Week 1 on GOV.UK
That was week one of being Deputy Director of GOV.UK Portfolio Delivery. Here I am barely keeping my head above water but in good spirits about it all.
Felt the love for GOV.UK since sharing that I was joining the team. Having arrived, I got some lovely welcomes from GOV.UK folks and from the senior leadership across GDS. Good to meet new people and see familiar faces doing new and exciting things.
Landed in an amazingly talented senior management team in GOV.UK. Been feeling very inspired by their delivery focus, positivity, ambition, real skills, and total lack of fussiness. Serious peeps and lovely into the bargain.
Special shout for Deb (Head of Delivery) and Rachel (DD for Governance and Assurance) who are also new starts in that team; we’ve been sticking close to one another and their check-ins throughout the week have been a massive help.
Even with the reassurances, I’ve felt like I’m at the back of the pack, puffing hard to keep up. It’s a team game so highly motivated to pick up some substantive actions and deliver them quick-smart next week.
GOV.UK Show and Tell and the first set of check-ins with teams covering Brexit, COVID, Accounts, Starting a business were the highlights that I was hoping they’d be. Felt like a real privilege to see and hear about the work done and coming up. Was already pretty in awe of these folks but after meeting them that esteem has reached new heights. What a lot they’ve been through in the last few years. And still fired up!
Had first 1:1s with my 4 new line reports. Hello again SOP, my old ‘friend’.
Loads of focus throughout the week on recruitment and roadmaps. Reading across those. What’s doing, what needs done, who’s here and who do we need. Recruitment is a challenge and likely to be the priority for a good spell. Optimistic about our chances, as a result of chats with the recruitment teams, and knowing about the things we’ll be inviting people to work on.
Learned about being on-call for GOV.UK. Added to escalation lists. Serious stuff! That’ll wake you up!
Special guest at the GDS All-Staff was Tom Read who is going to be our new CEO. I’ve never worked with Tom, I know him only by reputation and some wise words I’ve read. Now hearing from him directly, it all added up. There’s loads of positivity around his appointment at GDS.
Lots of meetings basically. All meetings result in actions. Most of the actions are reading. Which is good because I like reading. But it’s a mountain to climb.
All that work reading has competition though. In the little downtime I got, I spent it tucked up with Obama’s ‘A Promised Land’. If you’ve had the pleasure of hearing him reading on BBC you’ve not heard it all. Took a lot of reassurance from his reflections on being a ditherer, an over-thinker, struggling to balance work and life; things he’d only started to figure out as late on as when he was running for the presidency. A real leader.
The Cinematic Orchestra’s been doing it for me this week.
Home schoolin’ though :( Respect them teachers!
Bon weekend y’all.
