I pondered this being a weeknote, but honestly I’m so far out of that routine that it didn’t make sense.

I’m off work and we were meant to be going to see Wicked in the cinema for my wife’s birthday, but she’s got a throat infection after a week of the kids being ill as well, so has a GP appointment instead. Don’t you just love winter sickness?

Some stuff that that I’m learning about myself, and about how doing this *gesticulates around at service design, design research and digital transformation generally* stuff works, and feels.

I believe reflection is really important, but haven’t really managed to do it in a structured way recently, and its been gnawing away at me. Obviously I don’t have to do it in public (hello) but I’m increasingly aware that I’m ‘senior’ and so things that I say, even *gasp* being a bit vulnerable about stuff might help people who are newer to this stuff.

I’m pretty resilient, but some people are incredibly resilient

I’ve definitely stretched myself the past few months, I’ll happily admit that – and I’m sure the team I’ve been working with would recognise that. But its been hard, and I’ll be very open about that. Working on very public services, where there’s a strong feeling about them, is challenging. The fine line between acknowledging and considering public opinion, whilst balancing with making progress is hard. I am in awe of those who genuinely appear to manage both without becoming hardened cynics, but weighing the inputs in a considered way and make decisions in a constructive way.

I’ve learned that I definitely fall on the side of needing ‘quiet’ to be able to concentrate, by which I mean that feedback from too many sources, especially emotive feedback has a negative impact on my ability to do my work. I’ve struggled with this a lot, I’ve done a LOT of user research and taken pride in my ability to use that alongside other data to reach decisions, draw out insight and make ‘inductive’ leaps. So why am I struggling with genuine feedback from the people who might use a service?

Previously I’ve been through periods in my personal and professional life where I’ve felt sick opening my email inbox, because I’ve not wanted to see what’s in there. I don’t know how common that is, but its horrible and has helped reinforce my approach to work.

I never want to be the reason that someone feels scared to open their emails.

The concept of ‘conflict of interests’ will need challenging if we ever want to adopt co-design approaches

Within the private and public sector I think the main barrier that exists to genuinely doing co-design i.e. involving the people who will use a service in making decisions about the service, is the idea of conflicts of interest.

I’m not breaking any new ground by suggesting that co-design is fundamentally about power dynamics rather than design research methods. If you are designing the service where you are more concerned about people ‘gaming’ it because they know how it works, they you can’t truly co-design it. If you can’t be open about the decisions being made, then no amount of workshops will change the power dynamic.

As K.A. pointed out at SDinGov, not everything should or can be co-design. But if we want some things to be, then we need a better way to deal with ‘conflicts of interest’.

Being easy to work with is such an underrated skill

Across approaching 15 years of work, I’ve worked with some really tricky characters. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced truly toxic work environments, but client work on tight budgets, and big organisational politics can breed pretty unpleasant behaviours.

People being collaborative, supportive and helpful goes incredibly far. Even more than that people who are accommodating, even in challenging circumstances can make all the difference when times are tough. People who step in when you need someone to step in, people are generous with their time when you can tell its tough for them, those are the people who make it bearable.

I’ve also noticed that I’m much less vigilant, when I’m working with people who I consider to be supportive. I.e. they might make suggestion of decision that I would much more likely challenge if someone else made it…and I’m intrigued by that. I find myself biasing towards also trying to be easy to work with, (because I genuinely believe its important) but a couple of times in the past few months people have called me out on it, either knowingly or I’ve spotted it as the reason for an issue. I have more work to do to find the right kind of ‘friction’ when working with people i.e. choosing the right conversations to stand my ground.

I’m probably more of a discovery person, but that’s not always what you need

Discoveries often get a bad name. Of course its not without reason, there are lots of places where teams are stuck in ‘doom loops’ or ‘Discoveryitis’ (I forget where I read that sorry). This ongoing cycle of discovery, without significant decisions being made, or actually starting to make progress towards an outcome is unhelpful.

Another thing I challenge myself with when I ponder my role and personal interests is that as Sarah Drummond says:

Service design is rarely greenfield. Most service design is brownfield most of the time.

Of course not all discoveries are greenfield. In my head a discovery is more about being open-minded about what the right next step is, rather than working to a roadmap and tweaking as necessary. Frankly as soon as someone wants to codify all the learning into something that resembles user stories, Jira tickets and sprint planning I kinda check out. Give me the next tricky question to get my head around, and don’t worry too much about my Jira license.

I’m still grappling with whether its better to say ‘you know what, this is no longer the bit I am best at’ or whether its better to knuckle down and still get things done. I am SUPER aware that an endless stream of discoveries gets nobody anywhere near a functional service so of course make the effort to pull my weight, but I can feel my value dwindling.

I think my preferences are heavily dictated by the roles Ive had before, lots of years in consultancy and then internal; strategy type roles mean you don’t tend to get into delivery.

I’ll probably update this

I need to go and make a birthday cake.