Russell Davies

Norwich, city of some stuff

At the start of the holidays we asked Arthur if there was anywhere in the world he'd like to visit this summer. He said Norwich. (Blame Alan Partridge.) He was not wrong. We had a lovely day out. 

The castle/gallery is ace and mad. A proper municipal collection of random and locally relevant stuff.

Local wildlife is gathered in cabinets, numbered and labelled.

Plunderings from around the world have been donated by local benefactors.

Local industries are represented. Obvs.

And there's the odd thing you've never heard of before. Like Custard Cups.

But it's not just the usual. There's a Jeff Koons show on at the moment.

And there was this rather interesting experiment with 'unwanted' museum stuff.

Then we drove out towards Kings Lynn to visit Houghton Hall, where there's a bunch of art.

They have a lovely Richard Long.

And a fantastic collection of model soldiers in dioramas. Exactly what you'd do if you were a wealthy schoolboy. 

My favourites are made with flattened, almost 2D figures. They had a similar quality to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, as though Lawrence of Arabia had been shot by Ruby and Spears.

But, the main event, why we were there, was a sort of glacial 'son et lumière' organised by James Turrell. It's a pretty good excuse to sit on a lawn for 40 minutes, though as soon as Anne muttered 'Pimp My Stately Home' I couldn't help but think that it's exactly what a car modder would do with a stately home. Lots of pink and blue neon under all the ledges.

It rather made me nostalgic for my car account days, when someone would have suggested sticking a massive bass bin in there too. The background chat would also have been less (or at least differently) annoying too - not so much talk about the Chinese stock market and Waitrose points.

The next day we rounded off the trip with breakfast at the fantastic Cafe Britannia, handily located in Norwich prison.

Well done Norwich.

Am off

I'm going to leave GDS at the end of September.

It's been almost four years. My team don't need me any more. I'm getting old.

And Mike's leaving.

(As Alan Clarke said when Thatcher resigned "I came in with her. I go out with her.")

It has been a brilliant time. Utterly stretching and satisfying. Fantastic, talented people, so clever and hard-working and honest and honourable, all trying to do the right thing.

I've learned an incredible amount and had the opportunity to do so many new things. Massive thanks to Martha for the plan, to Mike for the delivery and to Francis for the support. Best. Bosses. Ever.

I don't have any big plans for what to do next - except I'm going to walk the Coast to Coast at the end of October and I hope to help with doteveryone - but I do need a job.

So if you want some digital transformation, please drop me a line. You can probably work out the address - [email protected]

And I hope I'm not done with government forever - there is so much opportunity to build a decent, empathetic, user-centred state. I'm still keen to do that.

There are many other people to thank but I'm not going to do a big list.

I just want to thank the team I'm leaving behind, the best team I've ever worked with: Ali, Matt, Giles, Graham, Ella, Zara and Mark.

Thank you, you lot.

I'm sure I'll write more about what I've learned, I'm bound to aren't I? What else is a blog for?

Summery

The Internet's Ego Death is so gorgeously summery. All those old school funk and soul references also evoke later summers like Will Smith's.

And 80s summers at the Blue Note and the Co-op disco in Derby. Loose Ends - Hangin' on a String, i-Level - In The Sand. That kind of thing.

My Top 5 this week.

215-221

Never

Part One - Flow

You can't fix services with engagement

In fact, increasingly, adding more 'engagement' will make it worse.

Spend a moment considering the problems Steve's had with Virgin.

So, the problems here are:

1. Steve's broadband doesn't work.

Obviously if that could be fixed all this goes away. I have no idea how you fix that, hopefully Virgin do, but, I imagine it's hard or one of the 12 engineers would have done it.

2. The system for dealing with Steve's broken broadband doesn't work.

There seems to be no coordination between engineers, bits of Virgin, no CRM, no ticketing system that works, none of that. That's a service design problem. Relatively trivial in a start-up, notoriously hard in a big sclerotic incumbent like Virgin. The only hope for a user stuck in this system is to escalate to someone who can escort you round the back of the broken process. Which is why people resort to social media...

3. But the social media team can't do anything to help.

Not only do they start on the problem fresh every time they hear of it, clearly all they can do is 'pass it on' to a system that can't fix it.

As Steve points out, this is can't be a profitable way to carry on. And it can only get worse - as people start to realise that the only way to solve this is to get escalated to the CEO.

I bet this explains a huge proportion of the productivity gap.

How did so many organisations end up here?

Because they've spent money on making their marketing digital, not their processes. They've got good at social media rather than service design.

They've invested in conversations, not services, so now they spend their whole time having conversations about how shit their services are.

They've done the easy stuff, not the hard work to make things simple.

They're just making it worse.

They're raising expectations ("we're listening!"), they're providing a focus for frustration and they're forcing their own people (normally good, smart, engaged people) to choose between being complicit with the users and slagging off their own organisation or, stonewalling or lying.

So what's engagement for?

The priority, of course, is to start building services that actually work. That's where you should be spending your money. Do that and you can use 'engagement' to help people find and understand the service.

Basically, do what Lucy says.

The Modern Antiquarian

Cybernetic Serendipity

Bye boss

 

End of an era