CPSRENEWAL.CA Weekly: Try Our 12 Step Program

If you know me beyond the blogosphere you may know that my resolve to remain an active player in the renewal puzzle was recently challenged. While this blog provides neither the time nor the place to tackle my personal issues, I thought it would be fun to try to renew my own commitment to renewal by creating the equivalent of a 12-step program.

12 Step Program for (re)engaging in Public Service Renewal (applicable to all groups and levels)

1. Admit you are not powerless over renewal.

2. Believe that working in the Public Service, as something greater than yourself, could help you achieve a meaningful living.

3. Decide to turn your attention and skills over to the Public Service and to the care of your fellow Public Servants.

4. Take stock of your character.

5. Admit to your group, to yourself and to your manager the exact nature of your needs.

6. Be entirely ready to demonstrate your commitment to the Public Service by ameliorating yourself.

7. Humbly ask for help from others whenever required.

8. Distinguish sense from nonsense whenever possible.

9. Keep a list of everything you determine to be nonsense.

10. Work to make sense of the nonsensical, but learn from others and pick your battles.

11. Through hard work and experience, seek to improve your awareness the Public Service and build your knowledge of right and wrong and the strength to follow that knowledge.

12. Renew yourself prior to making demands on others or on the organization to do it for you. Carry this message to Public Servants and practice these principles in all your work endeavours.


Let us know – what do these steps mean to you? Do you have a thirteenth (or fourteenth, fifteenth…step)?

Have a great (long!) Thanksgiving weekend.