Weeknotes S03E02
By: Matt White
Tags: Content Design, Public Speaking, Weeknotes, Delivery, Citizens Advice

Back at it again with my week-noting, when a change to my role happened and it felt bittersweet, so this is in part an ode to my lovely friend and colleague Simon and his awesome content design team.

Content no more

When I joined Citizens Advice almost two years ago, I took on leadership of the delivery function but also the content design team. This was an entirely new discipline to take on leadership of for me, but thankfully I had the wonderful Simon Kaplan doing all the hard work — I just had to make sure he was OK and had everything he needed.

Well this week, Simon was promoted to Head of Content Design (a role created after a re-shuffling of some of the customer journey leadership team) and I could not be happier for him. It’s absolutely bittersweet though because it’s been an absolute pleasure to work closely with Simon over the last couple of years. He’s worked so hard and has such an incredible dedication to the clients and advisers we serve as well as his team, so it’s with a tear in my eye I now say goodbye to him as one of my team. Luckily I still have him nearby as he joins the customer journey leadership team as my peer.

Reflecting on my 2 years

I always like to make time to reflect when significant changes happen in my career, to remind myself of what I have achieved but more importantly what the team have achieved and some of that includes (in my opinion):

Masses of recruitment, including shifting our dependency on fixed term contracts, stabalising the team in substantive posts and lots of internal promotions and external hires

Reorganising the team, introducing a new role to take on strategic leadership across advice content projects

Introducing new content design principles for the team and encouraging more sharing

Raised the profile of our work across the organisation and started to define the role of content design in product teams (a work in progress)

Battled the brexit and then COVID-19 storms together (holding on to each other and keeping each other going)

Improve collaboration with colleagues in other disciplines including our expert advice teams, user research, delivery and product design

Continued to maintain and develop our advice content more broadly, responding to user feedback and working on the accuracy across the vast amount of advice content we are responsible for

And overall keeping the good advice content ship going, delivering masses and masses of new and updated content to help people find a way forward. It’s emotional thinking about the numbers of people we have helped and I’ll always be very grateful for the opportunity to play a role in leading the wonderful content design team.

My future role

I started to think about my role moving forward now that I no longer have content design in my area — and I’m excited! Earlier this year delivery managers from technology and expert advice came together with my team and I’ve not had the time, space and focus to bring that team together in the right way. Luckily Jo has been doing such a great deal of work with the delivery community of practice that I think a lot of stuff I’d normally want to achieve (feeling like a team, defining purposes, roles etc) has happened somewhat organically through the community of practice work, but I’m looking forward to (at some point) having space to think about how I can build on the great work already done and what delivery at Citizens Advice means in the new year!

Public speaking

I did a quick lightning talk at the organisation’s show and tell session about remote working on Thursday, sharing what we’ve done in Customer Journey to support our team working remotely. I am not a very confident public speaker and get quite anxious about it (which a lot of people find hard to believe — it is true) and I got all worked up about it and am frustrated with how I did so that’s annoying. I wont beat myself up about it too much though and will let it go — in the grand scheme of things, it does not matter.

I also did a little presenting at the customer journey away afternoon on Thursday, giving an update on our latest staff survey results. Leanne then introduced a session for the team to help us with action planning and what good would look like against some of the themes we have scored well on, but have some ‘detractor’ comments about.

Areas from our staff survey that we did some work on at the away afternoon

The time we spend together as a team is always so nice — people generated loads of great ideas we can take forward and so I’m looking forward to bringing work on those forward with the rest of the extended leadership team in the coming months.

The away afternoon also had a section where we spent time reflecting on what we were proudest as well as an opportunity to thank each other. Reading through the jamboards was very emotional and acted as a helpful reminder of how much we have to be proud of as a team. We have achieved a huge amount during a really trying year, with such a focus on delivering for our clients and advisers. A very proud moment.

Could not agree more Giulia

Friday

Fridays are generally my time to catch up on the week that was, but today was a bit hectic — I chaired our weekly extended leadership team meeting where we discuss cross team things like wellbeing, staff survey, strategy, line management things and our EDI and anti-racism work.

I then had to record our weekly leadership team video — each member of the extended leadership team records a weekly update for the team, giving a round up of goings on, what we have been discussing and pointing to any important things we need people to do, as well as a question for some engagement like what’s your favourite lockdown discovery. I guess that was more public speaking for me — brutal!

I finished the day doing an end of year retrospective with Jo in my team using this festive themed retro, but tailoring it slightly. Jo and I catch up weekly and in the before times we used to have an offsite 90 minute monthly catch up to discuss broader development and objectives. These have not happened enough during remote working times so I was glad to make the space for some big thinking chats.

I think Jo and I work well together, so I enjoyed taking time out to reflect on all the wonderful things she has achieved this year. Particular highlights for me include:

her leadership of the delivery community of practice as well as leading the cross community of practice for most of the year

her work on remote interviewing which went far and wide, helping loads of others across the org (and twitter`) learn from her experience

her work supporting her team through difficult years — reflected in lots of amazing feedback from them and thank yous in the away afternoon yesterday

her support in taking on numerous cross team initiatives, being a genuine and authentic leader whilst being so brilliant at her job

Jo also qualified as a coach this week so I’m super proud of her for that achievement.

Weekly watches

This week I have mostly been watching:

Defending Jacob on Apple TV — it’s so expensive looking, and a bit of an apple advert but I love Michelle Dochery and will watch her in anything.

Re-watching Real Housewives of New York — the first few seasons are on Netflix but if you want to dive in and watch all of the franchises (like I have) then join HayU.

This weekend

I have big plans to see some lovely humans for walks, and to meet this incredibly adorable ball of floof for the first time!