Heather Macleod

1st March 2010

Wow...so it’s the 1st of March today and almost 3 months have gone by since my last blog. It feels like a lifetime ago that we were preparing for Christmas and I was pushing to have the first draft of my benchmarking review report in for scrutiny. Anyway, as usual in Local Government a lot can happen in 3 months and I am now in a new placement, in a new building working on something almost completely different to what I have done previously.

In fact my first placement was due to end on the 29th of January and I had for the most part met all the deadlines for submission required. However when Sue North, my line manager and Head of Support Services within Development circulated my report to other senior members if staff a few key suggestions were made about finding more financial information to support the recommendations being made to raise certain service prices. These managers felt it would help to know exactly how much income could increase by if the prices were raised and finding this out added a whole new set of challenges to the work I was undertaking as I now had to factor in market variations and demand theory. In the end there was no way I could get all the information together and re-drafted into my report before I was due to start my new placement on the 1st of Feb and it was looking like I might have to hand the project over the someone else. However my new line manager Tim Gadd, Programme Manager in the Programme Centre of the Chief Executives Directorate suggested that I continue to do one day a week in Development until the project was finished whilst doing the other four days on work for him.

I was a bit worried that learning all about a new placement and juggling finishing the benchmarking report might be difficult but it has actually worked quite well and last Friday I submitted the final version to Sue for circulation to DMT and Portfolio Holders. It is really great to have completed such a big piece of work and it looks like I will have the opportunity to share my finding and recommendation at the big DMT meeting in mid March after which I will nervously be awaiting feedback about whether any of the recommendations made will be taken forward. As for my new placement, well even that isn’t very new now as I’m a month in but it has been a fairly steep learning curve and is based in one of the fastest paced areas of the Council. The Programme Centre is part of the Chief Executives Office and essentially works to make sure that all parts of the Authority, particularly those conducting large-scale projects, function efficiently, effectively and within strict Council guidelines. This is an interesting placement though, not just because of the work but also because Jess and I are actually working together which has been great! Tim, our line manager, asked us to work on a governance review which was set into action due to problems at LCC regarding the governance of Lincolnshire Improvement & Efficiency Partnership funded projects across the Authority. Basically we have been working to ensure all projects are running efficiently, drawing down the correct funding, using the right documents to report on the work they do and that someone can be held accountable for this work. Basically all the projects were due to go under a peer review from another Authority at the end of last month and the task in hand was to make sure they would pass – which they did.

The next aspect of this governance project then will involve rolling out the systems developed for LIEP projects to all other projects across the Council but as yet i’m not quite sure what my role will be in this! In the meantime though Jess and I have our first trip to Warwick to get our heads around. We actually go down on the 23rd of March but before then we have loads of reading to get through and have some project work to undertake which is going to involve making some new contacts within the Council. I’m hoping to get this done as soon as possible because the work is going to come flooding in here at the Programme Centre and that isn’t going to leave much free time to get anything else done and then once we get back it’ll be time to hit the books and get the essays written and submitted before the deadline in May...I’m sure it’ll all be fine though and as usual I’ll keep you posted on how we get on!

14th December 2009

Hmmm, so, I’ve never written a blog before! I did recently watch that film though, ‘Julie & Julia’ which is all about this woman Julie who blogs her way through cooking 365 of Julia Childs recipes from the famous ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I’m ready to give it my best shot (blogging that is not cooking)

Anyway, I suppose I should start with an introduction to me and my blog...here goes nothing. My name is Heather Macleod and I am one of two new National Management Trainees (NMT’s) on the National Graduate Development Programme (NGDP) here at Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) – Now there’s a good few local government acronyms to get you going! As for my background, I’m originally from Oldham in the North West but moved to Sheffield where I still live to go to University. I studied Politics at undergrad and then with a 2:1 decided to do a Masters in Governance and Public Policy for which I got a distinction. I finally graduated in 2008 and spent the last year working for Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council on a schools project called Aimhigher which was where I first heard about the NGDP. Into the present day though and in fact, myself and Jess (who is the other NMT) are not the only new people to the programme, indeed it is the first year that LCC have taken graduates though the NGDP and so, in what is set to be a steep learning curve for all, it was suggested that we begin to document our experiences of the programme over the next two years!

I’m now coming to the end of my first three months at LCC and as part of the NGDP which, for the most part, has been pretty overwhelming but in an undeniably good way! It feels like such a long time ago that I was completing the online application form for the programme and reeling in shock each time I got through one of the assessment stages. I even had 4 local Authority interviews and despite having been made very welcome and not thinking I’d made too much of a fool of myself was convinced, due to the high calibre of other applicants, that I wouldn’t get a place. Imagine my complete disbelief then when (on the 1st July) I found out I had been offered two places and I was the one who now had a decision to make. I thought long and hard about the staff I’d met at interview, the placements we had discussed and the logistics of getting to a new place by plane, train or automobile and in the end followed my gut reaction that Lincolnshire was the place for me an so here I am!

Obviously it’s still very early days and I’m really looking forward to lots of aspects of the programme I’m yet to experience particularly starting the Post Graduate Diploma in Local Government Management at Warwick in March. However, a lot has already happened, my first week flew by in haze of new faces, places and corporate plus departmental inductions. The first placement I am doing is based in Development Services under Sue North who is Head of Support Services here and is a Charges Benchmarking project. Essentially it is my mission to identify exactly what services LCC provides through this Directorate and how much we currently charge. I then have to benchmark this against similar services and charges at 16 other County Councils with the aim of finding areas, existing or new in which we can raise or introduce charges to increase income generation. By no means has this been easy, it has involved a lot of internet research, cold calling customer service centres in the hope of getting through to a member of staff at other Councils and emails flying about all over the shop. Interestingly it has sometimes been harder to get the correct information internally than it has been to get it from other authorities but after two months toil I have an amazing technicoloured dreamsheet of findings which I am now in the process of turning into a report for submission to DMT’s who will then decide which if any areas we go ahead with trying to raise or introduce charges in. I have been lucky enough to work with and learn from some really great people in this directorate and I owe a lot to them for all the help and support they’ve given me not just with the day to day work but with the programme as a whole. I’ve spent a day shadowing staff at one of the District Highways Offices and Peter Hale, Head of Strategy for Development Services, has also included me in doing some work for a zero base budgeting exercise he and the financial advisers are undertaking for Richard Wills the Director of Development. In fact Richard also deserves special mention for his support to me and making it clear from the start he was committed to making sure I was working with top level managers within the Directorate to gain the relevant experience. All in all I think this has been a very successful first placement so far thanks to these people!

In this middle of all the day to day project work however we also had the National Induction Event at Wyboston Lakes, the first and indeed only time until graduation that all 90 NMT’s from across the County came together. This was a great opportunity to meet people, put ourselves to the test with Graham Robb Associates ‘interesting’ management activities and learn a little more about how the programme will unfold over the coming months! On top of that excitement, a few weeks ago now, Today I had the first meeting with my internal mentor Andy Brookes, Head of Organisation Change, who really helped put the programme and my current placement into perspective by looking at the NGDP capabilities framework and how the things I’ve experienced and skills I’ve picked up will be transferable to my future career plan. Also this week Jess and I met with Sandy Morrell, our Placement Coordinator and a Learning and Development Consultant for the Council to discuss future placements and some training opportunities which will involve undertaking a professional qualification in Communications through the Institute of Customer Services.

So as you can probably tell it’s all go here and now in the final push up to Christmas very festive. I cant quite believe that come the end of January I will be preparing to move on to a new placement but it’s very exciting and hopefully I can keep you all posted on how I’m getting on!