Weeknote S2E4 — in which I coin a new term

I like to think I practice what I preach, so last week I took some annual leave — after all, I had said It’s OK to do so.

In that week I started building my own cricket club in a twelve foot garden

and enjoyed my son’s baking (perhaps a little too much enjoying, as the other day he said I looked like Daddy Pig…):

Some reflections on my first week back after leave:

• On returning, my inbox and Slack notifications confirmed that my team kept things bubbling away nicely while I was away. I’m lucky that colleagues are in good health and good spirits, and are really very good at their job. In past roles, returning from leave made nervous. I trust with my life, and definitely trust them to do good stuff while I’m not there.
• Personal development in the civil service is full of jargon, a few terms jumped out this week — Delivering at Pace, Managing Difficult Conversations, Making Effective Decisions. Throughout, I was grateful for open dialogue between colleagues, suppliers, and senior stakeholders — and was reminded of the Prime Directive:

“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”

• I heard from former colleagues seeking introductions and a favour. Not only did excellent current colleagues respond quickly despite the crisis, a side benefit of emailing people for help was seeing that a number have set auto-replies to the effect that their spending significant parts of their day on childcare, so may take longer to respond than usual. This was a really touching, honest reminder that for many, The Situation doesn’t just mean working from home, it means being at home trying to work. Close family members are also in a similar position attempting to balance childcare, work, and life in general — it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that we need to be kind and understanding of each others’ context.
• I had two chats with a mentor I’ve been paired with through Cabinet Office’s excellent Race Equality network in a mutual mentoring scheme. I was struck by the generosity of someone with a senior, wide-ranging role sparing time — and more importantly, openly sharing perspective, listening really actively, and giving sage advice. I’ve struggled in the past to get much out of mentoring, I suspect this time will be different.
• This week was one where I helped push something urgent and important across a line — there are of course further lines to cross in the near future, but there’s a definite sense of achievement. That said, focusing on delivery while simultaneously reflecting on whether it’s the right thing to deliver in the right way is a brain-ache — so much so that I think I’ll call it DeliverFlection from now. I’m lucky that my working week gives me space to DeliverFlect, I hope next week I get to do the same next week