So that’s it I have as of today officially left that strange collection of lots of different bits of government that is called the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service Modernisation and Reform Team.
There are some things I know I’ll miss, and somethings I don't think I will. But moving on provides a time for reflection of what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown. And thankfully a lot of that is capture in my weeknotes, where I wrote them publicly or indeed in my diary — though strangle that process is one I find harder to keep than this.
I think I’m a fan of google and now Mac’s I’m definitely going to miss it — having just started using Outlook again — it feels very 1995
I’m moving into the Future Farming and Countryside Programme and will be doing Communities, Connection, Nurture and Wellbeing type stuff. Though my brain has really wanted to get going I have deliberately not started to explore those spaces or the Programme — not that any of them are new but I have wanted to sit in this time and recognise the ending — there will be plenty of time for the beginning next week. I also know that the shape of what I will do will change as the context shifts.
So this week we had the Reform Champions Reform Hack which was focused on the Purpose and Principles for the Reform Champions. The ever brilliant Nour Sidawi was doing the facilitating and I was supporting from the back — doing things like breakout rooms and playing music from
There is something about being a faciltator or in deed a facilitator's spare pair of hands — which means it’s really hard to be objective about how it went — you not the mechanics much more that the feeling and you are always looking to improve which for me means I’m really self critical. But from all the feedback I’ve seen and been sent the feeling form the people that attended was a good one — which is great. My main criticism is that I could have done with a way of chatting to Nour on my phone (it was not playing ball). I need my phone because I need no other distractions on the laptop when doing something like that.
On Wednesday at the Reform Champions Topic session we had a session from the Interoperability Programme (the HR side of things) it’s made up of Data, Estates, HR and IT) it was about One Civil Service.
I also made it to OneTeamGov breakfast again which was nice — we had a conversation in the round to begin with — I really like that. It’s made me start to ask the perineal David question of ‘Why do we measure?’ I dont think I’m going to get into this now.
The task now is to switch of the laptop and do some tidying up — I don't have a clear desk policy — a clean desk yes — though it’s dusty in parts but a sorting out is required and now is a good time, a natural time in which to do it.
I sorted out some of the notes I had kept yesterday when we were having tec issues — it’s been quite a year who knew I’d be doing all those things, indeed could do all those things. It has definitely had its ups and downs. Definitely more ups than downs. That said up and down is rather binary and that is not how the world works — it’s a very lazy short hand and on that note I found my systems pebble again.
This is one face (showing how we like to think things are)
And this is the other (showing how things more are)
There’s a whole story here about the pebble not having a boundary and also very easily consider to have one.
Till next week.
