#weeknote

Work

UKGovCamp happened. Pubcamp was of course the most fun part of it. :) I made some sticker design and two will be actually made, woop!

I wrapped up coaching with two of the volunteers. -> I need to write a longer, separate blogpost.

After some issues with attendance and effectiveness of our regular governance meetings (plus new ones being introduced to patch some gaps anyway...) I am trying to move my team to a more async mode of working.

I was a guest facilitator at a retro for another team, pretended to be a UR while pre-testing a protoype we will showing users at the start of Feb

said goodbye to two team members, one moving teams and another leaving CS zone completely :'(

did and analysed a survey from my fellow DMs about learning and skills, to be presented back next Tuesday

Food

Jam Delish - one of the current London 핫플, I went on a whim after a recommendation on work Slack. I only had two starters + plantain (+a flaming cocktail...핫 indeed :) ) as I went alone but I will be back and try more. The 'wings' were possibly my least favourite, the texture just wasn't it...

Other

went to see M3GAN - very fun campy horror, as expected

finished I'm Glad My Mum Died (finally... not an easy read if you can relate, despite short chapters and uncomplicated, conversational prose)

finished my elephant teapot handbuild (glazing in few weeks) and cast making

Work

Pretty busy two weeks work-wise.

The team continues to struggle a bit with the new standup but after the retro most have started reviewing the board more frequently and ensuring things are updated/moved etc. There’s been quite a lot of movement in the ‘thank you’ doc I’ve set up so I think eventually we can get away from the need to go through every card or every person and focus on things that are the most significant or could use help. I think there’s also more work for me to do on cards getting created and split out and facilitating conversations around them on a daily basis, I’ll think more about that next week. 

I’m also collecting some more info on work completed, mostly categories for now (we’re meant to be doing 20% of maintenance but in reality it seems to be around 60-70%...) but working up to cycle and lead time. I’ve been avoiding it because I have a reckon that

a) it won’t show very healthy things, and

b) it will highlight things we don’t have a way of optimising/will to push them anyway,

…but let’s try. 🤷‍♀️ With any luck it may help escalate the issues around structure and remit we’ve been talking about to Leads and SMT anyway. 

On the bright side, the new healthcheck based on a values exercise seems to be working in that the responses are much less generic and it’s easy to pull out actions. I may write up the process of doing this as a separate blogpost here or on LinkedIn. 

We kicked off a deep dive into one of the content formats on GOV.UK. So far the designers have been looking at how it was used before and relationship with things like the campaigns platform and other exemptions. Personally, the need for it seems very unclear and I hope connecting with a team that just completed their discovery on content formats overall will help us think more of just retiring it or merging with a different type and making it more flexible. 

Work-related events

Product Unconference - I mostly wanted to listen. It was nice to have a chat with a couple of people I’ve not seen since the pre-pandemic times and catch up. Hopefully more of that at the govcamp! The ‘working without a DM’ session highlighted how dysfunctional most teams are… I am very thankful for my current working situation and my great PM, but I’ve definitely felt a lot of the pain from the other side before haha. Altho people talking about their DMs being significantly more optimistic when reporting to higher ups was quite a shock, out of the things spoken about this was something I’ve never encountered. :)) 

DM away day for our programme - With two guest speakers and some group work this was a packed day that I think was quite effective in re-energising most attendees… It was definitely useful to have the time to talk about community things and agree actions for the next couple of months, and between setting up a survey to collect learning/skills/observation needs and writing up a thing about how I do health checks (including examples from a couple of other people) I definitely have new found energy to do things. \m/ But also, an ever-increasing antipathy towards the word ‘playbook’....

Making

My pottery class restarted!! \o/ With two out of 8 classes done I have an easter bowl ready for bisque and underglazes and half a teapot complete. The pace is pretty slow and all the techniques explained as quite a few people are brand new to pottery so my expectation of it building directly on the Beginners class is not fully realised. I’m in two minds about it because it’s nice and relaxing, but on the other hand a lot of the time is spent on things like I feel like I’ve got covered, especially considering I’ve done several drop-ins. 

