Weeknotes: Precious Time / Nuclear Seasons (S05E03)
The original title of these Weeknotes was going to be “February finishes” – they are now called Precious Time / Nuclear Seasons in honour of Nick Keane. Please scroll down towards the end for my stories about Nick.
Five things that happened
[1] We had a kick-off meeting for a new discovery (the cool kids call them “discos” these days) and started to scope out questions using Lou Downe’s 15 principles of good service design. It was really helpful for those completely new to this world, especially for those who aren’t as close to the implementation of policies/services. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this work will evolve over the next couple of months.
[2] Some of us ‘Labs Leaders’ (Andy, Alice, Anna and I) ‘met’ up to talk about building a pipeline of policy design/transformation/reform blog posts to publish throughout 2021. We came up with a nice long list of things we’d like to write about, things we’d like others to share and folks we’d like to hear from.
[3] I ran the UCD introduction to Policy session at our regular Policy Profession induction. I think we had 50 folks involved. It’s a 45–60 minute session where I run through the concepts of user centred design, our principles in UCPD, examples of where we’ve been applying this over the years and how they can learn more/get involved. I’m going to tidy up the deck (take out some internal only content) and link them in future weeknotes. There were some great questions about the differences between social and user research; ‘who’ should do user research and if/how can policy-makers train in those skills; if there are any areas of policy design where UCD can’t apply; and how to best balance conflicting views between different users, customers and stakeholders.
[4] Tal and Adrian (two delivery managers in Digital) joined our UCPD team time to run a two-hour special on ‘non violent communication’ (NVC). NVC is an approach developed by Marshall Rosenberg which focuses on creating positive outcomes from kinder conversations — both with ourselves and others, especially during times of stress and challenge. The concept is broken down into a 4-part framework consisting of ‘observations, feelings, needs and requests’. You can read Marshall Rosenberg’s book or watch this video to find out more.
[5] We had a learning session with one of our prisons to understand and learn more about their local peer-to-peer support, engagement and interventions. I’m always incredibly grateful to our frontline staff for giving up their precious time to facilitate such conversations.
As always, more things happened — I just can’t always talk about them and don’t always think people want me to write a long list of my various 1:1s with folks!
People I met from outside of my organisation
As well as our ‘Labs Leader’ catch-up, Dr Anna Wicher and I had our first 1:1 together where we talked about how it feels to run a ‘policy lab’ in government; what we think of the role of a ‘policy designer’ and what we’d like to do to support the policy design community this year. You should read everything Anna has written — she’s utterly fantastic.
I met with the folks from JUSTICE to talk about Family Justice, mainly the Child Arrangements Service and the Child Arrangements Information Tool and to hear their suggestions for improvements to the services.
I also met with some folks who reached out to me via Mega Mentor. We had a lovely chat about the career path of designers, what design in Government looks like, what to include in portfolios, what problems UCD can be applied to and how best to work with other professions. It was really wonderful and great for the soul — I’m looking forward to more conversations like these.
What are you looking forward to next week?
- Meeting the new Head of the Home Office ‘policy lab’
- Our team is presenting the story of prison video calls at Services Week
- Catching up with the OG Policy Lab ❤
- My ‘action learning’ catch up with two folks from DWP & DEFRA – we met at a session Nour Sidawi facilitated last year and catch up to talk about anti-racism, power and privilege, leadership and culture change.
- Making even more process on Prison Leavers Project, particularly the Service Communities
- Lots of lovely 1:1s with my team
The wave returns to the ocean
Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure it — its height, the way the sunlight refracts as it passes through — and it’s there, you can see it, and you know what it is, it’s a wave. And then it crashes on the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just… a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s meant to be.
I couldn’t write these weeknotes without acknowledging the loss of my dear friend Nick Keane. And as I write these words, I already don’t want them to end because I worry I won’t have a reason to bring up his name and share more stories about him.
Nick and I met when I joined the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), my first job after graduating from University. I hoped the NPIA would help me figure out what I wanted to do as there was a recruitment freeze for police officers (my dream job). I had much to learn but bags of enthusiasm and Nick took me under his wing. We shared a geeky passion for social media, technology and data and the positive impact it could have on people, communities and policing.
Nick opened up my world and introduced me to Teacamp, Govcamp and LocalGovCamp — a story I’ve shared before. He created opportunities for me at work, bringing me along to his interesting meetings with the best people (Tom, Nick, Tiffany, Rachel & Will to name a few). Nick was a proud feminist that spoke up and created space for a generation of young women who were shaping the future (of design, digital & data) and how it could apply to policing — such as Lauren, Sarah and many others.
He’d always seek my views on how policing could benefit from social media – and described me as the über Gen Y/web 2.0 kid. Nick would often joke in the year I was born, he’d already been a police officer for 10 years. That 30 year age gap between us made our friendship even more special.
He lent me his copy of The Black Swan which I found fascinating (but had to read about three times before I understood it properly!) and I found myself banging on about the impact of the highly improbable whilst we were delivering video calls in prisons last year. I’m not sure my contributions to his cultural growth were quite as high-brow, especially that time I lent him my copy of Bridesmaids.
Nick loved music and discovering new artists. We listened to Lizzy Grant before she became Lana Del Rey. She put on a gig at Koko when she released Blue Jeans. We bought tickets but when the night came, she cancelled as we stood outside queuing to get in. We did that polite British thing of “shall we just get a refund and go?” but decided to see how the gig would turn out, especially as the Maccabees were playing anyway. That was the night we discovered Charli XCX — Nuclear Seasons was our favourite song as it is strangely nostalgic even the first time you hear it.
It’s not an understatement to say that every police force and officer in the UK that tweets can only do so because of Nick. He fought the battles in the centre to create the explicit permission for it to happen. From the start he created and maintained a Twitter list of every account. This might seem like a small act but once you see that others are doing something, you can make the case or have the courage to do it yourself. I remember us celebrating when there were 100, 200 and 500 cops that tweeted — now there are over 2,300 on that list. When thinking about this, it reminded me of that saying ‘When a man dies, it’s as though a library burns down’ — fitting for someone as wise as him, especially as he was a Knowledge Manager for years.
He curated case studies, developed guidance, provided training and put on annual conferences to demonstrate just how important this stuff was. He didn’t just get cops to talk to each other — he brought in folks including Dave Briggs, Catherine Howe, Lauren Currie & rufflemuffin. Heck, he even managed to get Google to host events for us!
Nick always gave people a window to another world and I don’t think he ever really got the proper credit or recognition for everything he did. Especially as us banging on about Twitter at that time was seen as a luxury, a waste of time, a distraction — rather than a great tool for building trust and understanding with communities.
I know he never really minded though – to him life was one big opportunity for learning. He’d already been a cop for 30 years, completed two MSCs and had this ‘renaissance career’ (after retiring from the force) which he said were the best years of his working life. He’d always say to me that it should just be fun. It should just be a time to learn and grow. To see what sticks and follow it to see where it goes. And when it stops being fun, stop doing it. And that’s a mantra I took into my life and have said on countless occasions.
After we published our Engagement guide (a word that was slightly ridiculed by the more cynical police at the time) we’d have silly competitions about trying to avoid using the term and whoever would use it in a tweet first would have to buy the Krispy Kremes for the office.
I’m grateful this video exists of him talking about some of his work, because one day I’ll forget his voice. And it reminds me of a blog post by Holly about taking videos of people rather than just still photographs – something I’ll be doing much more this year when I can reunite with my loved ones. But for now, I can still hear it – especially when he’d do an over exaggerated Brummie accent.
Nick and I met up every year since 2008 and 2020 was the first year we couldn’t. Each year I write a list of 100 people I want to meet, and every year he is on there. I also keep a copy of that list in my journal and yesterday I went to colour in the entry for someone I met last week, but their name is next to Nick’s and I started colouring in his in by mistake. Nick will be entry 1/101 every year now, as a reminder to make sure I never forget how fragile life can be and always make the time to see the people that matter the most.
I’m sure you can tell from the way I write about him that he wasn’t just a colleague. He was my first mentor, a bit of a father/uncle figure, someone that listened intently and helped me make sense of things, who supported me through some dark times in my life, who always asked me for my advice about every topic under the sun and was one of my biggest supporters.
I know I don’t need to say this but I will anyway – tell the people you admire that you think they are great. Keep making the time for the coffees with your friends. Listen to their advice. Take videos and photos. Be there for them, check in regularly, never let anything be unsaid. Live the shit out of life when it’s safe for us to all do so.
And to end this on a lighter note, please enjoy two of the most ridiculous photos of me in existence, both taken by Nick.
Here’s to you, Keano – from Smitty.
Until next time ❤
