These notes are a tool I use for reflecting, remembering (because I can't), networking and public accountability. Read more here.
My recent accomplishments FAO the dark maga douchebag or anyone who’s interested…
Work, work, work
I couldn’t be prouder of the work coming out of all my teams right now. I only wish I could point you at some blog posts about it – it’s such exciting stuff, being done in such exemplary ways. We’ve started talking about sharing what we’re up to with the outside world soon, so it’ll come.
[Side note: I’m somewhat kicking myself for not being early out the gates with a team blog when I started at the BFI, like Dave and I did in Croydon, and Atika replicated in Luton. And like Pete, Ross and I did at GDS with this cheeky Tumblr that evolved into Inside GOV.UK and later the blogging platform for all central gov. I did get the BFI’s strategy launched with a promise of working out loud, but apart from one recent project it hasn’t taken off for reasons (mainly capacity challenges and inertia, nothing sinister). A breakaway digital team blog might have been the better place to start].
I worked 8 days since my last note, paying broad but shallow attention across all the things. But to be honest, Elon, this thin-spreading means I’ve been more busy than productive, although I did go somewhat deeper on:
- a check-in with our philanthropy partners the Uggla Family Foundation to report our latest BFI Player progress and growth projections. This concludes a round of scrutiny through 2 governor boards, our digital advisers and funders. They’re saying similar stuff: well done, keep going, harness all the BFI’s wider strengths and put them to work for the good of the streaming platform.
- our all-directorate show and tell which was full of brilliant, brilliant work – the teams are just amazing
- a productive 90 mins huddle on software asset management and our tech requests process, which is a mountain to climb but we’re making progress
- AI (again) – a bit more reading and playing, and contributing to the BFI’s response to the copyright consultation which creative industries came out against in full voice
Along the way, I’ve accumulated a stack of scribbles on index cards, reMarkable pages, OneNote notes, text files and random scraps of paper about Big Thinky Tasks I feel excited to tackle soon, uninterrupted time allowing. A lot of my job is thinking through problems and nudging things along – like Roger says here.
Not all work
Sorry to hear sad news about GDSer Charlotte Pike. Condolence book here.
Dylan aced his driving theory test, both kids just got school reports that made us dead proud, and we met Dylan’s A-level teachers at parents’ evening. Joel’s been busy getting off-book and rehearsing the two plays he’s in. Consequently I’ve also been busy with all this too.
Preemptively from one AP to another: stop getting Bond wrong.
It was a surreal end to Friday watching Trump and Zelenskyy argue live on the gym telly above my treadmill. News isn’t boring at the mo, is it? Terrifying, flabbergasting, farcical, depressing, but not boring.
You can say what you like about America, but they’re right about streaky bacon with waffles and syrup. Turns out it’s delicious and I’ve been wrong about this my whole life.
Featured pic today is some blossoms emerging on my rec. It’s fool’s spring though, we know this.
Found, interesting
🧀 Don’t micromanage the cheese by Tash Wilcox is excellent and introduced me to Kotter’s dual operating system (original here) which feels like such a useful description of my current reality and a way of making the co-existence of contrasting cultures more explicit.
⚔️ I’m not sure they can co-exist happily indefinitely, though. Kotter’s dual-OS might be best regarded as a transition state, as this excellent article says.
🏛️ David Thomas is doing interesting work on agile org design at Defra and writing about his progress weekly. He set out his approach in 3 posts. (I might ask him for a chat).
⭕ Holacracy is a framework for decentralised flat teams and distributed decision-making (via the above). It’s pretty compelling, I must say. But evidently no picnic.
🧠 Roger Swannell has a good bit at the end of this about counting team capacity by cognitive load, not person-hours
Plus this lot:
- 💤 I’m tired of pretending tech is making the world better
- 📑 20 top strategic planning tools
- 🎛️ Visual control
- 📝 Monzo’s writing principles
- 🖱️ Digital inclusion plan
- 🤖 AI content consequences
- 💾 The entire history of Silicon Valley
- 👣 Ella Botting is offering mentoring
- 🪧 We The Builders
- ✊ Solidarity Cinema
- 🔧 80+ ways AI can hep the creative process
- 🕵️ Spotting machine-made prose
- 🦠 How Covid changed service design
- 🛒 Revised Croydon Westfield plan approved
Cultural consumption
🍿 Picnic at Hanging Rock in NFT2. First time seeing this, it’s luscious.
🍿 Sister Midnight in NFT1 for a BFI patrons’ event. Entertainingly odd.
🎬 Reawakening on BFI Player.
🎬 Anora. Rewatch and showed Dylan.
🎬 Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw. First half is great, the rest isn’t.
🎬 Fast Five. Never seen any F&F before. Safe sequence is fun but otherwise meh.
🎧 Pharmakon – Crawling on Bruised Knees
🎧 Kim Gordon – The Collective
📺 The Traitors US current season (with Boston Rob et al). Terrific and stressful.
🕹️ Alan Wake II. Terrific and stressful.
Distractions
- Rapport – cards to prompt creative conversations
- Fictional brands archive
- Bots bots bots (reverse Turing test browser game)
- Sex toy map of London
- World’s 50 most beautiful cinemas (BFI is at 32)
Thanks for reading, aren’t you lovely?
