What am I doing?

I often ask this question of myself as the answer is rarely the same and it helps me get a sense of where I am in terms of understanding the context around me and the value I may or may not be providing.

I asked this question of myself over the weekend, one of those internal dialogues, primarily whilst I was cycling along the roads and lanes of Devon as I’m in training to do a cycling challenge during the first week of September. I’m cycling all three sides of Mont Ventoux in a single day with a group of friends, why? the only answer I can give is why not, its something which will challenge my physical and mental limits and I think I need that right now.

In a professional context I’m currently involved in some work to create some understanding around how and why people contact the council, the type, frequency and value of that contact. It is all part of a much larger piece of work to redesign 5 significant areas of the council and to question and challenge our purpose in those areas and ultimately deliver better outcomes with less money.  The work is fascinating and is already challenging some of the perceptions I had about why people contact us and our ability to deal with some of that contact.

Another interesting piece of work I was involved in was to support one of our county Councillors with facilitating a new conversation in his area around Highways and how we as a council can start to enrich our data about the highways which is primarily hard data with the lived experiences of those people who travel around those roads on a daily basis. Our aim was to provide a different type of space and meeting and not involve our Highways colleagues in the process as we felt they would create barriers to a new conversation emerging at least on this first occasion anyway. This is what I learnt about that conversation and the process:

• Sometimes sending in a shock wave can make a difference (takes bravery)
• Putting people in a different setting does result in traditional behaviours being harder to maintain
• If you remove the traditional platform then you can
  • (a) allow those who want to engage to do so and
  • (b) challenge unhelpful behaviours in a far less threatening way.
• Communities and the council do seem to have a common understanding of each other’s points of view, but we don’t yet seem to have any mechanism for using this information to effect resolution.
• We appear to rely a lot on hard data and this data is not representative of what the communities value
• A single meeting in isolation won’t change anything unless the wider behaviours change as well

On the back of this my role has changed, I’ve now moved out of Corporate Communications and into the Organisational Change Team managed by my colleague Sara Cretney. I’ve been asked to keep the strategic lead for Digital. So I’m now the Digital by Design Lead. My former team managed by Tom Dixon is going from strength to strength and no longer really need me, although I will maintain a strategic link and as individuals I am very passionate about ensuring they can be the best that they can be, so I am still committed to supporting them as individuals if they want it.

We are making real progress with the broader Digital agenda as well which is aligning with the wider organisational change I mentioned earlier and we are also taking opportunities to up skill, develop and challenge the current thinking of our Digital Board as well as other leaders in the council by inviting in external people to constructively challenge and disrupt which is helping us unblock some things as well as generate a new momentum for real and deep change. A couple of weeks ago we had Mark Thompson come in and give a talk to our Board and about 30 other leaders including some of our cabinet members on Digital which went down very well and people are still talking about it – in a good way. We also hijacked a leadership meeting next Monday which will now focus on creating a strategic mandate for action around all the work we are doing relating to Data.

The wider sector development work through LocalGovDigital is also going from strength to strength… ALL of the recent success is not down to me (as I’ve not been involved) and is down to people simply connecting and making things happen – all the work around the service standard is showing that councils can work differently together and that collaboration perhaps needs to be rethought as something more fluid and agile which responds to need and shouldn’t have too much formality around it but enough infrastructure to see it flourish – this and this are good examples. Phil and I have had a lot of conversations recently about how we can push the network forward and continually develop the opportunities to see action on the ground connect with the wider and broader strategic challenges. Whilst what we do as a network may appear somewhat random, it is having a positive impact on people working in the sector and in particular professionals working in this space. Without that I would have advocated the network think about its future and whether it had one – these are questions I constantly think about…If the network isn’t creating or adding value it shouldn’t exist.

My voluntary time is taken up by school governance work with my local primary school and now the emerging cooperative multi-academy trust that we are moving forward with where I’ve been asked to be the inaugural Chair which is a scary position to be in. The opportunity to help transform and improve outcomes for children and young people is a massive responsibility although it really is a huge honour to be asked. All of this activity and development is challenging me every day – providing and demonstrating strategic governance and knowing what this looks like all the time pushes me so far out of my comfort zone for such long periods of time, but I know I am growing and developing. It feels great to be on the journey with such fantastic people who I admire and trust.

I’ve made significant changes to how I work over the last 6-9 months to see whether I can be more effective and It hasn’t been easy, it has been a personal journey and one which has challenged my previously preferred responses.

Now I feel I am in a better place generally and when I ask the question of myself “what am I doing?” I can answer holistically and without seeing all my activity as a whole I can’t begin to see what impact I am making or what value I am contributing to or adding.