I enjoyed the quiet days at the start of the year, and while the sparkle of Christmas is lovely, I also appreciated the space and calm after the decorations came down.
Along with colleagues I made a start on our plans for the next financial year. Going into 2024-25, we have an opportunity to simplify and align our objectives, finance, and reporting structures, so that they show a clearer line of sight between the products and services we run and the outcomes we enable for patients and frontline staff. That means paying more attention to metrics that we can influence, but not entirely control. We have to let go of the certainty of hitting a fixed target in return for the possibility of making a bigger difference.
The spreadsheet template we’d been given for business planning wasn’t really working for me, so on the first Friday I opened a Word document and started to draft a more freeform background paper. I shared that paper with my portfolio leadership team and got valuable feedback that helped to refine it. On Tuesday and Wednesday of the second week back, I cleared my diary of most meetings and worked in the Leeds office with Marie and Yemi to start filling out the spreadsheet. I’m convinced we got a lot further, faster by being in the same place and checking in at regular intervals through the day.
I regretted not having set clearer expectations for one meeting, which didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. The tactic of “short early conversations” could really have helped. There was a more general lesson for me about how we need to adjust our approach as part of the new NHS England – away from championing our own digital solutions, and towards talking knowledgeably and confidently about the whole of a problem in the context of people’s lives and workplaces. We’ll get there. The best product leaders I’ve known have always had that attitude.
Through the week, I also caught up collectively and individually with members of the team working on our “first contact” discovery. They started with a wide-ranging brief, which they’re unpacking and starting to narrow down. I’m looking forward to how they tell the story of their journey so far at a show and tell next week.
And starting the year as I mean to go on, I got down to the user research lab on the ground floor to observe an interview with a member of the public to inform development of the NHS App. Here’s to keeping up my 2 hours every 6 weeks in 2024.
Matt Edgar writes here 