A very short blog this week – my apologies.
Can I ask you all to please volunteer to help us out with the Olympic torch events on July 11 and 12 at Hudson’s field in Salisbury and the surrounding towns and villages. We need more marshals and others to help ensure these events run smoothly for our communities and are a real celebration in the county. They also offer us a great opportunity to further develop our culture and team working together and have some real fun! Thanks in advance.
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. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 29 June 2012
Friday, 22 June 2012
Friday 22 June 2012
First off my apologies for not blogging for three weeks. I had a week away on holiday, a wedding and then came back and it’s been somewhat full on ever since! Normal service will be resumed from today.
It’s been an exciting week this week. Cabinet on Tuesday in Devizes reviewed a number of important papers including the Business Plan outcomes. Of over 100 targets that we set ourselves, 95% were green and being met which is a great achievement. Thank you to all our staff. We continue to work on the others to ensure we deliver for our communities. The press of course focused entirely on the 5%, which is expected. Unbelievably frustrating though after we spend so much effort delivering for Wiltshire.
I had the pleasure of meeting the newly announced Bishop of Ramsey later in the day. It was a good opportunity to welcome him to the county as well as to speak with partners from across the patch. It always surprises me how much business you can do in an hour when everybody is in one room!
On Wednesday I attended the development services team transformation morning in the Civic Centre. The team are really starting to deliver their transformation programme including a full systems review, culture change, new single IT system, management and team development, move into county hall and most importantly designing the service around our many different customers. Feedback from staff and customers continues to build in the team which is great to see. It was an energising session. Another unscripted Q&A which I always enjoy too.
Straight after this I attended the recruitment event for our new graduate trainee. There were five candidates who went through a full day of interviews, presentations, etc. It’s always so good to meet and speak with the next generation of local government officers before they start their careers.
The three corporate directors had a quick visit to the redeveloped part of County Hall. I have to say it looks and feels fantastic. We all start to move in towards the end of August. It is going to be a huge improvement for our customers, elected members and staff. The team and contractors have done a great job delivering this with such high quality, on time and under budget (again). Well done the property and transformation teams.
I shall be meeting up with the passenger transport team in Shurnhold this afternoon to spend a couple of hours going through progress on their systems thinking review of the service. This is always a great opportunity to learn how we work, why we work like that and how we can jointly improve the services for our customers.
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. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
It’s been an exciting week this week. Cabinet on Tuesday in Devizes reviewed a number of important papers including the Business Plan outcomes. Of over 100 targets that we set ourselves, 95% were green and being met which is a great achievement. Thank you to all our staff. We continue to work on the others to ensure we deliver for our communities. The press of course focused entirely on the 5%, which is expected. Unbelievably frustrating though after we spend so much effort delivering for Wiltshire.
I had the pleasure of meeting the newly announced Bishop of Ramsey later in the day. It was a good opportunity to welcome him to the county as well as to speak with partners from across the patch. It always surprises me how much business you can do in an hour when everybody is in one room!
On Wednesday I attended the development services team transformation morning in the Civic Centre. The team are really starting to deliver their transformation programme including a full systems review, culture change, new single IT system, management and team development, move into county hall and most importantly designing the service around our many different customers. Feedback from staff and customers continues to build in the team which is great to see. It was an energising session. Another unscripted Q&A which I always enjoy too.
Straight after this I attended the recruitment event for our new graduate trainee. There were five candidates who went through a full day of interviews, presentations, etc. It’s always so good to meet and speak with the next generation of local government officers before they start their careers.
The three corporate directors had a quick visit to the redeveloped part of County Hall. I have to say it looks and feels fantastic. We all start to move in towards the end of August. It is going to be a huge improvement for our customers, elected members and staff. The team and contractors have done a great job delivering this with such high quality, on time and under budget (again). Well done the property and transformation teams.
I shall be meeting up with the passenger transport team in Shurnhold this afternoon to spend a couple of hours going through progress on their systems thinking review of the service. This is always a great opportunity to learn how we work, why we work like that and how we can jointly improve the services for our customers.
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. Talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Thursday 31 May 2012
Full speed ahead to the Jubilee weekend. I hope you and your families have a good early summer break and enjoy the festivities across the county. Thank you to all the teams working this weekend keeping the show on the road.
It’s been a busy week, with several programme boards – Shaping the Future and the ECO/C02, both making very good progress to drive forward our agendas for embedding our values and culture across the organisation and reducing the counties carbon footprint respectively. We also had the first meeting of the new Scrutiny Management Committee. Robust scrutiny is vital to our organisation and it is important that we use this forum to develop policy in the future.
This afternoon I’m being interviewed by one of our Graduate Management Trainees on the subject of Leadership. This got me thinking and writing, so I thought that I would share with you my favourite definition and model of leadership. It has five elements:
1. Personal mastery: self awareness, self development, authenticity, composure and balance, integrity, presence
2. Vision: change catalyst, direction, purpose, systems thinking, judgement
3. Action: personal drive, role model, decisiveness, commitment, influence
4. Knowledge: subject matter expert, critical thinking, integrative problem solving
5. Relationships: empathy and trust, collaboration, communication, conflict management, development of others, inclusion
And to simplify this, we have just two functions really; to get the job done and to develop people!
It would be good to hear your thoughts and ideas about this.
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. I shall be taking some furlough next week, so talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
It’s been a busy week, with several programme boards – Shaping the Future and the ECO/C02, both making very good progress to drive forward our agendas for embedding our values and culture across the organisation and reducing the counties carbon footprint respectively. We also had the first meeting of the new Scrutiny Management Committee. Robust scrutiny is vital to our organisation and it is important that we use this forum to develop policy in the future.
