TGI Friday! I’m taking today off so this might be a short blog as I’m off to Wales in half an hour. I’m also still smarting from us losing last night's cricket T20 match against Pakistan too, but their bowlers were excellent, especially in the last overs.
Talking about cricket I spent most of yesterday at Somerset County Cricket ground with Chief Execs from across the South West (they offer South West Councils cheap meeting rooms). It was good to catch up with friends and colleagues, and needless to say there was lots of interest in our leadership model. We discussed some of the big issues facing local government in the south west, to agree how we would respond and lobby central government. Welfare reform to the benefits system is worrying everybody as we believe that in Wilshire it will remove around £10 million per year from the economy at a time when we need every penny to stimulate economic growth and jobs. Others are hit much worse and the impact on rural communities will be high. We also discussed the approach to inspection, particularly the peer review process being led by the Local Government Association (LGA). Our fear is that the service based approach will emphasise silos and non-corporate working within our organisations at a time when this is the last thing we should be doing. Having said that we are definitely in favour of the light-touch peer approach.
I spent all day Wednesday in Salisbury. It was good to catch up with the Customer Service teams in the morning and talk about ways that we can improve the service. These ideas all came from staff working in the front line and we have started working on these items immediately. It’s all about continuous improvement. After lunch I went to Bourne Hill to meet staff from the Planning, Technical Support, Conservation, Enforcement and the Building Control teams. Again it was great to hear their feedback on our recent planning transformation event and importantly put some faces to some names.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. 199 followers as of this morning... will you be number 200?
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 24 February 2012
Friday, 17 February 2012
Friday 17 February
It’s been a fun week this week – out and about meeting staff from across the county and of course England are 2-0 up in the ODI series against Pakistan with the Essex lad Cook scoring back to back centuries in both matches.
On Tuesday I was in Shurnhold meeting the planning teams from the west and the east. It was a good opportunity for those informal discussions after the big transformation day we held recently. Lots of great questions, some real concerns about the future which I hope were answered with honesty. I have had several emails from staff since which I always like.
Yesterday I was in Bourne Hill with Sue meeting groups of managers and staff from the south of the county. Again we all learned a lot and it was inspiring to see staff from different departments coming together and able to sort many of their issues between them. Our role to facilitate this and ensure our teams connect across the organisational structure is important if we are to offer joined up services to our customers. There were concerns regarding the building which Mark from the FM team did a great job in handling and the other area of most concern was over the uncertainty surrounding the admin review. We have a paper coming to CLT on Monday on the admin review so we will have much more detail about this to share with you over the coming weeks.
Today I’m spending most of the day with the highways and street scene teams in Kennet House, Devizes. We’re looking at options around how we deliver these services in the future whilst ensuring we maximise the involvement of our community areas in shaping and making decisions related to their needs. Interesting stuff, or at least I think so! I should probably get out more...
Earlier this week we discussed the plans and issues around the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. These events this year are going to be massive in Wiltshire and will involve so many different staff from across the organisation. I see this as a great way to develop our cross boundary working and support our culture development as well as having a good old party in our communities. More on this over the coming weeks.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
On Tuesday I was in Shurnhold meeting the planning teams from the west and the east. It was a good opportunity for those informal discussions after the big transformation day we held recently. Lots of great questions, some real concerns about the future which I hope were answered with honesty. I have had several emails from staff since which I always like.
Yesterday I was in Bourne Hill with Sue meeting groups of managers and staff from the south of the county. Again we all learned a lot and it was inspiring to see staff from different departments coming together and able to sort many of their issues between them. Our role to facilitate this and ensure our teams connect across the organisational structure is important if we are to offer joined up services to our customers. There were concerns regarding the building which Mark from the FM team did a great job in handling and the other area of most concern was over the uncertainty surrounding the admin review. We have a paper coming to CLT on Monday on the admin review so we will have much more detail about this to share with you over the coming weeks.
Today I’m spending most of the day with the highways and street scene teams in Kennet House, Devizes. We’re looking at options around how we deliver these services in the future whilst ensuring we maximise the involvement of our community areas in shaping and making decisions related to their needs. Interesting stuff, or at least I think so! I should probably get out more...
Earlier this week we discussed the plans and issues around the Diamond Jubilee and Olympics. These events this year are going to be massive in Wiltshire and will involve so many different staff from across the organisation. I see this as a great way to develop our cross boundary working and support our culture development as well as having a good old party in our communities. More on this over the coming weeks.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 10 February 2012
Friday 10 February 2012
A snowy start to the day today so I hope you’ve all had safe journeys to work or are using the home working ICT that most of us now have. I’m typing this at my kitchen table as I contemplate going outside to scrape the snow and drive to Trowbridge.
Assuming I get to Trowbridge I’m meeting about 170 staff from our planning service this morning. We’re launching the transformation programme for that service today with an interactive event for all staff in the service to shape and influence the work programme for the year. This is a major priority for me this year as planning is such an important part of delivering our vision for more resilient communities, and ensuring we attract more jobs into the county and keep the ones we have during what is a difficult economic climate.
Yesterday we had the joint scrutiny meeting of the proposed 2012-13 budget. It was a lively meeting with some great questions from members as they prepared themselves for the full debate on the budget at Council on 28 February. The finance and services teams have done a great job once again to prepare this in such a readable and accessible format. Well done all.
