Weeknotes S01E00
By: Mike Cavaye
Tags: Weeknotes, Governance, Something New

[A mid week intro setting up for later]

TL;DR: Starting weeknotes so look out for them. It’s part of embedding changes in our governance. So get excited.

I’ve been meaning to start writing weeknotes for a while, and then guiding the team into using them as a good mechanism to keep connected in our messy, complex increasingly asymmetric world. Our shift to remote working as the norm requires us to shift how we make what we do visible, how we share how we feel on things and importantly how we have time to regularly reflect.

This is going to be one way for me. Worth noting from the outset that this writing doesn’t necessarily provide fully considered view but more an avenue for discussion and comment so I encourage you to get involved.

There is a better way

We’ve been spending a run of time recently thinking about how we do things differently formalising our shift to a digital approach to governance - check this out as a great set of aligned thinking :) Building and enabling digital teams (nhsproviders.org). During the covid period we shifted swiftly to changed governance and now we need to applying the learning and adjust to ensure we land understood behaviours and bringing people on the journey. This isn’t about replacing tried and tested practices — more adjusting to nature of the digital world we work in where iteration, learning and adaptation are key.

Emerging Principles

So weeknotes is going to be my personal shift as a very practical step ( openness and visibility) on applying some emerging draft ‘guardrail’ principles. This builds on some great work we did with Public Digital for our Children’s Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Transformation at an ICS level. Let me know what you think:

· Avoid duplication of effort through collaboration

· Run Show & Tell as the primary governance mechanism

· Welcome change and remain flexible

· Commit to developing skills and networks in partnership

· Base decisions on evidence through ongoing research with users

· Ensure digital inclusion is at the heart of what we do

· Safety and quality is everyone's business - Assure as you go

· Over-communicate on what we are doing and learning

· Use popup governance to resolve issues

There may be more…

There are of course some challenges we are learning from

· Uncertainty has seemed to rise (albeit for me this is uncertainty that was always there — we’re just being more honest) but this gives us flexibility to pivot to meet needs but….

· We need adjust and find better the ways of managing the tsunami of requests (especially the last minute ones)

· Devolving autonomy to teams is not easy and we need to build trust and understanding

· We need to start speaking the same language — what words do we connect with? e.g. Do we understand the difference between portfolio management and project/delivery management?

Again there will be more (I’m sure you all have some to mention)…

Lots to do in this space and a lot of improvements we can make.

So back to weeknotes — My intentions

I’m taking some inspiration from Andy Callow here

Write in a more concise manner than I generally talk Reflect on what happened and how/what I felt since last time I wrote weeknotes — what did I achieve, enjoy and would have liked to do more of. Let you know who I’ve been talking to outside the organisation What i’m looking forward to next week Celebrate what needs celebrating with enthusiasm and openness Give you some insight into what I’m reading and a few thoughts

So get excited and look out end of the week for what I’ve been up to and we will see how this goes.