Speaking of drop-ins, my nerikomi plant pot is also just waiting for glazing and firing. I had a mishap with some paper stuck in it so fingers crossed and prayers for it not exploding. 🙏🙏🙏🙏 I also went to a different class, to explore making plaster moulds and using slip. I will make a separate review after part 2 in a couple of weeks but overall I was amazed by how easy it was. If I can find some place to work with casts and slip more (my studio’s current drop-ins don’t really have it available), I definitely will. 

With this, my drop-ins are all used up and I think I will not be buying more before March considering all my other crafting commitments. 😅

On Friday evening I went to the first out of five classes about laser cut jewellery. It's much easier than expected, with most difficulties being Windows and trackpad related haha. I've got to see if there's adecent vector drawign app for iPad.

Eating

I’m trying to eat less meat this year. Giving it up entirely is unrealistic (I went to Berenjak and oh my god the chicken was so good) but exploring more veggie options is so far very fun - even if it’s just ordering tofu version of drunken noodles from Rosa’s. ;) 

Last 2 weeks highlights: 

Unity Diner - 2nd try, still so so good! I realised I’ve only had chicken approximates but one of my friends ordered the ‘lobster’ mac’n’cheese which was similarly uncanny in texture, and another the ‘tofish’ and both were very happy with their choices. I’ll probably go back very soon. 

What the Pitta - entirely incidental trip after I got annoyed with either of the Prets by the office not stocking the new NODuja range or Jambon-buerre (sssh!). The wrap was very tasty, massive, and ready pretty much immediately so this is a perfect place for lunch. 

Holy Cow! - a Friday night delivery order, inc their take on black daal.  Honestly not too impressed, will go for veggie options from usual Indian takeouts in the future. :(

Looking

New Black Vanguard (tbqh the Bitter Nostalgia room with collabs by Hyangmok Baik and Adébayo Bolaji was my favourite thing in Saatchi that day tho)

at work

i ran a part 1 of team values workshop in place of a retro, i wrote it up and i'm waiting for feedback from my PM before proceeding. trying to make the process at leat a little bit async. this will be very useful for reviewing healthcheck questions

changed standup format and my method of terrorising the team. I mentioned before that we basically have either an icebreaker or a mole every standup with points system, I got copies of Saboteur for the two winners. :) this Q, inspired by someone on LinkedIn, to focus on collaboration I only pull up the board and ask 'what help do you need today?' & people raise their hands if they have something to say - there's a points system again for every help request or thank you (they score each other). we shall see how it goes. it's a bit of a challenge as the team is on a quieter side but going through the motions and treating standup as a reporting meeting is kind of useless to me...

stole some design system day stickers and made a creature (i've swapped the blue and green ears since taking the pic because too much of the colour on the same side was annoying me.....)

in my own time

horror show @ somerset house

very good exhibit, the first part is probably the weakest through sheer repetition (if you've been to any exhibit about uk music, counterculture, or fashion you'd have seen the same pics of Bowie, Vivienne Westwood etc) but gets interesting in the 2 later sections with lots of cool art, props, and historical artefacts, plus one of the few video rooms where i actually sat through the entire presentation (feat Aphex Twin, Ghostwatch, Radiohead, and more). they also screen the entirety of Derek Jarman's Blue!

strange clay @ hayward

i nearly missed this, i need to be less of a dunce about exhibits i want to see in 2023. many spectacular and inspiring* pieces from various artists but my highlight was the Lindsay Meyrick room with Till Death Do Us Part (1987) installation.

