Back to school

I am off back to school next week – or to something rather more grand, which is the Kennedy School at Harvard University, USA. This is a ten day course which I was invited to join last year – about leadership and management in an international context. Being able to complete it was the only condition I put on me taking up my new post!

Rabbits against post office closure

Over in Belfast with the Postwatch crew, we took a look at this online video… sheer creativity

Mobiles

I asked my daughter last week what she would take if she got stuck on a desert island. The first was promising: ‘food and water’. Then followed ‘my mobile phone’ and ‘a shop’!

I have a book coming out next year, co-written with a Professor of Marketing, Agnes Nairn, on children as consumers. This brought it all home. Perhaps our idea of desert islands is conditioned now by foreign holidays, rather than the age-old fear of being a castaway.

Roger

From the Board members mentioned yeterday, have a look at Roger Darlington’s outstanding blog. He can tell you how to be happy – I kid not.

Future Focus

We have the third meeting of the new NCC Board today and will be using a facility called “Future Focus”. The idea of this is to have facilitators and technology that can allow you to develop a shared sense of the landscape ahead of us. So far, there have been decisions aplenty for the new Board. This will be a welcome opportunity to be more reflective.

Who are the Board? Here are the names. The government (BERR) is currently recruiting the members for the new Scottish Consumer Council, Welsh Consumer Council and NI Postal Services Committee.

Lord Whitty	New NCC Chair
Mr Douglas SINCLAIR	SCC Chair
Ms Vivienne SUGAR	WCC Chair
Mr Roger DARLINGTON	NCC Member
Ms Christine FARNISH	NCC Member
Dame Suzi LEATHER	NCC Member
Prof Edward P GALLAGHER	NCC Member
Mrs Sharon DARCY	NCC Member
Mrs Sukhvinder KAUR-STUBBS	NCC Member
Mr Stephen A J LOCKE	NCC Member
Ms Enid ROWLANDS	NCC Member
Mrs Anna WALKER	NCC Member

Channel Dave

Sir David Varney is adviser to the Prime Minister on public services. he passes on a message of support for the new NCC, saying that the combination of “general and specific” in the new organisation could be a real strength.

Gosh 2.0

With the wonderful Tom Steinberg from My Society, I co-authored a report last year government, the Power of Information, on the growing evidence base for new models for service delivery across government. Technology Minister Tom Watson was good enough to say on Weds in an interview to the Guardian that it could become “a fundamental design principle of everything we do.” If you want to compare, then look at David Cameron’s outstanding speech on opening up public sector information of a few weeks back too.

organisation design

What does the new NCC look like?

Two takes here. In terms of organisation, my current thoughts are going round the staff teams. Thanks for comments from people to date. We will try to keep the information and exchange flowing.

Externally, we have the first of our external stakeholder events on Monday, marking World Consumer Rights Day – see Consumers International

What I am going to say is here – consumer-power-march-2008.doc- the headline is, we’re on our way!

Fairtrade tea

Fairtrade Fortnight is finishing and seems to have been more of a success than ever before. My experience was limited to tasting fair trade tea. I have never done tea tasting before. Derek here is the Co-op tea taster, and he goes through 1,000 teas a day!

Big cheeses

Having chained myself to the desk for a little while to get the practical work on the new organisation moving (and plan is to get info and progress ideas now out to staff), I came up for air yesterday.

I met the heads of the energy (retail) companies to tell them what we are doing. I said we will give you credit if you do things right, work in partnership if you help and campaign hard if you don’t. I told them the story of challenging the banks with a donkey to see if it could deliver money into consumers’ accounts faster than they do through cheques on inter-bank payments. “we’ll do what we can to avoid the donkey” was the closing comment from one!

Later, I saw David Varney – the inspiring adviser to the Prime Minister on public services. He sent a big message of support to all of us involved in the change. Good luck, he said. This is vital work and the combination of the general and the specific, he believes, will be a real strength.

I meet Royal Mail for the first time soon. So, all the big cheeses. But it is nice for me to be coming out for fresh air!