These notes are a tool I use for reflecting, remembering (to counter my SDAM), networking within my profession, and public accountability. Read more here.
Wotcha. I’m three Pret Christmas sandwiches in, the tree’s just gone up and I’m looking forward to a festive break. But we’re not there yet. Here’s what I got up to in November.
Work, work, work
Our refreshed Executive Team is refreshing. The vibes are better. We’ve got new brains in the room, and there’s a commitment to working together as a “first team” à la Lencioni. We’d drifted quite far from that in our previous configuration, and the layers below felt it.
My month’s been dominated by 2026/7 (“six seven”) business planning. I used every spare hour planning for a crucial 3-day exec team offsite, and a good amount working with my deputies on their plans, who’ve been working with their deputies on their plans, and so on.
We’re doing all this on hard mode in the context of a messy operating model, poorly defined portfolio, woefully under-resourced teams and a mountain of tech debt, design debt and content debt from under-resourcing in decades prior. Not to mention worsening finances. It’s meant adapting the thinking I did over the summer about how to meet a renewed directorate remit, to fit my vision to our financial reality and not appear tone-deaf in my “first team”.
But also doing justice to my second team and what it needs. Being the DDaT guy in the boardroom always means navigating a comprehension gap, second guessing what colleagues (whose heads are also full of their own domains) do and don’t know or understand, and finding ways to get a lot of context over succinctly. So that’s where my time and anxiety has been focused all month. With good results, phew.
Apart from the bit where someone said of a colleague “they just need a really good number two” (as in deputy, not dump) and the Viz reader side of me took over and I lost it.
During all this full-on planning I also got horribly distracted by a headhunter dangling a tantalising opportunity that was too good not to look into, despite being happy where I am. It turned out to be nothing, and in fact helped reaffirm my love and commitment to the BFI. But it cost me some emotional energy and time I could have spent better.
Lots of other stuff kept me busy including exec boards, governor boards, project boards, a final round hiring panel for our new cyber programme manager, writing all staff memos and whatnot.
Last but not least, I had a virtual catchup with the lovely Opama and an IRL coffee with Russell.
Russell and I got nostalgic for paper-based workflows which were often better than today’s costly CRMs (I have fond memories of very effective ‘job bags’ moving around the building in my early role in magazine production). We talked about optimism in untested income ideas which I likened to the overvaluation of junk in Storage Wars. Russell has thoughts about updating his PowerPoint advice for a remote screen-based world. We talked about asking simple questions of teams, like “whose job is it to do X?” Russell gave me a batch of his Haudoo books and I got inspired to write one.
It’s not all work, work, work
I’m losing weight and getting fitter with a new PT called Luigi (accent more like Kehaar than a Nintendo plumber) which is doing my mental health wonders, if painful and hard to fit in.
I saw Adam Ant at the Roundhouse on his ANTMUSIC 2025 tour and he was spectacular. Been wearing the official tour merch ever since.
I went to Nottingham for a fun board game weekend: Nemesis Retaliation was the star. Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Halloween and Crossing also featured. We were down one player and he was missed.
I’ve had a consultation for my robot tatt and booked it in for January.
Mrs Neil went away for a week to write.
My folks came to visit and I cooked an early xmas dinner. A nice time.
We visited Sheffield uni with Son 1, and he’s been invited to interview at Cambridge.
Looking forward to 3 nights in Iceland at Christmas, our first time going.
🔎 Found, interesting 🧐
- Learning from other teams to inform our cinema website redesign – latest by my team
- Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound – 🙋♂️hello
Service design:
- Using service maps for operational efficiency
- Five conditions for service ownership
- We learned the language of digital. Now it’s time to learn the practice
- When do you need a pattern and when do you need a standard?
- “There is no magic” – An hour with Public Digital’s Katherine Wastell
Ways of working and thinking:
- Every organisation has some madness
- Clocks, clouds, and the nature of digital problems
- Catherine Howe’s transferable principles as she moves from CEO of one council to another
- The Decision Stack: How FujiFilm survived what killed Kodak
- Our devices work for Big Tech, not us (FT paywall). In summary: “Trying to make real progress on what matters to you is like trying to lose weight by signing up for a gym located between an ice-cream parlour and a hamburger joint.”
Tech architecture:
- The bridge to nowhere: Why your ‘Target Architecture’ won’t ever deliver
- The deep digital geology that’s slowing your company down
- Strangler Fig
- Untangling your technology spaghetti
Public sector digital:
- Digital identity and the UK government’s announceability problem (Or why a lack of digital product skills at the top of government creates inertia)
- GDS Local
- Is the launch of GDS Local a turning point for local government and public services?
- An appreciative review of the ‘refreshed’ Digital Strategy for Scotland
- Tix on her first year at Luton
AI
- Team dynamics after AI
- 43 minutes per staff member per day
- The majority AI view. In summary: “Stop being so goddamn creepy and weird about the technology! It’s just tech, everything doesn’t have to become some weird religion that you beat people over the head with, or gamble the entire stock market on.”
Listening, watching, playing, reading
📓 Books
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells
⭐⭐ Seveneves by Neal Stephenson [DNF]
🎬 New films
Can’t recommend these first two highly enough – hooray for British film!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Pillion
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I Swear
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Together
⭐⭐⭐⭐ A House of Dynamite
⭐⭐⭐ Islands – on BFI Player
⭐⭐⭐ Warfare
⭐⭐⭐ The People Before
⭐⭐ Stiller & Meara: Nothing is Lost
🎬 Older films
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Heretic (rewatch)
⭐⭐⭐⭐ No Hard Feelings (rewatch)
⭐⭐⭐ CLIMAX – on BFI Player (first watch)
⭐⭐⭐ 9 Songs – on BFI Player (first watch)
⭐⭐ A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin – on BFI Player (first watch)
⭐⭐ Looking for Mike (first watch)
⭐⭐ Exposé (aka House on Straw Hill) – on BFI Player (first watch)
⭐ Old (rewatch) – so bad it’s great!
🎧 New (to me) music
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Clark, Steep Stigma. Obsessed!
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Big Brave, Vital – via Cat
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Mandy, Indiana, Magazine
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Xenia Reaper, Nept Polarisation
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Kanding Ray, Sirat OST
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Danny Brown, Stardust
⭐⭐⭐ Oneohtrix Point Never, Tranquilizer
⭐⭐⭐ Daniel Avery, Tremor
⭐⭐⭐ Nightmares on Wax, Echo 45
⭐⭐ FKA Twigs, Eusexua Afterglow
📺 TV
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Ink Master seasons 2 and 3
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here We Go season 2
⭐⭐⭐ Girlbands Forever. Good but from a weird world with no Girls Aloud.
🕹️ Games
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tiled Words – new daily puzzle obsession
⭐⭐⭐ Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. Nearly finished now.
⭐⭐⭐ The confounding calendar. Annual advent calendar of puzzles from tomorrow
Distractions
That’s the end! I’ll be back with some traditional end of year musings during Twixtmas, no doubt.
