February 10 – 16
My “weeknotes” capture events, thoughts, and other items from the past week, mostly focused on work. Learn more about the weeknotes concept here.
This week in #weeknotes
Winning the talent war. We had a surprise (but not surprising) resignation this week that suddenly opened up a role. The resignation hit on Monday and we had the position filled by Friday—a record turnaround time. (This was a fluke made possible by another hiring effort that was already in progress.) Meanwhile, we’re hopeful another role will be filled after the weekend after we finished up a series of interviews. Finally, yet another role is being hashed out through a collaborative re-imagining that aligns talents with team needs. (Yeah, this may not make a lot of sense, but that’s because I’m obfuscating roles, names, etc.) I went home on Friday feeling like we won the week. In about a month from now we should be rocking and rolling with all kinds of new talent in new roles we didn’t anticipate having when the year began. And it’s all because we work hard—really hard—on making good job descriptions, making good job postings, and interviewing extensively. The work pays off.
Reacting to RTO ripples. While we were fighting for talent, Ohio’s governor recently announced an end to remote work for State of Ohio employees. And while our team is decidedly not part of the State, it nevertheless triggered reactions. So as leaders we had to react and remind some folks that the RTO mandate didn’t apply to us. However, it might impact us, as State employees will start parking downtown in greater numbers, which will eat up parking stock and raise prices for our folks when they do come downtown. What an unnecessary mess, especially considering the State already sold off a lot of real estate and no longer has enough space to bring everyone back anyway.
Planning raises and promotions. Due to the retrograde way the county does budgeting and the unimaginative way our own organization’s budgets are built, we end up having to make pay change decisions months in advance, and even up to a year in advance in some cases. This requires that we either (a) make guesses about who will be up for a pay hike or promotion 6+ months from now, or (b) holding off on pay changes well past when we would have given them if we had a more fluid budgeting process. This causes stress for everyone involved. But this week our leadership team made some decisions to bring some order to the chaos. We didn’t fix everything, but at least adding in some frameworks will make future efforts a bit more predictable. (I would much rather have the freedom of the private sector in this situation.)
Fears about 2026. While we’re talking pay rates, raises, and more, there are growing fears the chaos and destruction across federal agencies may seep down to the local level by 2026. While our teams are not funded directly by the feds (we’re at perhaps a third-degree-or-more distance from federal money), nevertheless the losses across some local agencies may be acute and may ricochet through county budgets in unforeseen ways. Right now, nobody knows the impact, but everyone fears the unknown.
Politics and technology. Setting aside the federal disaster in progress, we have a local situation that’s been fascinating to watch. Basically, there’s a major software upgrade / replacement that’s been needed for years. We have a project in progress to do that. But the elected official over the affected agency has concerns about the project due to timing around the 2026 election (yes, 18 months away). They fear potential consequences if the project doesn’t go well and it spills into public view. I think about this in reverse—that it’s better to make a solid try and fail than to leave a semi-risky legacy system in place, but then again I’ve never run for office. In any case, this is the first time I’ve seen election concerns interact with a technology project in such a clear way. We’ve certainly prioritized some work at the request of elected officials in the past, but that’s no different than prioritizing a project because a key VP or other leader in the private sector wants you to do it. The idea of putting a project on ice for 2-3 years to avoid election interactions for a single official is a first for me.
The week in links
- Which AI to Use Now: An Updated Opinionated Guide — I discovered this succinct yet comprehensive comparative guide to the latest #genAI services and solutions via a LinkedIn post by Wendy Jameson. It’s good stuff.
- The Federal Government is Forked — Former federal leader and current U.S. Digital Response consultant Keith Wilson shares his thoughts on the chaos being wrought by President Musk. Sadly, there are a growing number of these posts out there.
- AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news, BBC finds — I shared this story on LinkedIn this week, as a reminder that AI tools have zero knowledge in them.
- VOTING FOR THE MAYOR WHO PROMISED TO BLOW UP THE CITY DOESN’T MEAN I APPROVE OF THE MAYOR BLOWING UP THE CITY
This week in Bluesky funnies
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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