In Mendick's imagined household, which she has rendered from below-ground perspective, we encounter teeming groups of ceramic vermin: navy slugs are at war in the kitchen, an octopus erupts from the toilet, wasps and moths infest the hallway, spiders crawl through water pipes and cockroaches plan a cyber attack in the living room while mice and rats feast at the dining table. As it highlights the ambivalence and complexity of domestic relations, Mendick's tragicomic installation also reveals the irony and humour of situations that might otherwise be unbearable. 'Our houses are personal worlds - microcosms of hell, bliss, or loneliness,' the artists explains.

i'm reading: Gideon the Ninth. it's ok, a bit silly in places in that YA way and the cast is way too big (and multi-named) for me to follow very well in some scenes but i will get the other parts of the series.

i'm watching: Copenhagen Cowboy. classic NWR so far, in the best way possible.

i ate: finally visited Barbary (mostly because my haircut appointment was 1 minute down the road) and was not disappointed! quite pricy (single nan for £5 💀) but a treat should cost i suppose... i had the brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and the aforementioned nan with a spinach dip. i'd recommend the latter three if sticking to veg, altho maybe next time i'll just try different dips instead of going for mains. they only have bar seating around the kitchen which is not my favourite but did ensure super snappy service and really is ideal for solo dining.

next week

i'm going to see Tár, and maybe M3GAN (either it's getting a very limited release or some cinemas have not put it up yet).

dinner with pals at Berenjak. lunch with some of the team at Unity Diner. maybe another team lunch at Eataly.

first meeting of a Delivery Leadership peer group.

my pottery classes restart, and I have the first session (of 2) of mould making course.

This week was less fun and more filled with meetings than I'd care for. Including at least two that started with 'do you have 5 minutes' and lasted for over an hour. I get that people are trying to cram stuff in before they leave on 19th and before the year end but... mercy. I'm still burnt out from 2020. 😭

I'm swinging wildly from being quite pleased about what I've done with Team 2 to being depressed about how underbaked some of the processes are, how messy the backlog is, and so on. Fortunately the new PM is helping now and my mantra of reducing WIP may actually get somewhere, and they will have a new DM joining just before the day in the office. \o/

On the bright side I made some notes from User Research for Team 1 and heard pop-up research results from the side project which has now finished. We also have an emerging solid plan for Team 1's work in the first Q and some ideas for making our programme check-ins different and more effective.

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The unexpected snow that paralysed UK transport as usual got in the way of a nice dinner with a friend. I still managed to join the

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If I ever find the strength to be a Lead or in the position to influence org-level roadmaps again (Doubt.) this is definitely something I'd like to try:

It seems so obivous now that I've seen it, I am bewildered why anyone bothered with the Gantt-y spreadsheet lines. 🤯

It might go well along Vaugh Tan's Boris framework as well, just to make sure the things NOT being done are super visible? https://vaughntan.org/unpacking-boris

This is a good vid:

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The unexpected snow that paralysed UK transport as usual got in the way of a nice dinner with a friend. I still managed to join the chocolate tasting group this month (we did bars originating from Tanzania) and use words like 'coarse', 'sour cherry', 'fruity but without a sour note at the end, a bit like apricot or banana' and hear other people describe stuff as 'the bin', 'sick', 'horrigyingly cloying'. One of the most pressured environments I've ever been in for sure. 😂 The chocolate in those sessions ranges between 70-85% so they day after in a bout of foolhardiness I went for a 100% hot choc at Knoops* and instead of something inexplicably disgusting I got a cup of hot, watery disappointment.

I failed miserably on the cheese advent calendar/cheese tasting front and mixed all my wonderful cheeses together to create (in all fairness pretty amazing) pasta cheese bakes. Farewell pre/post make model, we hardly knew ye. :'(

*I try to use Duck Duck Go more but even with string 'hot chocolate new row' and 'hot chocolate new row covent garden' this place was unfindable and I had to go with Google again. Sorry that I'm addicted to convenience I guess. -\(-__-)/-

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Puppet History made me cry.

I lost several more hours in Hades - it's way too easy to do just another run.

And of course I'm playing Witcher 3 again. I forgot just HOW MUCH empty space to run across there is in it. The writing remains gut-wrenching and I already found two new quests so overall I am having a very good time tho.

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NEXT WEEK

I feel like I've not watched a genuinely good film in ages. Maybe I'll try to change that. Maybe I'll just play games I've played before for 100 hours. 🙄

I might get started on a year-end personal retrospective and a personal plan. I've been asking the people I coach about theirs so it's only fair, right?