BrainDump #4: Better late than never…
So I missed last week’s BrainDump to spend some time with my niece and family visiting a farm! So this week is a bit of a bumper edition…
Throughout January a big focus for me has been the wellbeing of my teams and how I can best support them — I think it’s really important that we don’t take wellbeing for granted and take the time out to spend with each other. As part of this I held my first monthly team drop-in — although we have an (imaginary) open door within H&C I thought it was important for the team to have designated time that they could come and have a natter to me. This could be to chat about how their roles are going, career development, help and advice or just a chat about their day. This is really helpful for me as it gives me an insight into how things are going, where people’s ambitions lie and how I can help/support people to get to where they want to be.
This month I was also asked to give a presentation on wellbeing at our Directorate Away Day and it proved to be a great opportunity to put mental health “out there” to encourage people to talk about the stuff we tend to bury as deeply as we can. As a result of this session 24 staff members have committed to a 90 day wellbeing challenge and I’m looking forward to them keeping me on track with my health/wellbeing goals!!
What I’ve been working on:
Future Leader Programme Evaluation: I really believe that people in leadership positions should actively look for ways to extend the ladder behind them. We’re really fortunate to have high numbers of really talented staff within MHA and the Future Leader programme was a way of developing, empowering and showcasing these individuals. The programme has been really successful and I’ve been blown away by what the Future Leaders have achieved in such a short space of time.
UC Prep: We’ve been given some breathing space in Monmouthshire with our go live date moving to June so we’ve structured our next few months around what preparation we need to complete. This includes; embedding a rent first culture, defined roles and responsibilities and a really robust training and comms plan (amongst other things!)
Tenancy Health Checks: We’ve been piloting health checks for approximately 9 months and the vast majority of our tenancies so far have been “green”, however, for those which are unsustainable in their current form we’ve been working alongside our tenancy coaches to improve — this has proved really successful with tenants engaging well with our services and making improvements for themselves and their properties. This preventative approach means we’re able to get to people before they hit a crisis — so we’re able to put mechanisms in place with them at their own speed rather than fire-fight.
Evictions Lessons Learnt: Evictions are failures — fortunately we do very few however, it’s important to learn from those that we do. We’ve started quarterly lessons learnt jointly between our income, new homes, support and continuous improvement teams. The purpose of these reviews is to critically and objectively look at what we could have done differently and how we can continue to improve our approach to unsustainable arrears.
What I’ve been reading:
Alexander Osterwalder “The one biggest error in customer interviews: mistaking opinions for facts” http://blog.strategyzer.com/posts/2018/1/8/the-one-biggest-error-in-customer-interviews-mistaking-opinions-for-facts?utm_content=buffer64ec2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Jeremy Swain “Street homelessness: The dangerous appeal of the street magnets” https://jeremyswain.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/street-homelessness-dangerous-appeal-of.html?m=1
Serena Jones “Setting the foundations for a psychologically informed approach — a housing association perspective” https://serenamjones.wordpress.com/2017/11/25/setting-the-foundations-for-a-psychologically-informed-approach-a-housing-association-perspective/
Brad Johnson & David Smith “The best mentors think like Michelangelo” https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-best-mentors-think-like-michelangelo?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Patrick Butler “Most children in UK’s poorest areas now growing up in poverty” https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/24/most-children-in-uks-poorest-areas-now-growing-up-in-poverty?__twitter_impression=true
