Weeknote: S2, Ep15: Hiking edition featuring wild camping, digital inclusion and open-minded listening
What’s hiking got to do with leading digital transformation?
I spent three days hiking and wild camping in Scotland. I’m a fair-weather walker and lover of B&Bs, so this micro adventure was always and intentionally going to test the boundaries of my suburban-loving comfort zone. I thought a lot about the experiences I’ve had during our first year of digital transformation at Royal Greenwich. The West Highlands feel along way from the Woolwich peninsula, but my reflections landed on these three things:
- Hold onto plan A lightly
“ I have a plan” said Anna, “but it will change”. Anna’s goal was to give us a great experience in the mountains. Her wisdom and expertise as a guide allowed her to change “the how” to meet “the what and the why”. Anna understood the things she could not control (the weather being the obvious one). She worked with and around those things to find the best experience for us in the circumstances. Sometimes we made collective decisions and sometimes Anna made the judgment call. She was always hyper aware of her surroundings, the energy (or in my case the fatigue) of the group, and our shared goals. Anna made consistent small adjustments. Embracing change without drama, seamless micro nudges based on evidence and intuition navigated our journey through the landscape and with each other.
2. Small steps and no path
There were no established paths up a Munro. Anna was picking our routes with a compass and clues from the landscape. Anna was re-encountering our environment from a place of experience, I was learning for the first time in real time. The most efficient way to the summit was taking small steps in a zigzag pattern. It feels counter initiative, but there are no straight lines when you are way-finding.
3. Look down and look up
In the wind and the rain, we focused on finding the next safe place to put our feet. Small, careful repetitions keeping an eye on the person in front and knowing that the person behind is doing the same. It’s grinding in these moments. When the summit is still a distance reward, remembering to look up to catch the expanse of the mountains or to look back to see how far you’ve come helps you to catch your breath and ground yourself for the next bit of the climb.
The three legged stool of digital inclusions (plus a fourth leg)
Susan, Karolina and I went to the LOTI digital inclusion conference on Thursday. It was an absolute joy to connect with people in real life and talk to learn from each other’s experiences without the barrier of a screen. Our pilot scheme shared a lot of similarities with other boroughs. The three-legged stool of devices, data and connectivity writ large as the foundations for promoting and cricually sustaining a pathway to inclusion. We discovered a fourth leg — empathy and human connection. The motivation to “get online” is fundamentally a human one. It might present as employment skills, a medical intervention or household budgeting, but in listening to the stories of what worked, empathy was the thing that unlocked people’s fears and tapped into their ability to learn.
Open-minded listening
Following an impromptu and refreshingly honest conversation with the project managers, we’re re-purposing our weekly catch up sessions to co-design some of their practices and processes. At the moment, I’m trying to hold the space to listen, exploring their assumptions and mine, and holding back the rush to solutions. Change has swirled around this team for a long time now, together we need to experiment with practices that provide them with a means to navigate uncertainty (the new constant) whilst avoiding the bear traps of rigidity and self imposed red tape.
