshing to hear his take on it: you have to take care of yourself; if you cannot do your job in your working hours (assuming you are working effectively for a reasonable number of hours) it is your boss’s issue, and the organisation’s issue . You have to be prepared to say now I’m going to leave the office and take care of yourself. And as a counter to the idea that looking like you’re working long hours makes it more likely you’ll get promoted, he said no, long hours make it look like you’re out of control, and then I definitely don’t want to promote you.
And he talked about how important it is when his boss and others around share the difficulties of balancing your life and work — as a senior leader sharing the same challenges across the organisation.
The group also talked about managing, in the context of a wider Civil Service wide conversation thats happening around bullying and harassment. Managing pressure is a big part of this. And being perceptive of the people around you; the impact you and others are having.
We talked about the dynamics of relationships. Changing the space you’re interacting in can make all the difference; I do love a walking meeting.
and if you’ve never found it hard to break a habit, try brushing your teeth with the wrong hand.
You can walk past something everyday and not look at it closely…
On Saturday morning I went round “55” or 55 Broadway. Also known as St James’ Park Tube Station — which in 1929 was London’s tallest office building. It was the early tube headquarters, its art deco and, as we discovered, weirdly brilliant.
Its quite a funny shape and remarkably light and bright — its 14 storeys high, but people were only allowed to work on the first 8 floors as the hoses of the fire brigade can’t reach beyond 7 floors. Its designed in a cruciform shape, so that every office has natural light. And back then, building regulations meant the upper stories had to be stepped back so light could get to the street. Not so any more!
We heard all about how the used to work — it was incredibly hierarchical. The executive offices have higher ceilings, fancy wood panelling, cloakrooms and actual BATHrooms. Because you need a bath at work.
My favourite part was the view from the roof — and there I am up on the roof going “ooh look there’s my office and there’s my old office” and of course I found another Civil Servant from my department and made friends…Hi Libby!
Interesting things I found on the internet
This was shared with me this week, and there’s a patch about 18 mins in where it gets really interesting analysing our social media rituals. And then there’s a whole aspect on the power of filters and images and sharing with your community which got me thinking.
This was my Sunday morning listening.
Are Even Women Biased Against Women
Spoiler: Yes
I think it was summed up in this bit here, around ten minutes in. We internalise what we see around us so “despite our beliefs, if every time you come to work, every time you switch on the telly or you listen to the radio, men are associated with high status, leadership and competency that is what is our unconscious brain is going to learn” Your brain learns when two things are associated together and actually lays down neurons to connect them, even if you rationally don’t think the two things are connected.
“If our social territory is ‘Think Leader, Think Male’ then that’s what’s going get reinforced in our unconscious mind despite our dearly held beliefs to the contrary.”
Collectively many of our team have been thinking about how we work across our sites better lately, so I’m on the hunt for things like this:
Following on from Prateek Buch, the wonderful Debbie Blanchard has written about what One Team Gov means to her, and it’s lovely 👇
I like this a lot. You could probably cover off a lot of policies with “behave appropriately”. 👆
And why am I still writing this, when it takes such a chunk of time out of my weekend? well… what Ryan said.
Final thought…
Did you know? Baked beans reduce anxiety and depression because of their high level of amino acids. Beans have secret super powers.
