Weeknote 17: presenting

Week ending 12/05/23

A poster which reads, You Are Not Your User, developed by the Government Digital Service

Someone on Twitter shared this GDS poster this week and it reminded me that I used to have this, along with a number of other GDS mantras, stuck up on the wall behind my desk in a previous job. Whenever I was having a challenging discussion, trying to push back on the latest big idea from the exec team, I would passive-aggressively (or sometimes just aggressively) point at this poster. Unsuprisingly, it rarely had the desired effect.

Having those posters up used to make me feel like I had back-up; this wild concept of prioritising what citizens actually need from us as a public service isn’t me being unhelpful or radical — these are proven and established methodologies used by Government! But as a stakeholder management approach it wasn’t my finest hour; the shouty, angry red ALL CAPS. No wonder everyone just ignored me.

I’m still having the same conversations these days, just hopefully in a more collaborative way. Even if i’m screaming in red capitals on the inside.

What went well this week

• We agreed as a team that the work we’ve done on women’s health is ready to go without any further iterations and rounds of research. Our stakeholders agreed so we’ve adapted our delivery plans and are aiming for a launch sooner than previously thought.
• Mark and I attended an NHS England national digital channels (website, app, login) Show & Tell for an audience of charities and patient groups where we presented some work we did last year to update our policy on linking to others from NHS.UK. Our presentation prompted lots of discussion about whether there is any more we can do to benefit from the expertise offered by charities as and when we’re updating or transforming content.
• Started to plan the roadmap for Q2 and create the documentation which supports each roadmap item. Lots more to do on this next week but was good to make a start at least.

What went less well

• There are quite a few things piling up in my to-do list that I just haven’t had the time to focus on and this list is growing each week. I keep thinking I just need a quiet week and I can clear it all but that week never seems to come. I have a couple of train journeys coming up next week so maybe that will be a good opportunity.

Coming up next week

• Two days in London which I’m quite excited about
• Another presentation on Monday with Mark — this time helping me talk policy colleagues through our content transformation process with the aim of agreeing together where their input is most helpful
• More detailed planning for launch of our women’s health work, post launch evaluation, and next steps
• A workshop about the development of a proposition for the NHS website. This is really important for our teams and will help us identify priorities for the upcoming roadmap
• More roadmap work as need to have a first iteration ready by next Friday.