CAST Weeknotes (15–19 February) — Action please!
If last week’s weeknotes probably felt like they were being read out from a yoga mat, this week is more about the action! (and the exclamation marks!)
What’s happened this week?
Nearly half-way through the 2nd round of the Development Programme!
That’s gone quickly. We’ve been checking in with each project and been busy onboarding the 18 teams on Ochre, the bespoke online tool we’re using to track the progress of all our Catalyst programmes. Suraj and Joseph (from the CAST team) have been leading on this development work and have worked miracles behind the scenes to improve the user experience, functionality and features both for grantees/partners and for us connectors. So what could have been a tricky process has turned out to be very smooth. Thank you!
The Open Working festival has well and truly kicked off!
At least it feels a bit like a festival. Alongside the OWLs, we’ve been going out on Zoom, megaphone in hand, promoting the value of working more openly to all our grantees and partners. And it looks like the megaphone is working. Cue a flurry of publishing activity from charities and digital partners — weeknotes, blogs, linkedin posts…even tweetnotes! It’s all happening, see for yourself. Blimey, even we’re at it!
(Still) wrapping-up the 1st round of the Development Programme!
Hang on, you thought that was over didn’t you? Think again. We’re deep in techie talks with partners to make sure that all the good stuff built can well and truly be reused by other organisations. For instance: you like the look of a web service built through this programme and want to use it and adapt it for your own service? How do we make sure you can do that in the easiest way possible? We’re busy sorting all that out. And we’re also busy fleshing out the communications outputs — blog, repositories, videos. And all the learning and evaluation. Lots!
What we’ve learnt?
The second go is usually better than the first one…as long as you make changes, and don’t just repeat.
We’ve tried to take a lot of this feedback on board from the 1st round of Development to make sure the 2nd round is a better experience for everyone. Here are some tangible examples (Molly also talks about these here):
- We’ve created a programme handbook using Notion — the go-to place for any info about the programme for grantees/partners. We update it weekly so if a grantee or partner misses an email, they can find the latest information in the handbook.
- We’re using Ochre not just as a programme reporting tool but as a place to log all our interactions, and as a repository to store project resources. Again, all the info in one place (rather than various airtables, spreadsheets and g-folders). This is a bit of gamechanger for our team as it’s helped streamline a number of processes.
- We’ve set clear(er) expectations and established clear(er) ways of working with grantees/partners from the off. That might mean using MS Teams for one team and Slack for another to communicate; or Miro, G-drive or Sharepoint to share project resources. The tool doesn’t really matter, it just needs to work for grantees and partners. We can adapt and piggyback what’s already being used by them.
Puzzles?
Six months into the formation of this new team (all done remotely!) and we’re finding our groove and feeling more settled. We’ve been appreciating and reflecting on the different stages, helped by Bruce Tuckman’s Team Development model (and Pete and Abi from Outlandish).
It’s nice to be on that upward ‘collaborating’ curve— it only took 6 months and what feels like years of Zooming! Alas, it’s also the beginning of the final stage as these programmes conclude in the Spring…and potentially this team too.
What’s next for all of us? Now there’s a puzzle! For now, let’s enjoy the present, towards that ‘high performing’ crescendo maybe…
