One of the three priorities for the coming year is mental health: "building a healthy, respectful and supportive work environment." I'm glad that it's being flagged as a public-service wide issue. The statistics and figures are jarring. But the change will come at the person-to-person level, through empathy with what individuals experience — or at least, understanding that what others experience will not, cannot, and should not match what you experience.
Reasonable orders
In the movie How to Train Your Dragon, there’s a scene where Gobber (a big, burly viking) tells the protagonist, Hiccup (the only non-big, non-burly viking), “If you ever want to get out there to fight dragons, you need to stop all... this.”
“But you just pointed to all of me.”
He can't follow that advice, and it's crazy to ask him to.
People see the world in different ways. People experience the events and environment of the workplace in different ways. Susan Cain’s book Quietargues that modern Western culture — including our workplaces — is built around an ideal of extroverted people. Demographic divides have long played a role in success, and people tend to hire people that look and think like them. Mental health is definitely not yet fully understood or appreciated in the workplace.
In How to Train Your Dragon, the status ladderwas created by big, burly vikings for big, burly vikings. Likewise, certain types of people have built our institutions in their image.
In the workplace, we run programs, develop internal policies, restructure organizations, navigate relationships, manage employees, and provide feedback and advice. There are times when we do these things fairly and constructively. And then there are other times, when our demands sound to the recipients like “Y’know, it’d be great if you were a different person altogether.”
Telling someone with interpersonal anxiety to speak up more in meetings. Suggesting that women adopt male stereotypes to get ahead in their career (hat tip to Suzanne Huggins for a great post). Telling someone with ADHD to focus. (And it doesn't even need to be telling. Norms and culture do the job.) "Stop all... this."
Over the last few years I've had more and more conversations with people that are on the short end of a workplace built for the average, not the distribution, of people and personalities. It does not surprise me that mental health is the problem it is today, and it will require a massive leap forward on all of our parts to improve. And we need to do it.
Imagine someone telling you that to be a public servant, to respond to that calling, “You need to stop all… this,” and pointing to your whole life.
After nearly 37 yrs, I’m retiring from public service. It’s been a true honour & privilege to serve as Clerk. Tks for everything!
— Wayne Wouters (@WayneWouters) August 20, 2014
Well, today is Wayne Wouters last day as Clerk of the Privy Council and I have it on good authority that there's a retirement celebration on October 14th that you are invited to. All the details are here, if you have any questions drop me a line. The one thing I will say is that you probably don't want to miss it.
To describe Wayne Wouters’ journey, we have to begin by acknowledging that this journey is in part directed by another very significant leader, the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. Without the mutual respect and understanding by these two Westerners of each other's roles and the institutions that each heads, there can be no sustained progress for either Canada or its public service.
A prime minister, on his best days, is the guardian and steward of the country's prosperity, humanity and resilience. He holds those values close to him as he leads a government on behalf of Canadians. The Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet is head, guardian and steward of a vital national institution that contributes to supporting the agenda of the government of the day. He ensures that the values of the public service, including stewardship, excellence and integrity, are honoured and oversees the non-partisan institution as it strives to protect Canada's national interest while maintaining its relevance. [Full article]
I think it's timely given all the chatter recently ...
First, the report wasn't written with guys like me in mind. Clerk's reports generally speak to the early and late majority, not the innovators or the early adopters. If you are on the left side of the adoption curve like me, you likely thought the report fell short; and while perhaps that is true for you, you (we) need to remember that it's pretty progressive for those on the right of the chasm.
Second, if the report rattles the cages of the status quo and rallies the troops around change, then it's something that we all need to get behind. We need all the momentum we can get and holier than thou attitudes from guys like me aren't productive. We can disagree on execution but let's at least agree that we have consensus on the vision. Can we do better? Of course, we always can. But let's not allow perfection to be an enemy of the good. That tendency is old-school bureaucracy, and if we fall victim to it now, we'll become everything we profess to hate.
