Weeknotes s03e44

TL;DR: Back in the saddle again. Thriving and resilience. Stuff I can’t write about.

[week ending 10/12/2021]

Short notes this week due to spending much of the time involved with interviews for the Senior Leadership Team for our Groupwide Digital service.

Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? I joined a demo for a System Patient Tracking List (PTL) product. There were lots of these during the course of the week, but sadly this was the only one I got to.

I had a chat with Indi, which we try and get 30 mins every month or so. This is a great opportunity for me to ask what other orgs are doing and prompt my thinking. We talked about the different approaches organisations are taking to manage their Targeted Investment Fund programme which gave me food for thought.

What did you enjoy? I got the phone call I’ve been waiting for over 6 months — that my collarbone is sufficiently healed to start cycling again. So one morning this week I rented an eBike to get me from the station to a meeting venue off-site.

What did you learn? As part of my coaching arrangements, I get invited to a few sessions from an external speaker. This week I caught a bit of the session from Emma J Bell, the author of the audio book 9 Secrets to Thriving: Uncovering Your Inner Resilience. I wish I’d heard more of the session, as she drew on some really intersting research, including; 66% of our thinking is on stuff we cannot change or influence. When we attribute motives or reasons to actions of others, we are wrong 80% of the time (including 65% for those we are in a close relationship with) — attribution bias in action.

What are you looking forward to next week?

• Interview sessions with the 5 shortlisted suppliers for the Digital Capability procurement we’re running.
• Spending some time with the Product Director we’re bringing on board to help with the TIF programme
• Northants CIO & CCIO forum

Interesting Stuff read/consumed:

• NHS Providers Guide — Making the Right Technology Decisions. Great set of material — not only because UHN is name checked. “The key question leaders should be asking is not whether a technology project is delivering ‘to plan’, but rather is it working for its users (i.e. patients, service users and staff), or should we invest in something else? Boards should be demanding fewer memos and more demos.”
• Andrew Raines — CIO Interview Series. Would love him to be an ex-strongman…
• Accounting for revenue and capital Implications for the digital age by HFMA. “Innovative digital projects add further complications because the rules [business case process, accounting, budgeting rules] assume business as usual rather than innovation.”. “capital funding cannot be used to finance expenditure that is classified as revenue expenditure or vice versa. This can be a challenge for innovative digital projects, where capital funding is made available for an investment that does not meet the accounting criteria for capital expenditure.”. Too flipping right! The exec summary ends with enfuriating “The project must therefore be within budget, and expenditure must be made in the year for which it is planned as there are no carry-forward arrangements.”. So — far from being something new, I read this paper as: as you were folks, no solution to the capital funding/revenue solutions challenge, continue to rely on false-certainty with up front planning and fixed financial years. Disappointing.
• Challenges in implementing digital change. Large IT project well behind delivery. Changed to introduce iterative delivery, leading to ministers to panic and ask for a “detailed roadmap for the full delivery” (page 7). More requests for false certainty.

Books finished this week:

• Fiction: .
• Non-Fiction:

Currently Reading:

• Non-Fiction: How to Be Less Stupid about Race by Crystal Marie Fleming.
• Non-Fiction: Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.