Wednesday 8 July 2009

Another early blog this week as today is my last day in the office for a couple of weeks. Although I shall only be at home, I'm really looking forward to spending some time with family, friends and just doing those things that I'm too tired to do after a days work. I particularly want to catch some large carp with my eldest son...

So it's been a week of getting things in order. I have completed three out of my six appraisals which are due at this time of year. I take these very seriously as all staff need to have regular feedback on their performance and I certainly need feedback from my team on my performance. It's always a good way to learn together - although we tend to do this throughout the year rather than just in the formal appraisal process. I encourage all managers to complete this process over the next few weeks, and if you haven't had an appraisal then do please ask for one - you are allowed to!

We are in the middle of the new Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) interviews this week. These will happen on an annual basis to allow the Audit Commission to assess how effective we are in leading our communities and delivering improved service performance coupled with better value for money. I had my interview with Bridget Downton from the Audit Commission on Monday. She was exploring areas of performance management, how we handle major change and transformation programmes and actions around areas such as our People Strategy and benefits realisation for our transformation work. It will be interesting to understand how we are perceived by our external inspectors having just been through such radical change over the past 6 months.

Thanks for reading and we'll talk again in a couple of weeks.

Carlton