What it was:

A session of positive thinking and planning, from a group exercise and a one-to-one co-coaching session, aimed at drawing up an action plan for achieving some of my professional aims. This was part of the Deputy Director Leadership Programme held in London on 28 January 2020.

What I learned:

In the exercise, imagined ourselves looking back to now from a vantage point of success, two years in the future.

We identified:

Wish – what I hope for in the future
Outcome – the benefits I will see if I achieve this
Obstacles – the obstacles in me I need to overcome to succeed
Plan – what I will do to overcome these obstacles.

For me, these were:

Wish:
* Leading a team ideally at SCS
* Working in the technology, innovation or digital field
* Doing something with impact, profile and influence.

Outcome:
* Feel happier, making a stronger contribution, using my skills, having a positive impact
* Achieving my social motivation of impact and influence

Obstacles:
* Lack of the right role
* Lack of the right networks and contacts
* Lack of career examples / behaviours

Plan:
* See below.

What I will aim to differently as a result

• Generate examples tactically from the SCS behaviours, then do things that model those behaviours. The material is all publicly available!
• Gain experience on how to join together a multidisciplinary team, and providing the enabling framework for teams to deliver
• Be able to give examples where you mobilised people to work collaboratively
• Learn to feel achievement from enabling others to do stuff (not doing it myself)
• Understand the wider issues around AI e.g. cognitive biases; How do we engage people e.g. visualisation
• Understand the benefits of the different factories, platforms etc.
• Engage with the AI community; get on the GDS data science group; Go to events that help me move towards that skill set
• Finally – Refresh my development plan to incorporate this.