Outside of work, most of my spare time at the moment is spent packing up the house ready for a move. I’m at that stage where I’m starting to question how we’ve accumulated quite so much stuff, whilst also trying to work out what can safely be packed away without us suddenly needing it the next day. Has anyone seen my hat and gloves?
So, there’s plenty of change happening at home, and quite a bit at work too.
Looking back
It’s been another varied week.
A fair bit of my time has gone into implementing our organisational change:
- helping colleagues interview for posts
- getting interview questions ready for roles in my own team
Good recruitment takes time and consideration. You want the process to be fair, and you want the questions to give people a proper opportunity to show what they can do.
On the delivery side, a lot of the focus has been on improving some of the apps we’ve released recently, particularly:
- complaints
- requests for information
- member enquiries
Going live isn’t the end of the job. It gives us real user data, real feedback and a much better understanding of where we can make things better. Alongside that, we’ve been getting the data archive in place for the old systems these apps replaced.
We’ve continued to move forward with waste services too, working closely with our waste colleagues to ensure we deliver improvements to residents and staff.
It’s all good
One of the things that continues to impress me is the appetite for change across Luton. The engagement from services has been great.
People are prepared to:
- get involved
- challenge things
- work with us to improve services
Technology obviously plays a part in what we do, but it’s that willingness to work differently that makes change happen. This was highlighted in a recent retrospective about our corporate apps.
Jayvik and I have also been progressing our social value work with Netcall, with an offer to train two care leavers in low-code development. I’m particularly pleased about this one.
There’s something really positive about the work we’re doing, creating opportunities for people to develop new skills and potentially discover a career they might not otherwise have considered.
It was also good to meet colleagues from Islington and talk about CRM. Different council, but many of the same challenges. It’s always useful to:
- compare notes with other councils
- share what we’re learning
- realise that many of the problems we’re tackling aren’t unique to Luton
It’s complicated
Organisational change inevitably brings a bit of uncertainty.
At the same time as keeping existing work moving, we’re:
- recruiting into new roles
- supporting colleagues through interviews
- starting to think about how the new team comes together
There’s a lot happening at once, but there’s also a real opportunity to:
- build on what we’ve learned over the last couple of years
- make sure we have the right skills and roles around the work we want to do next
Looking forward
There’s plenty to carry on with.
We’ll keep improving the services we’ve already released, rather than treating go-live as the finishing line. We’ll also, continue the work with waste services and keep moving the organisational changes forward.
We are also starting to look more at our general enquiries application, which is intended to deal with ‘everything else’.
We’ve set aside a day to look at our pipeline and project management tooling. We’ve built a proof of concept and spoken to a number of colleagues. Now, we want to make some changes before we start using it for real.
I also have a meeting to look further into Netcall’s CX Digital product and how we can use it for chatbots and WhatsApp. Our aim is to bring customer conversations together across different channels and services.
Hopefully I’ll also make some progress on the mountain of boxes at home too.
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