Month(ish) notes #1 — starting a new role, ambitions and reflections
16th May — 24th June
I started a new role as a Service Design Lead 6 weeks ago. I’ve never really been consistent with writing so I’ve decided to trial my own version of week notes — month(ish) notes.
I joined a team called digital transformation, working within the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate. The team’s aspiration is for all public services in Scotland to be well designed, accessible and inclusive. They do this through sharing common tools and platforms to enable digital systems, encourage collaboration and embed user-centred design.
What’s happened and things I’ve enjoyed
- Spending time to connect, learn and listen. I have been spending time learning and understanding the work we do, the language we use to describe ourselves, as well as our vision for the future. This included spending time with my team as well as tagging along to different sessions, organising one-to-one coffees, or 15 mins catch ups with folks to just say ‘hello, I’m here’. I found these particularly helpful when I’m spending most of my time in my living room. Meeting Geoff (our director digital) and senior management teams; learning from others both internally and externally; chatting to folx who have been here before. I’ve been settling into my new wee project team and really enjoying spending more time with Emel, our user research lead and Maeve, our principal business analyst.
- Learnings and connecting with others from further afield. Have been particularly grateful for spending a wee bit of time with folks like Martin to chat about international gov digital services; Jim on tech stacks; and Jacquie on service design involvement in target operating models.
- Steer discoveries in the right direction. Discoveries can be tricky and I spent a tiny bit of my time to provide advice on ways to frame a problem, define hypotheses, and accept that discovery is to enable the team to decide what to do next. Two resources I find myself most oftenly referring to are Ben Holliday’s 5 questions and Will Myddleton’s setting discovery for success.
What I want to bring and embed within my new design team
- Being transparent. This is key for me in establishing a positive team culture. I see transparency as a conscious action — one that is first modelled by the team’s leader.
- Designing with care — care for ourselves and care for those using our services. I want us to adopt two key approaches to our practice: being trauma-informed / trauma-responsive and intersectional. I want us to put equity and diversity as key principles, and also to take care and support each other.
- Designing for a planet. Change takes time but we’re running out of time. I want the team to feel supported to be confident amplifiers of change. We’ve formed a mini group as part of our DDaT service design profession across the Scottish Government to develop this work further. I’ve been learning from folks like Lucy and Ness, and Paola Miani. Give me a shout if you’re working within this area, we can learn together.
Three things I’m learning about myself
- Focusing on building trust, not on making good impressions quickly. I have previously been described as tolerant, not patient. The last couple of times I joined a new team, I remind myself of Lauren Currie’s tips on how you manage yourself in a new position. Especially this bit -
We’ve all read about the importance of proving our value in the first 100 days… In the beginning, it’s vital you spend your time doing the actual work, rather than showing your team you are doing the work.
Starting in new teams, we spend a lot of time building new relationships. As a person learning how to find a good balance between fatigue and introversion who is also not very patient, I sometimes find myself exhausted. Building trust and relationships takes time so I’m learning not to spread myself too thin. Trust for me is about honesty, vulnerability, competence and authenticity. It feels to me that building relationships is about finding a balance of being likeable and credible. Here’s how I’m approaching it
- Asking for help. A good way to show vulnerability in practice. And it makes me more credible in the future as I build up my own knowledge to answer questions.
- Investing time in connecting with others, not just internal to my own team but externally. Reminding myself consistently that it takes time and to be patient. How does one learn patience?
- Finding a mentor. I’m part of a civil service mentoring initiative, where I’ll get paired with 3 mentors. This can be a good opportunity to have protected time to reflect and grow.
2. If you can’t find an existing community you fit into, create your own. Changes across teams can sometimes result in what Emily Webber refers to as ‘radical transformation’ for communities. It’s when a dramatic event like people leaving, lots of new people joining, or drop in energy happen. So this is when a community might return to an earlier stage like growth. I’m putting in time to do a couple of things — (re)started a mini community of practice for our directorate’s service design team; (re)started another community for UCD Leads; joined other communities for different professions, like technical architecture. I’ve been coming back to Emily’s book on building successful communities of practice.
3. The more anxious or doubtful I am, the stronger my accent is. I have been noticing this recently and finding it fascinating — maybe I have never realised it happens before. Some words are also much harder to pronounce. Anyone else speaking more than 1 language and noticing this for themselves?
What’s next
- I continue to find my feet in this role and understand the work we deliver. I’m joining more sessions, attending show n tells and seeing user journeys and demos for components we have.
- As I develop the work on the project I’m leading, I’ll be making my work transparent and visible, inviting people to feedback early on in the process.
- Spending time to grow our service design team and practice — recruitment and community.
3 things I’m grateful for
- Spending time in the office with wonderful humans like Neha and Gayle.
- Being a step closer to being a first time home owner!
- The great work done in NHS Digital on taxonomy that we can learn from.