This afternoon I’m being interviewed by one of our Graduate Management Trainees on the subject of Leadership. This got me thinking and writing, so I thought that I would share with you my favourite definition and model of leadership. It has five elements:
1. Personal mastery: self awareness, self development, authenticity, composure and balance, integrity, presence
2. Vision: change catalyst, direction, purpose, systems thinking, judgement
3. Action: personal drive, role model, decisiveness, commitment, influence
4. Knowledge: subject matter expert, critical thinking, integrative problem solving
5. Relationships: empathy and trust, collaboration, communication, conflict management, development of others, inclusion
And to simplify this, we have just two functions really; to get the job done and to develop people!
It would be good to hear your thoughts and ideas about this.
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. I shall be taking some furlough next week, so talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Friday, 25 May 2012
Friday 25 May 2012
This week has been a real week of celebration – with almost 100,000 people on the streets of Wilshire as the Olympic torch visited seven of the northern towns in the county. It was great to walk the route and see and speak with so many residents, businesses and of course our hundreds of staff who marshalled the event so well.
I would like to thank all the staff who volunteered to marshal. The preparation and training beforehand paid real dividends as everybody was safe and able to enjoy a fantastic two days. The streets, pavements and towns were exceptionally clean which made a big impact on everybody present and those who watched the live streaming around the world. It was a great show case for the county.
I would also like to thank those staff who kept the day job running during this week too. Many staff couldn’t get out to watch or take part in the celebrations as they had critical work to do. This is greatly appreciated.
Changing subjects a lot, I’ve been thinking this week about how and what we write to each other. We all write lots of emails, papers and discussion documents and of course some of these have the desired impact whilst others don’t – causing confusion, angst and many other unhelpful emotions. I came across some thinking from David Ogilvy, of Ogilvy and Mather recently that I thought I would share with you today. It got me thinking about how we could help our cultural shift and values by writing better... see what you think and let me know.
The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy and Mather. People who think well, write well.
Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. (think email here)
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
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 - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
I would like to thank all the staff who volunteered to marshal. The preparation and training beforehand paid real dividends as everybody was safe and able to enjoy a fantastic two days. The streets, pavements and towns were exceptionally clean which made a big impact on everybody present and those who watched the live streaming around the world. It was a great show case for the county.
I would also like to thank those staff who kept the day job running during this week too. Many staff couldn’t get out to watch or take part in the celebrations as they had critical work to do. This is greatly appreciated.
Changing subjects a lot, I’ve been thinking this week about how and what we write to each other. We all write lots of emails, papers and discussion documents and of course some of these have the desired impact whilst others don’t – causing confusion, angst and many other unhelpful emotions. I came across some thinking from David Ogilvy, of Ogilvy and Mather recently that I thought I would share with you today. It got me thinking about how we could help our cultural shift and values by writing better... see what you think and let me know.
The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy and Mather. People who think well, write well.
Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches.
Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints:
1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times.
2. Write the way you talk. Naturally.
3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs.
4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.
5. Never write more than two pages on any subject.
6. Check your quotations.
7. Never send a letter or a memo on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. (think email here)
8. If it is something important, get a colleague to improve it.
9. Before you send your letter or your memo, make sure it is crystal clear what you want the recipient to do.
10. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Go and tell the guy what you want.
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 - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
Tuesday 15 May 2012
Next week we celebrate the Olympic torch coming into Wiltshire for the first time – Tuesday 22nd and 23rd. It returns later in July. This is a great opportunity for us to celebrate and I would like to encourage you all to get out of the office and watch the torch and other celebrations in our communities – they will be with us for only a short time, at some locations for less than 15 minutes so please feel free to all join in. Times and locations will be shared by our Communications team later this week. We also need volunteers to help marshal these events, so could I thank those of you that have already volunteered and encourage more of you to get involved next week – we need all the help we can get please.
Last Friday I spent the day at our Parsonage Way depot with the highways and street scene team. The team have implemented a radical redesign of their service using systems thinking principles. The bottom line is that the team have improved their already impressive performance by almost 100% whist delivering significant revenue savings back to our communities. The day was so impressive, with a team that really understood their customer purpose, characteristics of demand and flow of work through the system. It was capped off with great community engagement, especially with the Parish Councils.
We have over 200 people now trained in this method and we need to develop this approach and encourage our service teams to experiment and deliver continuous improvement for our customers. There is a lot of national debate about the future role of public service in times of national austerity. I feel this misses the point. We need to be in the business of delivering what our customers, citizens, clients, users and communities need whilst improving performance and reducing cost. Let’s focus on doing that together...
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 - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
Last Friday I spent the day at our Parsonage Way depot with the highways and street scene team. The team have implemented a radical redesign of their service using systems thinking principles. The bottom line is that the team have improved their already impressive performance by almost 100% whist delivering significant revenue savings back to our communities. The day was so impressive, with a team that really understood their customer purpose, characteristics of demand and flow of work through the system. It was capped off with great community engagement, especially with the Parish Councils.
We have over 200 people now trained in this method and we need to develop this approach and encourage our service teams to experiment and deliver continuous improvement for our customers. There is a lot of national debate about the future role of public service in times of national austerity. I feel this misses the point. We need to be in the business of delivering what our customers, citizens, clients, users and communities need whilst improving performance and reducing cost. Let’s focus on doing that together...
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 - talk again in a week or so.
Carlton
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