October 8th, 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Jill’s notes
I survived my first whole week of Kevin’s school break. A lot transpired, so it felt a bit odd without my go-to for second rationale thoughts. Both Sam and Harry did a fantastic job this week, reminding me we are a high-performing team.
Harry is full-on into BC Parks, his proactive and thoughtful approach to visual design is refreshing and already evident in the published repo — a flavour of BC Gov Bootstrap.
Sam continued to impress stewarding the launch of the EPD intranet this week. He also started his Google UX Design Certificate coursework as we look to provide him with more hands-on practitioner experience and growth opportunities.
Weekly rundown
This week was a blast, with four main events:
ONE — #DigitalBC Livestream: I was pleased to guest host the BC Gov’s #DigitalBC Livestream with Dai (pronounced Die) Vaughan in Part 1 of Legacy Modernization. My takeaways: culture, team funding models, and talent. What a pleasure to lead this discussion. On another note, what a humbling way to watch your habits on camera — let’s say I’m grateful for Ari and his kind and constructive speaker coaching. Ready for the next one
Let’s finish with a few quotes from Dai:
Technology is not the problem, they can easily be fixed — it’s the culture around commission and maintenance that causes trouble.
Changing…rethinking…reorganizing…all points to how legacy leadership is real root of problem, not legacy systems
TWO — Digital Era Leadership for BC Parks: I spent time with the Parks Leadership team discussing digital era leadership and its fit into their context. We discussed proposed competencies (I love these), leadership types, and of course, human-centred design. Kudos to the team for taking the time out of their dedicated three-day session to invite new ideas into the discussion. It proved lively as well, with rich conversation and active participation. Not always easy in a virtual session at the end of the day.
THREE — Interviews: I was a panellist on multiple interviews this week for the Director Digital Services role at EAO (my former position). I was so impressed. All the interviews were enjoyable, and I learned something new from each one. It’s exciting to see the maturity and talent in the competition. Most importantly, I enjoyed a full day in person with my colleagues. Despite it being one of those days where it felt like “I didn’t get anything done,” it reminded me why it’s important to connect face-to-face. I had a great day, and it was much more fulfilling than getting a lot done on my own. Oh and if you haven’t tried Caramel Chicken from Foo you are seriously missing out — thanks Geoff.
FOUR — Service Transformation Branch Show and Tell: Sadly, our executive show and tell was cancelled as things are a bit of a moving target, but I wanted to share our distilled approach below. More to come on the moving target in the coming weeks with what will surely be some exciting announcements.
The “what if” handcuffs
My takeaway this week was that sometimes you need to stop talking about the hard stuff and write it all down. Throw it in a shared doc, a Miro board or on a wall IRL. Twice this week, I took time with our teams to write it down. It seems obvious, but how often do you get stuck mushing through problems, solutioning on the fly, and constantly saying “what if…” or “have we considered…”? It is exhausting. The solution seems obvious: write it down. In case you need someone to say it:
Stop. Write-it down. Be curious. Ask questions. Do not say no. Ask for more detail. No judgement.
The result for me this week was a restful and amazing weekend (yes, I’m writing this on the holiday Monday after two days of way too much food, shhh). It’s all because we released those what if’s into the wild Friday. Simple and powerful. Ready for the short week.
Kevin’s notes
Out of office — he is returning on October 27th, 2021, leaving Jill to solo design for a dangerous few weeks.
