Weeknotes S11 Ep12 / Systems Thinking week 5
Shifting sand and broken records.
It’s been a long and busy week. My current project team have been simultaneously finalising one phase of our work (synthesising and discussing research) while also prepping for the next phase.
I spent the first half of the week trying to second guess the outcomes of research in order to get ahead on the work I needed to deliver, but I see now that I was probably attempting to build on sand. Decisions wouldn’t ultimately be made until Wednesday that would effect the approach I needed to take. I see now that a lot of the energy I expended at the beginning of the week may have been misplaced until the ground became a little firmer.
In hindsight I think I was trying to give reassurance that the work was on track through showing the thing (sketches of plans), but I think this may have worked against me when it came to giving reassurance, as each of those things was ultimately not quite it, and I wonder if this actually had the adverse effect undermining confidence in my progress.
It may have been better to have had the confidence to say that it was shifting and that I needed to show a much closer approximation of what the thing would be later in the week, a bigger bang.
As I don’t believe in big bangs — I’ve found this approach rarely works — so has been a difficult thing for me to reconcile.
Similarly because I expended so much energy early in the week, and worked late on Wednesday evening (due to a combination of need and anxiety) it meant I made a silly mistake and missed some key information. This meant I caused some additional confusion and fuss for the team on Thursday, which I regret. At least I’m mature enough to acknowledge my mistakes, and I’m comfortable enough (through reflection like this) to be able to unpick these things and move forward. I hope.
So I’ve been reflecting about to what extent a focus on sketching and showing the thing have really helped me in this project. I came into it with the determination to bring some of my skillset and possibly some different ways of working, ultimately, to make a difference that felt meaningful to me, and there hasn’t been as much opportunity to do that as I’d hoped. So I’m also dealing with slight disappointment in myself (while also trying really hard to acknowledge the many constraints).
We don’t have the luxury of time or a full-time team to really build out ways of working, and the constraints of the waterfall approach that we need to take feel quite uncomfortable to me. Ultimately I’m not sure it’s possible to have a waterfall approach without a single person responsible for enforcing deadlines. It feels very command and control that way, but if you have a plan, with deadlines and dependencies, but also expecting a team to be empowered? Well, I’m not sure that works.
With the luxury of a better run up at this I would have tried to see how we could work together in weekly sprints to empower the team to define and deliver their work in discrete weekly chunks that showed ongoing progress. Anyway, onwards.
And what else?
Monday was the The Local Digital Showcase #4 as part of Services Week which covered the Digital Place-based Engagement project and my Community Engagement Playbook project too.
If you’re interested you’ll find a recording of the session (complete with me failing to get the sound on the video working) here:
While we’re talking about Services Week, I should probably mention all of the things I wanted to get to but missed this week. I missed services week and also missed a drop in session for applications to the Future Leaders Scheme (more later), The National Lottery Heritage Fund Civil Society Enquiries session on Ecologies, Constellations and Ecosystems, and Rachel’s Tech and Social Justice meetup that I really wanted to get to but was just too busy/tired.
However on Wednesday I did manage to present an updated and (I think, slightly improved) version of my Experiments in Work Wellbeing presentation to colleagues at DfE as part of their new “Wellbeing Wednesdays”. I also got asked by DavidBuck to do it again at Defra’s “Wellbeing Wednesday” next week — seems like the alliteration is driving this initiative at the moment — but I hope it continues anyhow.
On Thursday I ran a coaching feedback conversation with Jason which I really enjoyed. I was really honoured when Jason asked me if I’d do this for him and it was so good to hear about how he’s been getting on, what he’s reflecting on and how it’s all coming together. It’s really great that people in government are doing this kind of training and I am still intending to bring together a UK Gov coaches meetup — when I’ve got more time.
FLS (Oh god it’s that time of year when Sam starts moaning again)
I mentioned above about the Future Leaders Scheme, applications close next Friday and, though I signed up, I’m really not sure if I can be bothered.
Every time I apply I get disappointed and it makes me feel like I’ve reached a ceiling. Maybe I’m just not clever enough to get further than this? Maybe my ambition and my ability are out of step? Maybe I should accept my lot and stop pushing for more when there are lots of people out there with better educations than me.
Maybe I’ve got more of a chance of progressing if I just continue to advocate for myself and make my own opportunities? (Something tells me given the way the wider system currently works (paternalistic, hierarchical) applying and ultimately being successful is the most effective way to get ahead).
But if that’s not a system I really believe in (one that ultimately disadvantages some more than others) then do I even want to engage? Especially when it takes so much effort and heartache to do so? And would I be contributing to an unfair system by applying as a (now) comfortably middle-class white women — almost certainly.
But then would I be doing others a disservice if I didn’t try to move into a position where I had more ability to make meaningful change for others? It’s not particularly generous to think that others wouldn’t, or couldn’t do better at that, or that others haven’t tried, especially if they have lived experience.
So even engaging with the system feels like the wrong thing to do, and so, I guess here I am talking myself out of it.
Systems Thinking for Service Designers
On Monday I had a great conversation with Ben in NZ about our assignment work and it was good to get to know more about him and to talk through ideas.
I was thinking about how we often talk in government about creating an environment where it’s safe to fail, taking the agile ways of working and focus on experimentation and testing — and embracing it — in fact in the Radical Visions work we did this came up. Here’s Prateek talking about exactly that:
But if you think about how we ‘double down’ on problems, through policy or manifesto commitments, organisational hierarchy, commissioning, procurement, selecting the people with the right skills, problem definition, ways of working, standards and more an issue has been through so many layers that by the time it gets to the level of the people doing the doing the problem definition should be seriously tight.
That in turn would mean failure at that point is absolutely a failure because the problem should be so well defined that the answer is clear and the outcome achievable. If those processes were working, or rather if we believed that they were working, failure simply wouldn’t be an option.
And so you can extrapolate from that that people in more senior organisational positions would be less tolerant of “failure” — even the small and good kind.
Anyway, I need to do my homework now and create some causal loop diagrams, thinking about getting started using The Tiger Who Came to Tea, because why not? Oh and I’m going to play with Loopy — byeeee.