What I thought was most interesting
The recognition that the public service brand (as a profession) was in need of a major overhaul. While it was clearly an overarching theme of many of the conversations I took part in when I was on the inside, I was surprised that it made it's way into the final report. It's obviously a theme we've explored at length here (See: When did the Public Service become an ignoble profession?) but it's also one with no clear-cut solution. Engaging civil servants in profiling their work online will do little to stem the tide of sniping ministers, rhetoric filled unions, prosecutorial journalists, self-censoring bureaucrats or apathetic citizens. In short, while the problem here is well-defined, I have trouble reconciling the depth of that problem with the response.
What I thought was cause for concern
A common thread through the entire report was connecting senior managers more directly with the rank and file employees. Many of the actions the report proposes would do just this (tiger teams, innovation labs, dragons dens, etc); and while creating new feedback loops is important, so is unclogging the existing ones. It's a point I've raised before and won't belabour further (See: On Dragon's Dens, Hackathons, and Innovation Labs). That said, while dens, 'thons, and innovation labs may work for some people, they definitely won't work for everybody. By their very definition they are exclusive and exclusionary, they benefit only those who have access and how one gains access is still not well defined. In my estimation, access is likely to be left to middle managers and early career executives to operationalize. They are the permission seekers, the vetters, the filters. How will selection for these new endeavours be any different than the selection of who gets what training opportunities, what briefing notes make it to the deputy, etc? Isn't the filter issue the thing we are trying to address here? Would we be exploring these novel approaches if more information managed to permeate the clay layer? What's the old adage about letting the inmates run the insane asylum?
Ironically (or perhaps more rightly, sadly), the Association of Professional Executives (APEX) recently urged the government to take more action on mental health because it's most recent study found that the organizational commitment of executives was on the decline (from 64 per cent to 52 percent) and that about 32 per cent of them are disengaged, disconnected from their work and unable to deal with the demands of their job. I'm not being glib, mental health in the workplace is an important issue that ought to be addressed. I'm not trying to liken middle managers to inmates or the public service to an insane asylum, but sometimes you just need to use a metaphor to drive home the point. Truthfully, I have plenty of sympathy for the challenges facing middle managers. It's something we have written about in the past (See: The Plight of the Clay Layer and Where Good Ideas Go To Die) and something I speak to frequently during presentations. I won't belabour the point but there is still something here that just doesn't sit well with me. It strikes me as avant-garde but guarded by the old guard.
What I thought the report did well
Give people hope. While I wasn't in the room (I'm an outsider now remember — arguably I've never been an insider, but that's another discussion altogether) I was told that the energy in the room was palpable. The twitter stream exploded with a cacophony of support from across the country with only a few (quickly buried) objections (why we are so desperate for hope is another conversation for another time).
There are hundreds of briefing notes and decks being written across the public service as your read this that are using the Clerk's report as leverage. A quotation from the report on the front page, a photo of the Clerk and another quotation on the back. If an initiative can be tied to any of the report's pillars, it will be.
This is to be expected. After all a Clerk's report is never about the actual report — it's about what we all do with it.
While the exercise is ongoing, Blueprint 2020 has already done something very important: it has clearly shown that the Civil Service can benefit from - or dare I say desperately needs - a reliable, universally accessible, and focused outlet for its cognitive surplus. Moreover, the combination of GCPedia and GCconnex have proven best suited to the task of soliciting widespread participation as neither impose significant barriers to entry or traditional restraints to participation (hierarchy, organizational boundaries, geography, etc). It is also worth noting that while the participation thus far has predominantly been via GCConnex, GCPedia could easily facilitate the co-creation of the final report and could see significant uptake should the work go in that direction.
That said, it's actually symbiotic relationship
The fact that Blueprint 2020 is driving a tremendous amount of engagement on these platforms is a god send to the platform's administrators, overseers and evangelists. In fact, Blueprint 2020 may prove to be the first truly compelling case for their more mainstream adoption. The new life blood Blueprint has injected into these tools - at a time where their future is still being decided - is a boon to a tool set whose value has been upheld and defended by early adopters despite the fact that the tools themselves continue to lack a clearly articulated focus.
