Wednesday 30 November

Wow things are moving at a pace – my feet don’t seem to be touching the ground much at the moment...

Last Friday we held the first two manager forums in Salisbury. About 120 managers attended from right across the organisation and county. It was great to meet everybody, describe who we are and what we’re each about and for us to set out why we have adopted such a radical leadership model. We then talked about the cross cutting themes by which we will manage the organisation, the key deliverables in our first 90 days, the changes that we will all experience from the transformation programme including campuses and finally 2012 – a year of celebration, with the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee. Both very important events for Wiltshire. We concluded with over an hour of questions and answers which is always good – it gets us all thinking and hopefully understanding.

There was a buzz about the events that I haven’t sensed for a while in Wiltshire and all managers fed back that they supported the new model and thematic working. I found this very encouraging. The next two sessions are on Monday in Chippenham, so I look forward to seeing some of you then. The events for all 5,000 staff start in mid-January.

Yesterday I met up with front line staff. It’s always good to catch up with what’s happening, brief staff on some of the larger issues such as the budget and campuses and find out what the “word on the street” is. We plan to expand these type of informal meetings from the new year and hold them weekly in each of the hubs. I’m looking forward to that.

Speaking about the budget we had an excellent informal session with Cabinet last week. It was the first real test for the three Corporate Directors. We took a balanced proposal to members almost two months ahead of where we were last year. The finance teams have done a great job – thank you all for that – and at the end of the discussion we were still just about balanced. We’re now working on the delivery plans associated with our proposals.

That’s probably enough for now. I’m in London for three days next week so we’ll talk again early the following week.

For daily updates, discussion, opinion and comment you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand
Thanks for reading.

Carlton