Five days working in the Leeds hub, including an in-person meeting of the Digital Urgent & Emergency Care (UEC) leadership team.
Looking at my diary, I can see the shape of the week, with Monday and Tuesday salami-sliced into 30 minute calls, many of them one-to-ones – rewarding and exhausting in equal measure. Leadership is a conversation. Also, on Tuesday evening my wife dragged me to the cinema, where I managed to stay awake through the whole of ‘Poor Things’: artful, problematic, nonsense on stilts.
Wednesday was the team meeting day. I was glad we’d snagged one of the few meeting rooms on the 5th floor that has natural light. There was a lot of shuttling up and down in the lift with colleagues not normally based at the office who needed to be escorted in and out. Once settled in the room, we started with a retrospective facilitated by Andrew, a delivery manager from another team. He’d come up with a great exercise to get us drawing, thinking, and talking. Out of that we now have a backlog of areas to build on and work on, which we’ll discuss at future team meetings. Brin gave an update on the 111 Review, we ran through our input to the 2024-25 business planning process, and after lunch we focused on our number one risk as a portfolio – the high vacancy rate our teams are carrying. I have set a target to bring that rate down to a more sustainable level by the middle of the next financial year, but there’s no doubt that in the meantime it will limit our capacity to work on everything we’d like to prioritise.
Thursday was a little less fragmented than the start of the week. A catch-up with Victoria, who has been leading my team’s contribution to the Pharmacy First initiative, which was announced to launch on January 31. I’m proud of how the team was able to re-plan their work to take on board the emergent requirements of this ambitious new approach, which will definitely make things better for patients seeking help for common conditions. Then the Access to Urgent Care Board, where I presented with Jeff, the senior product manager leading the discovery team on the Patient Experience of First Contact. We had a good discussion and a healthy challenge from a senior leader in the ambulance sector. After a substantial lunch, the Digital Leadership Steering Group, where I am privileged to join counterparts from across government to give input on the Central Digital and Data Office’s work to transform government services. I ended the day relaxing with a needle in my arm at the Blood Donor Centre on the Headrow, followed by a paper cup of coffee and and orange Club biscuit.
Friday, only a couple of one-to-ones scheduled. I also put in a quick Teams call with colleagues to figure out a way forward on a cross-cutting initiative that we need to put into business planning. Now I’m sitting on the sofa writing these weeknotes, after commenting on an interesting draft that we’ll be reviewing next week.
Altogether, a full on, but productive week.
Matt Edgar writes here 