This point is likely to cause a stir, and I'm open to debate on the matter, but collaboration for collaboration's sake, I would argue, isn't a compelling enough reason. If it was, there would be wider adoption, more robust support, and firmer governance all backed by a larger budget. I suppose what I am saying is that in my view Blueprint 2020 has given the tool set a more succinct raison d'etre; Blueprint is a case study that hints at its still untapped potential: a dynamic and evolving repository of the cognitive surplus of the civil service. So while the explosive growth in usage since Blueprint's launch is encouraging, I have to wonder about what happens to all that engagement after the exercise is concluded. My gut tells me that in the absence of something as equally as compelling as Blueprint, the bulk of the users and their contributions will simply fall off.
Which of course begs the question: How do we build on the momentum rather than lose it?
While the tools will likely be prominently featured in the final report as a key enabler, there is an opportunity to do considerably more with Blueprint to further ongoing collaboration. For example, we could publicly affirm that the cognitive surplus of the civil service is something that ought to be more explicitly harnessed and that centrally provided collaboration tools - GCpedia, GCconnex, and whatever evolves there from - are the de facto outlet for that surplus. That said, an affirmation of this sort only goes so far.
Who among us hasn't quoted a Clerk's report to justify a proposed approach?
If we are truly serious about pooling our cognitive surplus to solve real problems by levering centrally accessible collaboration tools, then we ought to take more demonstrable steps to enshrine that ethos directly into the Values and Ethic Code of the Public Sector. We could achieve this by including a statement under the sub-heading of "Expected Behaviours" that read:
6. Collaboration
Public Servants shall demonstrate a commitment to collaboration by:
6.1. Exercising their professional responsibility to direct their cognitive surplus towards joint projects that further the interests of the Crown at every opportunity.
6.2. Using centrally provided collaborative platforms with a view to working openly with their colleagues to create value, put forth ideas, and posit solutions to the organization's (GOC) most pressing problems regardless of which institution they work for, what position in the hierarchy they occupy, and where they are geographically.
Not only would such a statement explicitly make collaboration the default value it would also make the code of Values and Ethics more tangible, more relevant, and more in line with the vision that Blueprint 2020 actually articulates.
I was supposed to continue a previous thread about what is happening, right now, in Canadian Public Service [See: Moving Public Service Mountains, Part I]. Wasn't on my mind tonight. I'll get back to it.
It's an amazing book, both for content and impact. It was fundamental to environmental movements, and gets much credit for the ban on DDT in the 1970s.
Over the past few weeks, many people in my circles have touched on the question of whether knowledge workers are losing an appreciation for genuine, deep understanding. The alternative, it seems, is a reliance on statistics, data sets, frameworks, and processes*. Most poignantly, a commenter on a previous post referred to the onset of “methodolatry.” [See: Rearranging the Briefing Room Chairs on the Bonaventure.]
I started thinking of case studies of the need for such understanding from the world of organizations, particularly in the context of change initiatives, but kept returning to Silent Spring.
Silent Spring
The management framework and data analyses were clear: insects were causing massive problems to plant life in the United States. Chemical pesticides, including DDT, could be applied in concentrations low enough to kill the insects, but not the plants they were feeding on. What Silent Spring brought to the public attention was that, unfortunately, there was an element missing from the understanding. What ended up happening was that other animals that ate the insects in massive quantities, particularly birds, eventually hit lethal concentrations of the chemicals and started dying, too. This disrupted the natural check on the insect population and threw the ecosystem out of whack.
Poor results resulting from an inaccurate or incomplete understanding of the environment. This happens in the world of organizations, too: businesses, governments, and civil groups. I'd like to explore some cautionary tales, and some counterpoint success stories.
Modern Medicine in the Developing World**
Timothy Prestero's design team developed a simple treatment for infant jaundice, which was bathing them in blue light. They built a great device to do so, and started trying to implement it. What they didn't realize is that, if there is room in a device for more than one infant, a terribly overwhelmed hospital in a developing country is going to crowd three infants in and dampen the intended effect. After righting this misconception, and a litany of others, they came out with a top-notch solution. By talking to distributors, manufacturers, hospital administrators, mothers, doctors, and watching the device used in action. A lot.
The tech specs said the original version was an incredible device. But they didn't account for what people actually do. It's not “the device in action.” It's “the device used in action.”
Really, the necessity of dealing with people, notoriously complex entities they are, throws a gigantic wrench in the best laid plans. Deep understanding is irreplaceable.
