I can’t believe I’m in my third week already! It’s been a whirlwind and feeling like I’ve been here forever, both at the same time. It’s certainly been eventful, last week we were targeted by a phishing scam (credit to team who jumped on this very quickly and no damage was done) and this week an impromptu power cut in the local area, so affecting multiple sites for us. The upside was I learnt our business continuity processes and got to know our facilities team very well in short period of time! Apart from that, the last fortnight has been about:
- Myself! Feels a bit uncomfortable to say that, but also important. I know how easy it is to get sucked in and let the job be all consuming – so in an effort to both lead by example with my teams, and start off on the right foot, I have tried to prioritise and protect time for myself – blocking out lunch breaks in my diary and making time for some regular exercise. I accept they won’t always hold, but its better than none.
- Luton Leaders – this is the group who are leading Luton council – Heads of service up to the Chief Exec, and I attended my first of quarterly meetings. It was a great chance to meet lots of new colleagues and I even ended up being dressed as a Xmas tree…but also valuable conversations around finance and our need for robust governance, with a little challenge thrown in from me about how we ensure we are robust but equally have the agility to innovate and improve.
- On a more disappointing note, we got the news that the Vauxhall plant in Luton is set for closure. This is a huge blow to the local area, as it’s a big employer with many families in Luton having had generations working for Vauxhall. With my CDIO hat on, I am starting to think about what role we might have to play in supporting these employees with new digital skills and across the system in creating roles for the future.
- On a more exciting note but related, I was invited by the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bedfordshire to join their Industry Advisory Committee. Luton Council and the University of Bedfordshire have a really exciting Civic Agreement in place and the role of the Committee is to advise on the university’s curriculum development and employability of students through discussing current trends and needs in the employment market. I’ll be attending my first committee meeting on 16th December – more about that in the next blog post!
- Getting to know more of my team. I kicked off workshops this week, with each of the individual service areas, getting to know the individuals, learning what works well and identifying areas of improvement from small wins to blue sky thinking. It’s been a good review point for the teams as well as they are 2 months into being insourced.
- And finally, I’ve spent some time getting familiar with my budgets and thinking about the priorities in line with this.
- We’ve got two roles out to recruitment – a Principle Project Manager for our tech projects and a Senior Service Designer for our digital services.
And to end this blog post, a thank you for all the love off the back of my first one. This is all very much out of my comfort zone but it encouraged me to keep going! And also a big thanks to Opama, Ben, Annie, Dave, Will, and the LocalGovDrupal community for various bits and pieces of the last fortnight.