Friday 28 October 2011

Half term has been a busy week for some of us! Late last week I was at Newport Council in South Wales leading a peer review of their IT service. This was a good opportunity for me and the team to see how others work and balance the performance needs and financial constraints they have. We learned a lot that we can use within our organisation as well as helping the Newport team with ideas about how they can develop their good service further.

Monday started with two interviews for BBC Wiltshire radio on our consultancy spend. Although this spend accounts for around 1% of our budget, it quite rightly receives regular scrutiny from our elected members and people and organisations outside of the council. We use consultants to provide services which we are not able to provide as part of the set up of the normal organisation. For example our highways and bridges are designed by consultants because we don’t do enough of this to warrant employing our own experts including the capital plant required.

Mid-week I spent most of one day working with two young managers as their coach. They had completed their personality profiles and we were exploring how these could be used to develop their self understanding and as well as their role as managers. Growing the next generation of leaders is something I am passionate about and prioritise.

I met up with one of our customers yesterday in Shurnhold. He was very cross about a whole range of our services, across all departments. I listened carefully and tried to explain some of the issues that he and we faced. It was a good learning opportunity for me and gave me a number of ideas about how we can sharpen up our services in some areas.

Finally, the week ends with my preparation for next weeks’ selection process which is on Tuesday. Fingers crossed.

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Talk again next week.

Carlton