3 thoughts for the third consecutive week of #weeknoting

3 things this week

Here’s what has occurred to me over the last 7 days.

Culture is what we tolerate

That’s pretty much the whole thought. The bad policies, the unkind words, inauthenticity, and bullish behaviour. Whatever we put up with, or feel unable to try to challenge, will become part of the culture.

You can scale this thought up to the state of the world, or you can zoom in to your own situation in your own organisation and your personal experiences. We all have to be active participants in the situation we want to build however you choose to view it.

What is sitting uncomfortably with you right now, that you need to find a way to challenge? What is stopping you from doing that?

More thoughts on strategic and operational transformation

I recently posted some reflections on transformation in local government, including how so often operational transformation (making a website or tool or other touchpoint the best it can be) is mistaken for strategic transformation (changing the entire service, product or offer to be the best fit for user or fill a gap which exists). Or as I often find myself saying, how local government spends a lot of time choosing what shade of lipstick to put on pigs they’ve already paid for.

From here my thinking has turned to strategy which can sit within this mixed up transformation activity – content and customer experience strategy. These also commonly become convoluted in organisations with what should be channel strategies. A content strategy is not a website strategy, and vice versa, but that often seems to be how they are pitched, perceived, and acted on.

That top level experience strategy must recognise that even where an organisation desires self-service in a digital channel, the customer experience might be at odds with that (and for good reason). It’s why for more than a decade I’ve found the best online channel strategy for local government is one of ‘digital by customer choice’.

This means:

  • making ‘digital services so good that those that can choose to use them’ (to paraphrase GDS), especially for low stakes services or information
    • checking your bin collection dates (or having them proactively pushed to you in a way of your choosing), facilities at a local park, (for many people, but not all) paying Council Tax
    • encourage channel shift for the majority here, redesigning to run services in truly user-centred ways and delivering digital touchpoints which enable users to interact in a way best for them
  • designing a fully blended approach for ’emerging needs’ services where some users in some situations may self-serve (if the digital touchpoint is a good fit and meets their expectations) while others might need more help
    • help could be in channel with tools like ChatBots, AI coaches or suggestions, or telephone triage but it could mean moving to a non-digital channel
    • deliver in the best channel for the user and be realistic as an organisation about the costs of a blended approach
  • take a different approach to higher stake services
    • social care is the obvious one here, but it could be about access to housing, and (for some) it could be about paying things like Council Tax
    • for big parts of the former 2 examples it is more efficient for the organistion to prioritise touchpoints with direct contact with a human (telephone, face to face) (note: digital can be human too, just in a different indirect way)
    • more importantly, for the customer this is a more empathetic experience and likely to be in the channels of their choosing

None of this is new thinking – it’s in the content and website channel strategy in my current org as well as what I’ve devised and delivered elsewhere – but really nothing brings it home like lived experience. I was grateful this week to Annie Heath for sharing hers and her professional thoughts in this area.

Unintentional learning

It is A Level results week and my eldest was amongst this years cohort.

I didn’t need to see the results to know that I was already proud of him, and in awe of his personal growth over the last 2 years of study. He’s learnt things which can’t be reflected in grades – how he learns best (in structured settings with clear objectives), how he can recognise stress and self-soothe in those moments, how he is as deserving of a place at the table his chooses as anyone else.

I was so glad he was proud of himself for these reasons and more too. The grades for us both, were a bonus outcome of Sixth Form Study. A brilliant bonus as it happened as it opened the doors he wanted it to, and he’s poised to take the next steps on his chosen path.

It made me think too about the things I’ve unintentionally learned along the way. Hindsight tells me my experience of A Levels and as an undergraduate were where I started to realise my self-limiting beliefs were the biggest obstacle to overcome, that independence was about more than living in a different city to my parents, and that using part of my third year student loan to go to LA to hang out with the team working on the embryonic Neopets was an incredibly smart move experientially if not financially.

None of that was directly related to my subject (Journalism), nor were the things I learnt around my Masters years later (Online Communications) – chiefly that part time university, full time work, 2 children under 5, and a terminally ill mother is not a combination I would recommend to anyone.

Anyway, it all made me think: last week I was wondering where next to take my professional learning having become overwhelmed by choice. Now I think it probably doesn’t matter – I should pick something and get started because there will be amazing things I learn unexpectedly whatever the topic of the course.

In case you missed it…

This week I also blogged about content – specifically the strategic value lost, and the unkindness to users, when it is undermined.

In ‘We (still) need to talk about content’ I ask you to imagine content of every type (from words on the web page to field labels in forms to your logo) has been deleted. I asked, if this were the case, does your online experience still exist?

As ever thankful for the thoughts shared with me after the post – especially useful to know that others have used this same premise to make the point. Lizzie Bruce shared her own post on this and the follow on point which is the importance of content designers, and including a great mock up by Rachel McConnell on what Gov.UK would look like with the content gone.