2024 Weeknote 14

April 1-7

This is my ongoing attempt at producing “weeknotes” to capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on my professional work. You can subscribe if you’d like to receive these via email or via Substack notifications.

An abbreviated week

I took Friday off to get a breather and to prep for the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse, which is the biggest of big deals next week (tomorrow, as I write this). So my weeknote will be a bit shorter this time.

Plus, this felt like a catch-up week, with a grab-bag of administrative work, meetings, a little training, and so forth. It didn’t feel like the ball was moved all that far forward this week.

It’s hard to tell an organization’s story

One thing that came up again this week was the need to create a monthly report for the organization, to tell our story, to build trust and support. Totally agree with this, but the question is how to do this, without killing the staff working on it along the way. Plus there’s the problem of audiences and their interests. Many of the folks my boss talks to won’t be impressed with scorecards or even lists of accomplishments—if those accomplishments don’t address their personal / political interests. This is how humans work in organizations, so it’s not surprising. But how do you write one report that addresses each person’s narrow needs?

The result is likely to be three-fold:

• A continued monthly “story” we tell that’s more humanized and focused, to illustrate our values / mission / impact. This will be released in print and via LinkedIn newsletter.

• A new monthly high-level, scorecard-style, slide deck that highlights accomplishments and gives a generic dashboard of stats that non-technical government leaders can understand and appreciate. This is a pretty anodyne report written for everyone, and it might even be shareable publicly.

• A rolling list of “touchy topics” that high-level leaders need to know about for their political awareness and/or because they have their own interests in those topics.

All of these documents and approaches are needed. They can all help solidify support for our mission. Now we have to actually do it.

Gearing up for 2 weeks of… something

The next 2 weeks are… intense. Some proverbial balls are going to drop in the middle of all this, I can already tell…

• Mon, Apr 8: I’m attempting to see the eclipse with all the risks of traffic insanity and even just clouds ruining things. But I’ll be on the center line of totality one way or another, expecting a full 4 minutes of total shadow.

• Tue, Apr 9: I fly to DC to get ready for a conference.

• Wed-Thu, Apr 10-11: I am attending a conference hosted by the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, alongside a variety of government digital leaders from across the continent. This ragtag group represents all levels of government and we bring a wild mix of experiences to the table, since “digital services” in government remains a frontier-style activity. I’m hoping to learn a ton. Aside from meeting cool digital folks, we also get to meet with the United States Digital Service (USDS), one of the key inspirations in helping my team develop the GX Foundry concept. I haven’t been this jazzed about a conference in a long time. And I haven’t been on Georgetown’s campus since the late 1990s, when I worked for a consulting company at the Georgetown University Medical Center.

• Fri, Apr 12: As a capstone on the week, the Beeck Center got us access to do a tour in the East Wing of the White House. I have no idea what that entails. Then I scramble to the airport to fly home.

• Sat-Sun, Apr 13-14: Catch up on laundry, email, and so forth, plus record my weekly business news show for the local radio reading service. Then prep for…

• Mon-Tue, Apr 15-16: It’s 2 days of off-site leadership meetings. I probably can’t even prep effectively for them due to all of the items above. But in theory we should be talking about the rest of 2024, all of 2025, and beyond. Simple. Oh, I also have an HOA board meeting on Tuesday. (Yikes.)

• Wed, Apr 17: First day in the office since April 4.

• Thu, Apr 18: We launch our new Granicus-based “core” website for the county today. Luckily, this replaces a low-traffic site, so this is effectively a “soft launch.” But this is the nucleus of what’s to come—a total rewrite of our public-facing web presence organized around services we provide, not agencies or elected officials.

• Fri, Apr 19: Hopefully I’m still alive.

Leading like Loki

One last thing… This week I had another 1:1 meeting with someone outside my managerial sphere—talking shop, career stuff, and so forth. That’s the second in two weeks. Both conversations were great. It’s good for me to see perspectives from across the organization, and I’m happy to share ideas or feedback or whatever I can, if people find it helpful.

But I started to wonder… Why are people that are 1, 2, or 3 levels away from me, on entirely different teams, seeking me out? I mean yeah, I have an “open door” to anyone, but people rarely use those doors. So what’s different now?

My assumption… In my role I can be pretty visible, and I cut a path that’s fairly open, honest, direct, but also (I hope) fun. I aspire to take the work very seriously, but I don’t think we should take work too seriously. Put another way, I’m deadly serious about the spirit of the law, but I’m always skeptical of the letter of the law.

Then I remembered… this is why trickster gods exist in mythologies around the world. Perhaps the best known in the West is the Norse god Loki (mostly due to Marvel movies these days). I had to remind myself of the roles of trickster gods, as it’s been a while since college, but ChatGPT had a summary of the things tricksters do best:

• Disrupting Order

• Creative Chaos

• Teaching Lessons

• Testing Boundaries

• Catalysts for Change

• Symbolizing Ambiguity

• Entertainment

A lot of these appeal to me as a leader. Indeed, what brought me to FCDC nearly five years ago was an opportunity to lead a “turnaround” in operations and culture, which involves dealing with ambiguity, creatively applying chaos and disrupting the old order, catalyzing change, and so on. In the midst of all this, it also helps to be entertaining, to keep it light because what we’re dealing with is pretty heavy.

Leading like Loki probably isn’t a sustainable practice for static organizations. But who works in a static organization anymore?

In any case, I’ve enjoyed chatting with colleagues from across the organization. I hope there’s more opportunity to do so again. And again. 🙂

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