These notes are a tool I use for reflecting, remembering (because I can't), networking and public accountability. Read more here.
Work stuff first.
Mission: Impossible
There’s a complex story I’m puzzling over how best to tell. That’s the main thing I’m doing at the moment (and for the next couple of weeks).
It’s partly a story of “here are some strategic and systemic problems we keep hitting up against in digital that are actually bad for everyone, and we need to collectively understand and solve for any meaningful change to happen here.”
And partly “here’s a clear vision of the future which not only solves those problems, but is exciting and necessary for us to be cost-effective, adaptable and relevant for years to come.”
But also “it’ll take policy change and enforcement, better definition and agreement of priorities and goals, and changes to how we organise teams and manage work.”
It’s ultimately about an inflection point we’ve now reached where we have to move from a (somewhat) Trojan horse/tail-wagging-the-dog/maverick approach to applying service design thinking and tech standards, to making that fully mainstream, explicit and paramount. We can’t digitally transform our services without digitally transforming our organisation, and there’s a no man’s land of systems that sits between digital services for the public and corporate IT services for staff. Re-orienting around end-to-end services is the only way to manage and kaizen it all.
So my plan is to tell it as a positive story of our digital and tech work having reached a level of maturity now, to go to this next level. We’re standing at the edge of (a digital-first) tomorrow, and we can see huge opportunities to unlock game-changing improvements to org-wide operations and impact.
It’ll take a cocktail of clear collateral to communicate these complex ideas simply and make them grounded and relevant. It’s a somewhat risky business, with pitfalls of coming across too abstract or technical, being misread as empire building, treading on toes and so on.
So my head is quite full and my brow is quite furrowed at the moment.
But I’m not doing it alone (I have a few good men and women with incredible brains and domain knowledge at my disposal) and I had some breakthroughs this week on possible story beats, diagram concepts and so on. It’s feeling a bit less impossible than it was last week, we’re making all the right moves, but definitely a puzzle.
Other than that this week involved:
- BFI Flare opening night. I love this festival, it’s so joyous.
- Meetings and rapid work on a Spending Review commission from DCMS
- Drafting up some initial objectives for our incoming Head of Cyber Security
- Further chats about dashboard reporting for BFI Player
- A round of useful 1-1s, reviewing various documents etc
Oh yeah and there was that announcement about Tom Cruise’s BFI fellowship and cinema season, which I’m a bit excited about, as you might have already spotted (unless you have your eyes wide shut). If you want to play along there are 9 TC film titles shoe-horned into this post so far.
My TC top 5 (thanks for asking): Collateral, Edge of Tomorrow, Risky Business, Jerry Maguire, Interview with the Vampire. Yours?
Not work
Ran 7K outside. Good to be back out there. Now to fix my serious Revels and Mikado habit.
Had two unrelated expensive plumbing emergencies this weekend. Grr.
I’ve been arranging work experience for Dylan, at Croydon and the BFI, thanks to the generosity of current and former colleagues.
Joel’s finished his two plays now, and the final performance was excellent.
IIRC
Joel’s theatre productions prompted me to think about my own childhood appearances on stage, as a memory challenge versus the SDAM. To reiterate, I can’t remotely ‘go there’ in my head or anything like that, but I have these few facts committed to memory:
- I was offered the lead (i.e. Dylan Thomas) in A Child’s Christmas in Wales but didn’t want it (may have cried?)* so ended up being an uncle (a small part) instead
- Possibly a pervy uncle? Pretty sure the child (i.e. same aged peer) whose Christmas it was in Wales sat on my lap (insert joke here about a small part).
- I also had a small part in The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew which has something to do with knights and dragons. I left my prop on stage, a large papier maché tail of some dragon my character had vanquished, and it mucked up the subsequent scene
- I loved being part of these productions, the magic of backstage and post-show afterglow
*or this may have been when I was asked to captain the bottom-tier rugby team. I didn’t even want to watch rugby let alone play it competitively in a leadership position. The sports teacher** was baffled by this high honour being declined, and made me do it anyway.
**This is the same teacher who also wrote on my report in a prior year “Neil is not yet ready for a body-contact sport”. Reader, I was, and am still, not ready.
Browser tabs
- Idea Prioritization With ICE and The Confidence Meter (via Matt LeMay’s book)
- Why you should stop using product roadmaps and try the GIST Framework (via above)
- Developing service patterns – reusable designs for building government services and the prototype ‘apply’ service pattern. This seems hella useful to me to help teams design and operate services holistically.
- Agile organisational design in practice — week 28 and this
- Zettelkasten atomic note-taking method, and learn the method here
- AI playbook for charities
- Product roadmap do’s and don’ts
- Leading through a cyber attack: Learning from crisis
- The last paragraph of Matt Edgar’s weeknote
- Blackpool pleasure beach losses rise to £2.8m, meanwhile I am well excited about a new Universal Studios theme park near Bedford (expected by 2030).
Audiovisual and culinary consumption
🎬 The Wedding Banquet (2025). Heartwarming crowd-pleaser, with fun Q&A including Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone at BFI Flare opening night.
🎬 Take Shelter on BFI Player, a well-acted psychological thriller on mental illness.
🎬 Rush Hour, a nostalgic rewatch and the kids’ first Jackie Chan (I know, not the best)
📺 Anatomy of Lies and Scamanda. Both jaw-dropping shout at the telly fodder about people faking cancer for clout and coins.
📺 The Big Fat Quiz of Everything 2025. Recorded at christmas, finally watched, haven’t laughed this hard in ages, mostly thanks to Harry Hill and David Mitchell who both really brought it for this one.
🎧 Hypercube, an excellent new tune from Nathan Fake
🎧 First new tune from Venetian Snares in 11 years
🎧 Everything Kelly Lee Owens recommends here
📔 Finished reading Matt LeMay’s Impact-First Product Teams. Strongly recommend, it’s a rallying call to focus on impact over product methodology nirvana.
🧑🍳 Working my way through Jamie Oliver’s air fryer book. So far, two recipes with a sub-optimal ratio of effort to tastiness: scruffy butternut squash lasagne and prosciutto baked fish and garlicky beans.
Distractions
- Styscraper (browser game)
- LinkedIn’s new daily puzzle, Zip
- The HTML review
The bit at the end
I’m away in Nottingham for board games with besties on Friday (can’t wait!) so I’ll skip a week and post again in a fortnight.
Have a good 2 weeks. I hope it doesn’t rain, man.
