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Week 53: All that matters

Frankie RobertoPosted on

Illustration of a laptop open next to a vaccine vial, with the laptop having an NHS logo and form on it.

I did 5 straight days of commuting to an office this week, probably for the first time since the pandemic. Usually I work from home one day a week to make picking the kids up from school easier that day. But I just couldn’t face being surrounded by the kids’ mess and being sat at our kitchen table all day.

Everyone’s circumstances are different, but I’ve found going to an office to be much healthier, physically and psychologically. I think I might be done with WFH.

I spent much of this week trying to wrap up previous bits of work, getting them into a state where we’re happy enough for them to go into development.

One of these is our new product page and sign up form. For the coming winter vaccination campaign, pharmacies will be able to choose their digital supplier, and so we’ll need to explain the features and benefits of our system. We’ve sweated every word on the page, and I’ve added some illustrations too (sneak peak above).

An evening with Chris Hoy

Photo of a stage lit by strong spotlights, on which sit a man and a woman, and behind them a large screen saying ‘An evening with Sir Chris Hoy’ – All that matters

On Monday I went to a talk by Chris Hoy at a West End theatre, in support of his new book All that matters.

I’m a big fan of his, and watching him on TV race (and win) at the 2012 Olympics got me into track cycling as a spectator sport. If you’ve not been, I can recommend it. There are now velodromes in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Newport. The sport hasn’t quite found a stable commercial footing, so competition formats come and go, but it’s been fascinating to see the experimentation in how they are designed, balancing the in-venue experience with need to make it work for TV.

Whilst the evening was mostly about cycling, Chris also talked about his diagnosis of stage 4 prostate cancer, and how that has since affected his outlook on life. It was a stark reminder of why it’s important to enjoy the present, and not just think of the future or the past.

Chris ended the evening by imploring men over 40 (gulp, that includes me) to do an online prostate risk checker. He promised it takes 30 seconds and only has 3 questions. This is run not by the NHS but by a charity, and is curiously designed in a pseudo-chat format.

I’ve been vaguely aware that Chris has been campaigning for the national guidelines on prostate cancer to change, and that it’s currently being reviewed. In the meantime, it’s interesting to see that the NHS isn’t the only one doing digital health checks, and that charities and others have a role to play too.

Leading smart people

Julia Harrison from Public digital was the latest in our line up of internal Thoughtful Thursday talks. She gave us a great and thoughtful presentation about leading teams of smart people. It covered a lot of ground: vision, autonomy, mastery, purpose, strategy, principles, OKRs and more, so I won’t even try to summarise it here.

I still consider myself primarily a practitioner, but my role does include leadership, so I’ve been thinking about how best to combine the two.

One thing Julia mentioned was modelling good practice and behaviour, and ‘owning up when you screw up’ so others can not be afraid to do the same. I think I do ok at that, although I’d like to write more about some of our assumptions which have turned out to be wrong.

The harder bit is communicating a vision and a strategy. That doesn’t all have to come from me, but there might be things I can do to help.

Mike’s post this week, Dance of the design manager, feels relevant too.

  • The Spending review 2025 was published this week. I can’t pretend I’ve read it all, but there was more cash for the NHS and with it, increased ambition. Now we have to deliver.
  • Transformation at the speed of trust from Tom Loosemore was timely. I hope someone’s thinking about this for the NHS, especially given all the impending organisational change.
  • The Digital Shift is a new podcast mini-series, and the first episode features Chris Fleming and Lara Sampson discussing digital leadership.
  • My colleagues have written about what they learnt from looking at diabetic eye screening. This kind of discovery work can often get lost in the depths of Sharepoint after the work is done, so I’m delighted to see it out in the open.
  • Digital and mission-driven government: digital, burdens and networks from Richard Pope is the first of 3 essays which he’s publishing with Nesta. One cursed phrase I picked up from it is ‘the lure of being announceable’. Touché.

Happy Fathers Day to the dads out there.