The Action is the Juice

For some reason I’m awake at 5am and I didn’t write these on the weekend, so it’s time for weeknotes I guess.

It was a busy week but a good one. These are my highlights from my work, but much more happened.

  • A team added the brownfield land data specification to the service for data providers, so that local planning authorities can check, improve and submit their data.
  • A local planning authority provided all eight datasets in one go.
  • We kicked off some collaborative work with the community managers, joining up two teams across the programme.
  • I worked with Comms and one of our teams to get a blog post out fast, which Mike kindly described as ‘pragmatic’ not dogmatic.
  • I spoke at NL Design Systems Week 2024 about managing a commons – watch the video.

Things are falling in to place. It’s not perfect, there are some kinks in the operating model, but we’re doing the best we can. The ‘why’ is sorted, people get it. The ‘what’ for this quarter (our OKRs) are mostly complementary, although one may be too stretching. The ‘how’ is the tricky part. Some of it’s down to the model, some of it’s down to capability. But we improve what we can, accept what we can’t, and move forward together.

A few lines in a piece on product management really stood out:

Your product, especially if you manage people directly, is not the product. It’s the process that builds the product. Process is not inherently bad. There’s good process and bad process. Good process is any that allows the team to produce better work faster, with joy and elegance. Bad process is anything else.

I prefer a model over a process, but that is so right. It feels like we should be talking about our product operating models more. How your team builds the right thing, then builds the thing right.

Another quote gave me cause to reflect on the ‘strategic’ in my role title:

When people say, “I want someone that’s strategic,” what they’re really saying is, “I want someone that can come up with and articulate a compelling and simple why behind the decisions and the direction of the company and product.” So that’s number one.

And the second piece is, “I want someone that’s going to champion and be a change agent to do things that may be hard but actually best for the long-term interest of the product or company, even though those things are not going to be easy to execute on.”

And I think if you have one without the other, ultimately people are not going to see you as strategic.

A lot of that is about execution, but also the interplay of top-down and bottom-up. Roles and responsibilities decide a lot of that, which is another part of the model. Who sits where, who does what.

Anyway, I’m going away in two weeks, so we’ll see how much entropy there has been when I get back.

Several conversations helped me realise that lots of people in the programme (and probably the department) conflate digital with building products and services. Instead of how I see it: using digital methods (internet-era ways of working) to create meaningful change.

On Wednesday, I had a cappuccino followed swiftly by a three-shot latte in the office. Though it seemed fine at the time, I spent the rest of the day in and out of meetings, had 15 minutes for lunch, and was a bit hollow when I finally finished at 6pm. But I had a nice stroll along Embankment to Blackfriars, went home, finished off a presentation and had a bath. It was a very successful way to recharge the batteries. If we had kids, it’d be a lot harder.

Walking, watching, listening

On Saturday I nearly finished the latest series of Industry. The inclusion of a line from Michael Mann’s Heat crystallised the main themes for me, and it was a nice surprise.

Aside from that, I continue to be obsessed with this beautiful album by Sam Wilkes, Craig Weinrib, and Dylan Day. It really helped me write the presentation over several evenings.

On Sunday we did sections 18 and 19 of the London Loop. It’s over a year since we last walked a section of it! And, wow, this year has just flown by. Anyway, Bar Sicilia in Chingford is surprisingly cute, just like somewhere you’d go for a beer on holiday. Worth checking out.

Bookmarks

· Weeknotes

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