2025 Weeknote 09 : Fire on the horizon

February 24 – March 2

My “weeknotes” capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work. Learn more about the weeknotes concept here.

Achievement Unlocked: One Year of Weeknotes

I just realized at the last second, before publishing, that this release marks a complete year of publishing weeknotes every single week, come hell or high water. My first weeknote covered the week starting March 4, 2024. I don’t know what to make of this. I’ve enjoyed the creative outlet, but also found it to be a heavy load at times. I’m not sure if I’m “doing it right” and most of the time almost no one sees what I share. Still… if William Zinsser is right, and we can use Writing to Learn, then I must be learning something.

I do wish my colleagues would do this, albeit on a much smaller scale. Indeed, I should be doing this on a smaller scale! But the commitment seems to elude just about everyone. Or maybe it’s fear of being judged. Not sure. I just wish I could see/hear the thoughts of the folks around me regularly. I’ll keep advocating for it!

But for now, my year-long tradition continues…

This week in #weeknotes

18F is dead. It was just a matter of time. First USDS was gutted and used as a shell for the DOGE attacks, and 18F only had superficial wounds. As of Friday night, though, all of 18F was shutdown. But not before posting a defiant message (attached below as a PDF for future reference). LinkedIn is littered with the news and reactions, and I have nothing I can add, other than to voice my dismay, anger, and frustration. Perhaps my favorite hot take was from the Executive Director of 18F herself, shared on LinkedIn here.

Soccer is back. Here at the end of democracy you need some distractions. So I was pleased to see Major League Soccer is back in action, with the full season available for streaming on Apple TV+ (subscription), which my wife and I enjoy watching at home on the big screen. We went to a game in person in Columbus last year or the year before and… yeah… not doing that again. The Columbus stadium in particular was literlly designed to amplify the sounds of the crowd, and… well… mission accomplished. That stadium is way, waaaaay too noisy. But the games are fun to watch, and Columbus has a winning tradition, so we cheer on the team from home.

Remote work while sick. I had a reminder of the pandemic this week, as I spent the first 2 days working remotely because I was getting over what appeared to be a cold. Like most of the U.S. I was taken out by a cold—though lots of others have had much worse this winter. So I worked remotely and… those days are actually more exhausting than being in the office. The meeting-meeting-meeting-meeting schedule with no breaks or changes in venue just wears me down. That said, I wouldn’t have made it at the office.

Ready for the end of Season 7. This coming week marks the end of an 8-week block of time in our digital services group—the GX Foundry—so I’m looking forward to hearing about the accomplishments of the various teams. We haven’d done this since December 20. We use these 8-week groupings to organize work and priorities and then celebrate the wins during the year. It’s turned into a great ritual.

Will no one think of the children? (We will.) As our Delivery Services group does more and more Business Analysis (BA) work, we’re getting into a broader variety of efforts. One of those is revamping the digital infrastructure for our Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) team, housed in the Sheriff’s office. (Yes, they work on investigatinf the criminals that handle that material.) Our job is to help them assess their current infrastructure weaknesses and plan major some upgrades. They need a lot of storage and a fast network to move big files around and a lot of compute to analyze the collected material (yuck). But much of their gear was built up for a slower-paced world with less digital evidence. If we can get the funding, we’re gonna take them to warp speed.

Say it again. And again. And one more time. I was reminded this week of the old change management notion / leadership precept that to get an idea across, you must say it at least 7 times before what you’re telling folks begins to sink in. You have to say stuff so often you get sick of saying it. Only then will it begin to take root. And I’m starting to think this rule may need to be doubled when it comes to training others on new digital tools or digitally-based processes. You can’t demo it once and then tell others you already explained it. Repetition. Repetition. Take a breath. Repetition. Remember: Everyone is distracted, and you’re not nearly as dynamic a leader as you think! 🙂

The Phoenix Project rises from the ashes. More than 5 years ago, when I was starting in my first job in local government, I gathered a small group of my direct reports and a couple others to read The Phoenix Project together and discuss it every couple weeks in a book club chat. I had taken over a team that had been brutalized by bad past management and struggled to get anything done because they couldn’t see a positive future. So we read a book that delves into DevOps and Lean and Kanban and so forth, taking a journey through an organization that was also failing, before turning it around. Well, we’re bringing The Phoenix Project back, but this time for a cross-team gathering of about 15 people that are trying to collaboratively revamp how our organization gets work done, from start to finish. The group has had some trouble gelling, so this will be our chance to wrestle with some of the ideas in the book but also see one another on another level. I’m excited to do it again, as the book is a great read, but it also sparks a lot of thinking for our teams. I can’t wait to get started, but we will be waiting for a couple new-hires to get started later this month.

Meanwhile, in AI land…

The week in links: Positive Conflict Edition™

This week all my links are about things I’m reading and will be using as resources in the days and weeks ahead, as I try to lead some cultural transformations. In addition to launching the Phoenix Project book club noted above, I’ll be delving into the following resources, too. I have a keen interest in fostering positive / productive / innovative conflict, as some of our teams either go too hard into conflict or take offense too easily, shutting down learning opportunities. Here’s what I’m reading and using…

• How to Encourage the Right Kind of Conflict on Your Team — This short HBR piece explains the value of positive conflict and gives some practical tips for leaders on how to foster it. This is a culture-building and capacity-building piece you can use again and again.
• How Constructive Dissent Can Unlock Your Team’s Innovation — While focused on developing “innovation” capacity, the truth is this is similar to the last article: it offers some specific tactics, including development of team behavior expectations, leading with inquiry, and much more.
• The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder — This recent and popular book is not about creating positive conflict specifically, but uses the notion of “friction” and advises leaders to create or remove friction in organizational culture and practice in order to get more of the behaviors you need, and less of the destructive stuff. Combined with the prior articles, you get a notional framework for how to lead development of a more resilient and flexible culture, while sticking to a mission framework.
• The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups — This is a nerdy book that delves into how human psychology (driven by biology) plays into how we do, or don’t work well in groups. It talks about group sizes, intimacy, and more. I’m about 30% through the book, but already I’m seeing validation of things I’ve done in the last few years to establish team identities and a feeling of belonging, which is absolutely vital to team success. I was apparently following core psychological principles without knowing it. But now I can do it consciously.

Bluesky funnies this week

For an assortment of my favorite quips, puns, double-entendres, and hilarious off-axis observations over the past week, check out my latest Bluesky funnies collection.

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