Series 3 episode 19 – dark mornings are tough

The view from Hackney Central on the way to swim

I’m finding the weeks in the run up to the shortest day really tough – this happens every year and so I have various ways of coping that I’ve learnt. One is to make sure I get enough exercise outside* and that I’m mindful generally of the impact the darkness is having on me.

So what happened this week?

1. I spent most of Thursday at google next 19 – an enormous event (seriously) where I was on a panel talking about collaboration and transformation. I think it went really well — with a good discussion amongst panellists and interesting questions from the audience. Afterwards I roamed the stalls for a while**, looking at all the services on offer (so many services) before going to a government specific round table.
2. I went to the Poverty index show and tell — the team are building on the work done in discovery to produce a usable set of indicators about poverty in Hackney. This is really important work – how we design services to meet the needs of our poorest and most vulnerable residents means really understanding the data we have and being able to use it effectively.

Soraya, Lisa, Anna and Tim presenting their work to us on the Hackney poverty index

3. This week our development team won an award for their work on our APIs platform which is super exciting and very well deserved:

4. Since Nic left I’ve been meeting with each of the senior delivery managers in turn to have a chat about their goals for the next 6 weeks, what they want to focus on developing, and the bigger ‘what next?’ question. I’ve found it really useful and am starting to build a picture in my head about the direction for the team and how self organising might work. It’s also really nice to get to know everyone a little bit better — and be able to think about how I can support them to develop.

5. Jasmeen and I met over a delicious (and very Hackney*) lunch on Friday to sketch out what a simple and visual version of our housing product strategy might look like. Finding ways to engage colleagues about the direction of travel and their role in it is always hard, especially with the added lens of technology and potential use of jargon. It was great to work more closely with Jasmeen on this — and I’m looking forward to sharing our thoughts more widely and with Kylie Havelock and her team next week at Citizen’s Advice to learn from them about how they do this.

What did I read this week?

This from Adrian Brown writing for the Centre for Public Impact on thinking about being as much as doing in government (which essentially, to me, is the agile, user centred mindset):

On being and doing in Government

UCL reading

This week I was reading ahead for a lecture on civic engagement, and a lecture on politics in policy making — a lecture we should have had this week, but there’s a strike at UCL which our lecturers are respecting.

This on new forms of power, a paper from UCL on market shaping, and a paper from Nesta on systems innovation:

Understanding "New Power"

Movements with missions make markets

Green-Energy Inspiration Off the Coast of Denmark

I’m also reading this book about municipalism:

This is an interesting collection of essays and toolkits from the municipalist movement, on participation, city governance and various missions around the world (I especially liked Barcelona’s Superblocks initiative ‘let’s fill the streets with life’)

*having promised myself I’d swim every week at the Lido this year, my monzo data tells me I’ve made 36 trips so far this year (and there’s what, 4 weeks left?). Not bad when you take annual leave into account . . .

** soup, sourdough, toasted sandwiches involving kimchi etc — E5 bakehouse