Weeknote: 31 March to 4 April 2025

Happy New Year!

The end of one financial year, and the start of another. In the grand sweep of things, this arbitrary boundary shouldn’t matter very much. Yet it still dictates the yearly rhythm of the public service worker, much as it did for the 1700s tenant famer whose rent fell due on Lady Day.

As an agile leader, my instinct is to work in tighter cycles than this, but the weird way that public money behaves means that financial years inevitably take on an oversized significance for delivery teams here compared to when I worked in the private sector.

Every year end is different. It can be an abrupt stop, or a signal to accelerate. Sometimes the first few days have a phony quality where we maintain the momentum of the previous period, feet scrabbling like Wile E Coyote to feel if there’s still firm ground beneath us. The signs by the trackside back there warned of a cliff edge, yet unaccountably we’re still moving forward. Will we make it to the other side of the chasm? This year, even more than usual, it’s still too early to tell.

Annual appraisal

Thursday was my annual appraisal conversation with Helen, my line manager, who is unfailingly supportive and encouraging. But before that I had the privilege of meeting with our brilliant patient and public voice (PPV) board for Digital Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC). We’re here to serve the public, so it made sense to treat the PPV board as my appraisers too. I took the opportunity to account to them for what my team had delivered in the past 12 months and to get their input into my priorities for the year ahead.

For both the PPV board and my appraisal, I listed successes and struggles of the last financial year.

Successes

• We continued to enable urgent care needs to be met more often in the most appropriate place at the most appropriate time.
• The Bookings and Referrals Standard (BaRS) moved beyond the initial first of types.
• The First Contact work across urgent, primary and community moved from the discovery phase to the first test and learn initiative being live.
• We continued to change how we work as a team of teams, joining up across products in Digital UEC and beyond.
• We increased staff participation in our Pulse Survey.
• We reduced our team’s overall vacancy rate, and successfully procured and welcomed on-board 2 new delivery partners to support our work.

Struggles

• Delays and changes to strategic pieces of work.
• We didn’t get as far as hoped in the Pulse survey participation or results.
• A recruitment freeze means we still have some vacancies in key areas.
• More organisation changes have been announced.

When it comes to digital, the public are ahead of the NHS in their understanding of the problem and their willingness to be part of the solution. Earlier in the week I’d had a hurried second hand brush off from a busy executive when I offered my support. Yet here were people with lived experience who were very ready to share their hopes and fears for how digital can make a difference. They gave clear accounts of times when the analogue NHS had failed them, and laid down the terms on which they expected artificial intelligence and automation to add value.

Patient involvement in the NHS is a precious and under-appreciated asset, and one I will make a case to strengthen in whatever our new structure looks like.

What else did I enjoy?

In other news, the Sun was shining on Leeds, I had some great chats with colleagues in the office, and at lunchtimes in the bustling square outside.

On Friday I lost myself in PowerPoint (apologies to the colleague whose one to one I missed as I lost track of time). By the end of the afternoon I had an outline deck of the emerging work that I’m leading on digital access, triage and navigation. I’m looking forward to getting colleagues’ feedback on that next week.

Finally, I was pleased to contribute an article to the Service Design Network’s journal, ‘Touchpoint’ on a topic close to my heart: how service design and product management can work well together. It’s titled ‘Creative Tension and Collaborative Intent‘ and is out now in Touchpoint Vol. 16 No. 1.
I’m also looking forward to reading other people’s perspectives on the same theme.