It’s all about trust. My first weeknote, six months in at the Government Digital Service

This week I found my tribe at OneTeamGov. A heartfelt, thoughtful, humorous and engaged bunch of doers.

Yes, I’m writing a weeknote — and that’s also thanks to OneTeamGov and the example set by Sam Villis, whose spirited and interesting posts are here. I want to try expressing my weekly insights with a little less preciousness. Writing has typically been tortured for me, and this may help.

Onwards, then.

The theme of my six months at the Government Digital Service to date is trust.

Initially, being delighted by the high level of trust I encountered at GDS, where at any presentation there will be robust and courageous questions, and — as importantly — transparent answers.

Then, trusting myself when, arriving in a team called “Reliability Engineering Tools”, I recognised none of these words, or many spoken at all. Terrifying acronyms (wait, is that a government department? A cloud technology?). Innumerable ‘clouds’: UK Cloud, Cloudfoundry, EC2. My first month was an exercise in trusting that I would learn, and that the colleagues who hired me knew something I didn’t when they placed an English graduate into the Technology Operations department.

Trust.

A fellow Product Manager, one week in, asked me how it was going. My wide eyes gave me away. “Lean on your team”, he insisted. My mind countered, “But if they only knew half of what I don’t know right now…”

Gradually, though, I’ve learned to do just that. Because unlike previous workplaces, where it was “on me” to run things, at GDS we’re teams of peers.

Yes, I still need to prepare and think ahead, but I’ve been astonished by how little my colleagues need from me, really. A prompt is enough; the right opening question — and then, wow, the team flowers into creativity. I can relax into being a peer, not the font of all knowledge — which means we move faster and make better decisions. It’s been a learning process and continues to be.

Trusting the team.

And trusting that in trusting them, I don’t become less valuable. But instead have the time and energy for the things I uniquely have to do; which are scary and uncomfortable and really, really satisfying.

Learning to delegate sideways and manage up: the oh-so-common challenges of leaders in training. Both exercises in trust: in enabling others to do, rather than doing myself. I’m improving. It’s harder than it looked from afar.

Key to building trust with my new colleagues has been courage: something I’ve worked on since reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly some years ago. The courage to ask basic questions, stick my hand up when I’m lost, pause a conversation mid-flow to question an assumption — and risk getting it “wrong”. I’m touched every day by how warm, generous and encouraging the people are at GDS, all the way up and down the organisation. My confidence and sense of belonging have gone up and up and up — and my effectiveness, too. I know I can learn, now. The technical stuff is not beyond me. Or you. And my instincts are right. If something feels off, I ask the question.

Over six months in, the relationships I’m building with colleagues are the strongest and most daring I’ve ever experienced at work. I can ask terrifying questions like “What do you see that I might not see that’s limiting my success?” I can own up to feeling insecure and get a reality check. I can express sadness after a tense exchange and figure out — with the person in question — with curiosity and humour and well-wishing — how to do things differently next time.

The first time this happened I felt high as a kite. We survived! We grew! The fastest, deepest learning, made possible by trust and courage and warmth. Between two, this time, but equally possible within a team; upwards to ministers; outwards to fellow departments; citizens in the UK, and beyond, I hope.

Because a lack of trust costs. It costs in duplicated effort — “We’re going to build this thing ourselves because we don’t trust you”. It costs in the reluctance to get feedback from colleagues and users, which ratchets up the risk of building something that painfully, regrettably, doesn’t work. And in the lack of courage to unpack those lessons and share them far and wide.

Back to OneTeamGov, then. Why I loved them, so immediately and delightedly.

Because this community have recognised that public service thrives when we truly believe that everyone — from the user to the minister — is doing their best, given their skills and what they know right now.

“OneTeam” enfolds us all. We’re safe. We’re OK. We can tell each other what worked that time we tried to solve that problem — and what didn’t. We can learn and change and connect because we feel safe, and that means a better public service for all.

Onwards, then, to attending breakfasts on Wednesdays from now on. (Open to all, whether public servant or not.)

To Bath this weekend, where I’m pressing “Publish” on this post from the comfort of a hammock in the woods.

And to my excellent and delightful team on Monday morning.