Earlier in the week I held my monthly managers meetings with around 100 managers from the teams I lead. We shared some learning around the forthcoming planning transformation programme, devolving service decision making to communities (highways have done a great job on this), the overall transformation programme including campuses and a quick session from me on communication and how we might understand and improve it. This last item was raised by many staff in the recent forums we held.
I now have to write a quick letter to the Local Government Chronicle about councils with no Chief Executive. They really don’t seem to understand how it all works so I’ll have another try...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Assuming I get to Trowbridge I’m meeting about 170 staff from our planning service this morning. We’re launching the transformation programme for that service today with an interactive event for all staff in the service to shape and influence the work programme for the year. This is a major priority for me this year as planning is such an important part of delivering our vision for more resilient communities, and ensuring we attract more jobs into the county and keep the ones we have during what is a difficult economic climate.
Yesterday we had the joint scrutiny meeting of the proposed 2012-13 budget. It was a lively meeting with some great questions from members as they prepared themselves for the full debate on the budget at Council on 28 February. The finance and services teams have done a great job once again to prepare this in such a readable and accessible format. Well done all.
Earlier in the week I held my monthly managers meetings with around 100 managers from the teams I lead. We shared some learning around the forthcoming planning transformation programme, devolving service decision making to communities (highways have done a great job on this), the overall transformation programme including campuses and a quick session from me on communication and how we might understand and improve it. This last item was raised by many staff in the recent forums we held.
I now have to write a quick letter to the Local Government Chronicle about councils with no Chief Executive. They really don’t seem to understand how it all works so I’ll have another try...
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand.
Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 3 February 2012
Friday 3 February 2012
The last 10 days or so has been great – really buzzing, all apart from the Second Test which I am still in shock over. We’ll see what today brings the England team.
Last weeks staff awards were terrific. It was great to see nearly 300 staff attend, and some of their stories were humbling indeed. The 2012 awards start again this month so please get your entries in. It makes a big difference to how we all feel during some tough times.
I presented the Planning Service Transformation Programme to Cabinet Liaison earlier this week. This is a very readable document that summarises all of our plans for the development of the service over the next 12 months or so including some radical ideas to accelerate development of our culture and behaviours work which I shall personally lead with Brad. We are getting all the staff together next week – some 160 or so – to share and discuss this with them and most importantly to get their input into the future direction of the service. This is exciting and Cabinet fully indorsed the plan developed by Brad and his team.
We completed the staff forums yesterday in Chippenham. We’ve met well over 2,500 people over the last few weeks from across the county. It has been a privilege to see such engaged staff and listen to their observations and questions about how we become an even better organisation delivering with our communities. So many great ideas. The big issue that I have heard is that of inter-team communication; service X knowing and understanding what service Y is doing and why. We need to think very had about how we address this. It’s all about connecting people I think. We’ll have to come up with novel and effective ways of encouraging this at a time when people are very busy. Twitter anybody?
Whilst at Chippenham yesterday we held our first hub session for managers and staff based in the locality. It was a great conversation about many subjects and so good to spend some quality time with front line staff. I am really looking forward to these weekly sessions in the hubs. If you would like to come along then please contact that communications team and they can let you know dates and times. It’s very informal!
I am spending all day today with the HR team working on the development plan for people throughout the organisation and the next steps on our culture change journey. I find this stuff fascinating and so important as it will be the work that starts to deliver on many of the comments, questions and observations that have come out of the staff forums over the last month or so. Watch this space for updates.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Last weeks staff awards were terrific. It was great to see nearly 300 staff attend, and some of their stories were humbling indeed. The 2012 awards start again this month so please get your entries in. It makes a big difference to how we all feel during some tough times.
I presented the Planning Service Transformation Programme to Cabinet Liaison earlier this week. This is a very readable document that summarises all of our plans for the development of the service over the next 12 months or so including some radical ideas to accelerate development of our culture and behaviours work which I shall personally lead with Brad. We are getting all the staff together next week – some 160 or so – to share and discuss this with them and most importantly to get their input into the future direction of the service. This is exciting and Cabinet fully indorsed the plan developed by Brad and his team.
We completed the staff forums yesterday in Chippenham. We’ve met well over 2,500 people over the last few weeks from across the county. It has been a privilege to see such engaged staff and listen to their observations and questions about how we become an even better organisation delivering with our communities. So many great ideas. The big issue that I have heard is that of inter-team communication; service X knowing and understanding what service Y is doing and why. We need to think very had about how we address this. It’s all about connecting people I think. We’ll have to come up with novel and effective ways of encouraging this at a time when people are very busy. Twitter anybody?
Whilst at Chippenham yesterday we held our first hub session for managers and staff based in the locality. It was a great conversation about many subjects and so good to spend some quality time with front line staff. I am really looking forward to these weekly sessions in the hubs. If you would like to come along then please contact that communications team and they can let you know dates and times. It’s very informal!
I am spending all day today with the HR team working on the development plan for people throughout the organisation and the next steps on our culture change journey. I find this stuff fascinating and so important as it will be the work that starts to deliver on many of the comments, questions and observations that have come out of the staff forums over the last month or so. Watch this space for updates.
For daily updates, discussion, personal opinion, comment or just to connect or keep in touch you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drcarltonbrand. Thanks for reading and we’ll talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
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