Weeknotes E52
This is the final week I’m going to keep a running update of the work I’ve done & things I’ve learned along the way. 52 weeks and it’s time for a short break.
My priority this week:
Working with mental health team for a future NHSX collaboration.
Some interesting and shareable things that happened this week. Other more mundane things also happened…
Worth seeing…
Excellent exhibit. Worth visiting. Book tickets at V&A here.
Retrospective with team
The team moved across from the Department of health and social care had its retrospective at the start of the week. I don’t think I’ve missed one in 2019, I almost did as was initially on the cards to go to Leeds and attend a conference about Local Health and Care Records but alas enough people were going that I could continue to squirrel away back in Elephant and Castle. Retrospective was frank and honest as per usual. Things reflected upon, actions set to make things better.
Scoping a discovery in mental health
Lots of my effort is being put into setting up the right conditions for a new team to begin a discovery with colleagues.
Things being worked on:
- what is the area we are focusing on. Making sure that we “do the most good with the people, time and money” we have.
- exposing new ways of working and seeking buy-in from people across organisations
- recruiting a team
- finding a place for that team to sit and make sure they are in a space conducive for a collaboration
- setting up tools/services the team may use to collaborate (e.g. Google Drive)
- making sure research isn’t duplicated and jotting down all the things that seem relevant
- sharing how the discovery is likely to work and some ideas about comms
- trying to clarify who pays for stuff
- and other conversations…
NHS expo
Trying to help colleagues get a slot at Expo. Last time I went it was a lot of fun, would more than happily speak at some booth so I can enjoy the festivities.
Hospital visit
Visited a hospital this weekend as partner had a fall and sprained ankle (thankfully nothing worse!). I am completely fascinated by hospital design. Amazing challenge to evolve a hospital, this one founded in 1721, into a space conducive to care in the 21st century.
I’ve played far too much Theme Hospital in my life. I’d really like that challenge one day.
NHSX Show and tell
I was on the agenda for the 2nd ever NHSX show and tell. I spoke, quick update on work with NHS England for the mental health collaboration. Half way through the laptop died so I basically did it from memory, without the fine folk of Leeds to listen to me.
Basically said my aspirations of the work are:
- work on a real problem and do some good
- expose new ways of working
- build capability of both new NHSX staff members, NHSE and beyond.
Show and tells are great. By exposing work I’ve already had people sending me more stuff about an NHS Youth Summit I had no idea about.
Secretary of State submission
Rarely get asked to provide submissions. One was done. About 15% of what I wrote was used but very no revisions so I assume people got what they wanted.
Enquiring
Found a little more about:
Future chats
In the wider work with mental health we’ve got plans to go speak to more providers of care. We worked on what do we want to find out and what questions should we be asking.
More iterations on capturing the right questions this week. More plans being made but all good solid progress.
New ways of working
In my efforts to…
Apply the culture, processes, business models & technologies of the internet era to respond to people’s raised expectations. - Tom Loosemore
We’ve been introducing some alternative ways of working over the past few weeks. We’ve got weekly team meetings when all in the office now. We are conducting team retrospectives, which felt really good and gave us some time to reflect on work. We also did a bit of weekly planning on a newer Trello board we setup. We are improving how we work, week by week.
Just the start. More to improve.
Feedback
New organisations, new challenges, new people to work with. This week I got feedback that my emails and ways of approaching problems were:
“jaunty”.
What a great adjective! Meaning: having or expressing a lively, cheerful, and self-confident manner.
I wear “jaunty” with pride.
What I’ve been reading
- HTML is the web.
- How to build a design team in a big organisation. Favourite line is culture before scale.
- “the number of 4-24 year olds reporting a longstanding mental health issue has increased six fold in the last 20 years” ( Source: nominet )
- Making a design pattern library for mental health.
- Design systems solve common problems not easy ones.
- Speed as habit.
- Post-mortem culture hints and tips.
- Non-invasive laser destroys cancer cells.