Transforming the NYPD
William Bratton took over the Police Commissioner role in NYC in 1994, when the force was in a sorry state. The turnaround he managed is amazing, captured in one of Harvard Business Review's top ten must-reads, Tipping Point Leadership.
“Yet in less than two years, and without an increase in his budget, Bill Bratton turned New York into the safest large city in the nation. Between 1994 and 1996, felony crime fell 39%; murders, 50%; and theft, 35%. Gallup polls reported that public confidence in the NYPD jumped from 37% to 73%, even as internal surveys showed job satisfaction in the police department reaching an all-time high.”
The first change described in the HBR article is that he started requiring NYPD officers to ride the subway, even though the statistics showed they were the venue for relatively little crime. But the subways felt unsafe, and it sensitized officers to what life was like for those they served.
There are three massive points to consider here.
The statistics, without additional strategic thought, would not have led to this action.
The goal was to build a genuine understanding.
Specifically, the goal wasn't to build a genuine understanding for the Police Commissioner himself. It was to help front-line officers build that for themselves.
Which leads to my next case study.
Canada's Homeless Partnership Strategy (HPS)
The Homelessness Partnering Strategy is an interesting example of a community-based approach to “a wicked problem***.” Former Clerk of the Privy Council Jocelyn Bourgon describes it as showing:
“...how states can address complex issues by applying power through others (via funding) and with others (through processes of collective governance)... the federal government's efforts involved very little direct action but a great deal of capacity building for local action.”
The Senate currently holds HPS up as a success story and a model on which to build.
Some problems are simply too complex for one-size-fits-all solutions, and having stakeholders involved in the decision-making builds legitimacy for decisions. It creates adaptability in the system for things that are working or not working. A doctor on Prestero's design team (one from the hospitals that would use the device) would have exposed the shortcomings. If a loudmouth Mockingbird**** was on the U.S. Science Advisory Committee when DDT was being applied around the country, the unintended effects would have been known far quicker.
One official for the HPS got this, saying that there was “more known outside of Ottawa than inside.”
The lesson from Bratton and the HPS (organizations far larger than Prestero's design team) is that the top of the hierarchy doesn't need to try to understand everything. But they do need to make sure that, collectively, the organization understands as much as possible. And they should constantly wonder about what, and how much, it doesn't.
The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal
The 1990 book The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal attempted the academic approach***** to understanding how positive change happens. Studying six large organizations that had pivoted dramatically, with various levels of success, the authors came up with six success factors:
Mobilize commitment to change through joint diagnosis of business problems
Develop a shared vision of how to organize and manage for competitiveness
Foster consensus for the new vision, competence to enact it, and cohesion to move it along
Spread revitalization to all departments without pushing it from the top
Institutionalize revitalization through formal policies, systems, and structures
Monitor and adjust strategies in response to problems in the revitalization process
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So yes, I'm biased because this has been on my mind this week, but with the exception of #5, this list reads like an emphasis on deep understanding, with a significant degree of engagement with the front line, and with stakeholders.
Think of change initiatives you've witnessed, or experienced. What worked? What didn't? What elements of this list were present?
How were communications pieces, data sets, frameworks, and tools being used (by, as we've established, notoriously complex people who do not always use tools as intended), where the rubber met the road?
How did the strategists and champions know, and get feedback about, that front line use?
What we don't know, and don't understand, would fill a boat with no hull.
How do we mitigate that?
* Don't get me wrong. I love data. Heck, I have a borderline uncomfortable relationship with it. But I also like context.
** Please continue to not get me wrong. The term "developing world" is debatable, and at best, an oversimplification.
*** Interestingly, the data wasn't even available to show how big of a problem this was. Bourgon's book describes homelessness as a complex function of "poverty, housing, health, mental health and the security of communities."
**** Link is to poet Rives summing TED 2006, and contains, perhaps, my favourite line from any TED talk. It's about recording everyone's conversations with a Mockingbird, and then getting a key to the city: "And that is all I need. Because if I get that, I can unlock the air. I'll listen for what's missing. And I'll put it there." The role of the artist, redux.
***** Yes, in the context of this post I should be preaching caution towards data. But it's always worth thinking about.
