September 17th, 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Kevin’s notes
Witness MVW (minimum viable weeknotes) in action. I’m running full cognitive gas right now with work and school, so my bandwidth for deeper reflection in this space is limited. But it was a constructive week, and I’m grateful as always for the fine folk I’m privileged to work alongside.
Only new mistakes
This is the mantra (thanks rumon carter). We’ve done enough real-time retros on Parks challenges lately, and we’ve got new momentum and energy for critical delivery goals. Some lightening round personal reflection:
- Be relentless about user value through incremental delivery — do not accept the accumulation of risk through gold plating and big reveals.
- Sometimes command-and-control leadership is useful when deliverables require crystal clear definition and accountability.
- Related: follow-up documentation to meetings with actions. This is probably a head-shaker for many (duh, Kevin), but I’ve been lucky to work in many environments/teams where this wasn’t required.
It’s coming on 6th months but I’m not too proud to admit I’m still learning a lot about management. And that’s ok! I’ve really enjoyed being in these decision-making positions; it’s why I took the gig. Understanding team/resource maturity and crafting appropriate processes which enable the conditions for success is the strategic design challenge, and I’m here for it.
Other things:
- We scored proposals for design discovery with the Environmental Protection Division. We’ll announce next week, but safe to say, I believe we’ve secured the A-team.
- Harry and I did final refinements on our facilitation approach with the watershed stakeholders next week. I’m really looking forward to these sessions!
- I spent time with the GDX team, who’ve been conducting public user research around camping services, reviewing findings and considering recommendations. Presentation Monday, great insights to synthesize with our other buckets of discovery.
- Biohub! Thanks for the presentation Corey and Robin. This is a suite of ENV applications that I’m excited to learn more about, especially as it might relate to a potential public-facing experience. Our sector never ceases to amaze me when it comes to rigorous data collection and analysis for policy; now to leverage that same data as a wider service.
- I sat in on web meetings w/ EPD and vendor; great content design and information architecture work kicking off, love to see the investment in the public-facing content.
- I ate a burger for lunch with a friend/colleague from MCFD, and we swapped stories. Very validating, it turns out it’s never easy anywhere (surprise!).
- And we did a bunch more stuff on work which I believe is still somewhat embargoed from the public domain — maybe we can be transparent about it someday soon?
Whew, now on to Understanding and applying principles of social cognition and decision making in adaptive environmental governance (Decaro et al., 2017). Who am I kidding, I love this stuff.
Jill’s notes
A very productive week that started off with some solid Sunday prep. I’ve been finding lately that without sufficient re-charge and planning on Sundays getting physically into the office on Monday is near impossible (and yes, I realize I’m saying this with only two dependents who have four legs and no school morning chaos).
Weekly run-down
- Had a great morning and lunch with Kevin and Harry in person on Monday, some necessary team bonding time and the high value stuff that makes face to face matter.
- EAO with it’s GDX and Mining partners are making great progress with their Citizen Engagement proposal being funded through the Strategic Initiatives Fund — a CITZ + Telus pot of money. That was a lot of acronyms. If you’re still with me, the work involves focusing on improving our digital engagement tools starting with EAO and re-establishing a governance framework for broader government wide resident engagements. Jess Wade is pushing this over the project set up finish line as she transitions to BC Parks.
- On the GDX front, loving the direction that David Hume and team looped me in with respect to clarififying and unifying our messaging. More details on that later as we work more closely with our CAS colleagues.
- I sat in on the New York Times Agile MeetUp with Jonathan Smart (author of Sooner, Safer, Happier. I quickly picked up the audiobook and I am halfway through. So far, engaging and lots that I can empathize with.
- Procurement my old friend. Stepped in last minute to evaluate and was reminded the immense talent our vendor partners have. Excellent proposals.
- Re-connected with Amy Kirtay on the concept of Modernization Teams and how we can achieve better outcomes with the behemoths that are our legacy systems in government. On legacy, some interesting topics to come on this to be shared more broadly shortly.
- Briefed our executive and prepped some materials to internally launch our digital strategy. As much as I’d love to take it public, we will be iteratively taking the issues and work within public by default as much as possible (getting closer…).
- Internally, I caught up with Sid Tobias, Rachel Greenspan, and Aaron Unger. I always learn something new. As mentioned above, we had a great demo of the BC BioHub project from Corey Erwin and Robin Munro. I followed up with some areas of collaboration and opportunities to connect them more deeply within the BC Gov digital community.
- Outside the gov ecosystem, I’m always grateful to connect with our partners and this week shared stories with several. It’s certainly a tough market for securing talent everywhere.
- I got my computer back from the shop!!! Yay, didn’t realize how much of a Mac person I really was until 6 weeks of Windows 10.
Lots of time with Parks that Kevin outlines perfectly. We are finding balance and building capacity, not at all an easy task. My only regret this week — starting a cascade of dogs being lifted onto their owners laps in jest during what turned into and EPIC rally speech by Mr. rumon carter… Oops! I should have known it was going to be inspirational.
Finally, with the shift in weather, I have now have two muddy and amazingly happy dirt mops making me grateful we don’t have carpet.
