Weeknotes: S2 #2

Bored of my own ramblings, I’m trying a new condensed version of weeknotes this week.

Three things I did this week:

1. I continued my relentless pursuit of asking every question that comes into my brain, even though it makes me uncomfortable.
2. Organized some really helpful meetings with people outside of my immediate team to understand better the wider landscape we’re in.
3. Sorted out a very lo-fi way to collect feedback, insights and questions that keep popping up so I don’t lose them in my inbox/head. It’s a manual process right now and I’ll have to sort out a better way in the future, but for now it’s something useful.

Three things I struggled with:

1. Homeschooling while working (this is not new or unexpected.)

2. Getting used to relying on email again. We don’t use slack in my team, and I didn’t realize how much I depended on and loved it until now. I barely used my email at CDS, it was only for collecting official things that needed to be preserved, meeting invite replies, and newsletters. We have rocketchat which works for quick convos within our team, and Teams which I haven’t fully grasped yet, but communication outside of our team seems to come in the form of email threads and reply-alls.

3. Trying to keep my day on track. I’ve had a couple of meeting-free days this week and I find those days are most likely to slip away without much to show. I’m quite averse to pointless meetings just for the sake of it, but I find I really miss having a daily standup and weekly rituals — they seemed to help me organize and structure my day into chunks of focused work. I still have meetings here, but not as many and most are ad-hoc instead of recurring. I’m sure that will change as I get more stuck in,.

Three things that inspired me:

1. This article from Dana Chisnell on lessons from joining the public service was so timely and relevant and helpful for me. I’ve re-read it several times this week and keep thinking about lots of points on it. These were my top takeaways that I’m trying to put into action:

• Treat your first year as a research project, expect discomfort and sit with it.(this was immensely helpful in quieting my inner critic who feels I’m taking too long to be effective in my new role.)
• Change happens through building relationships and trust. You are here to make friends.
• Be humble and curious; have urgency but don’t rush things.

2. This podcast series on homelessness — According to Need — from the always amazing 99pi.

3. This short talk on Designing a Culture of Design from spydergrrl — I saw talk about this at an event CDS did a while back and was really impressed by this practical example of doing co-design in government. I also love the idea of no meetings, just design sessions.