Weeknotes March 23rd — 27th
As lighthearted as possible
I don’t know about you, but I’m now in the ‘adult about to be gunged on children’s tv’ phase of dressing. I mean, who even cares anymore that my clothing combination makes me look like I’m about to take part in a gameshow set on an oil rig which is only available at 3am down the dusty end of the TV channels?
Last week, another light year ago, had a few emotional ups and downs, though I’m not doing anything remotely as hard as going into a hospital every day, or helping queues of people buy the things they need for their family, or any of the hundreds of other jobs millions of amazing people are doing that are more demanding than sitting in running leggings and a slightly crumpled jumper in back-to-back video calls. Right now I can only work on my tiny corner of the world though, so I’m trying to do that.
On that note, here’s the work bit (does not include all the work):
Reviewing what we did the previous week with everything that happened
With Andy and Kim, I reviewed the internal actions and information sharing document we’d made in week one: I’ll call this the ‘getting the office ready to close’ week, and made sure in week 2 (last week) — the ‘we are now all remote’ week — that we had updated those notes and re-shared them. This covered anything new we’d discovered about communication tools, ways of working and so on. It covered stuff around the schools closing. We also checked in on all the actions that had been taken since the whirlwind of the first week. That took a while, but I hope it’s been helpful for anyone who needed guidance.
Reviewing Zoom — maybe some helpful things for other people in the same boat?
Alan and I completed the supplier review process for Zoom and we tested it out so we could set up the account the way we want it. In case anyone else is using or about to use Zoom (hi most people) then — if you haven’t already — there are a few things you may want to look at in the settings. For example, in our case for various reasons we don’t ever want anything to record, so we turned all recording functionality off. Other things like:
- Even if you don’t choose to actively record a session, the software has a default setting to automatically begin recording any time you share your screen. You can turn this off.
- There is another default setting which means the meeting host can know if a participant is not looking at the Zoom window. This seems pretty dodgy, so we turned that off. NB: as far as we worked out, as host you don’t get to know what the person is looking at that isn’t your Zoom meeting, but Zoom probably can know that, so that’s a bit dodgy x2. Off it goes.
- Make sure if you use the zoom application that you fully quit it once you’re done with your meeting.
Do Zoom get asked to fill in bespoke information security forms? Who knows. There is a big furore over their security at the moment, so we are being pretty strict in what Zoom can be used for here. Looks like it’s being used for UK gov cabinet meetings though, just imagine the security form for that.
Keeping the business running
It is financial year end, as a subscriptions-based business this means lots of renewals work and catching up with people. Talking about money right now feels argh, but equally, the more businesses that can survive this situation without needing to ask for government emergency support, especially suppliers whose business is supporting the public sector itself, the better it will be for the economy and for everyone’s lives. We’re still working hard and are lucky that with the kind of work Delib does we are still in the position to do that.
Struggling without empathy
I found some of last week’s calls tough. I struggle when there’s a lack of empathy, especially in times like this when it is really needed because we’re all a bit raw and only just keeping it together. It’s certainly very hard work to be empathetic when you feel like you’re the recipient of something not going as well as it could, but the attempt at understanding what other people are up against in their day is needed more than ever right now. A set of questions: What do I think might have caused this? What else might have been going on? Knowing the person/people involved, do I think they’d set out for this outcome? What might it be like in their day that would stop them seeing my situation? What might they not know that would help?
Not to be too meta, but you’ve also got to try to be empathetic about why people aren’t able to be empathetic. Those questions go both ways. I know! Minefield eh.
Bespoke information security forms, mon amour
In case anyone was thinking, “I wonder if in a time of crisis processes are being made easier so long bespoke information security forms won’t happen?” and of course, why wouldn’t you be wondering that, it’s a very valid question. I can confirm that, no, long bespoke information security forms are still very much a part of life. I know this because my colleague Alan and I spent over a full working day filling one in last week (that’s two working days between us both). I wrote about these a few weeks ago as well. And in a time when maybe lots of us are thinking how precious time is, how it’s something we can’t get back once it’s spent, it feels especially extravagant to be spending some of those hours typing the words ‘please see our information security policy’ or ‘as per our ISO27001 accreditation’ into a document multiple times. Call me a romantic, but right now (and always) I want to do things that benefit the world somehow.
A new training plan
I updated the training plan for our new starter Ceri. Our normal plan and agenda for training account managers hasn’t been quite as translatable to this weird situation as I’d have hoped it would be. I have a structured plan linked to clear objectives so people know what they’re aiming towards, but it normally also involves a new person joining in almost everything going on so that they can pick stuff up by osmosis as much as by repetition. This works well in an office, though in this situation we’ve realised it’s just crazy to ask anyone to be on so many calls and emails and doing such disparate new tasks all day every day — it’s a recipe for mind-melting. And let’s face it, there is enough mind-meltingness to cope with right now. With Jessie’s help, I re-did Ceri’s training agenda to be able to focus on one project at a time. A project being something like e.g. Learn how Citizen Space works. Learn and run through how we do deployments. Learn how we do support.
One at a time. Make a list. Tick them off. Move on to the next topic. No fixed timescales or days to complete each project.
This aims to do two things: Hopefully it will mean Ceri can get to the end of each day having achieved a winnable set of tasks all related to one single chunk of the work we do, and it means those of us helping with training can focus on one thing at a time as well. Once we get to the the end of that project chunk and it’s fully absorbed we’ll move onto the next project. Each project has three types of task:
Actions: Stuff you run through with other people
Reading
and Practice: Stuff you can practice and work through on your own test site to cement knowledge.
We have more new starters joining us in a few weeks and I hope that what I and others are getting to grips with now will benefit their remote training and on-boarding as well. It’s a learning process for us all.
Many more things happened of course, but for now, here’s some other stuff we’ve been doing to help each other:
- A morning Whereby check in at 09:30 to say hi and how are you
- Drinks o’clock at 16:30 on Zoom every Friday
- A wellbeing Dialogue (Dialogue is one of our tools) to share ideas of things we can do to make life better, so far it has workout sessions, jokes, reading lists, a virtual film night, an album listening party, online board games and more
And here’s some light entertainment:
A video of Roy Ayres and his bandmate Clyde Gassaway having a xylophone battle at Ronnie Scott’s in 1988:
and that time on Shooting Stars when Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer swung a series of different sized mammals at Mark Lamarr:
