How Organizations Plan, and Why It Shouldn't Be Institutionalized Advice

by Kent Aitken

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The last couple posts have been working through a question about how organizations plan. The long story short:

• We've institutionalized oversimplification (a symptom being the "Elevator Pitch")
• Correcting that oversimplification is likely an unrealistic goal
• The solution (according to Charles Lindblom) is letting policy decision-makers throw rational planning out the window and "try stuff"
• To avoid unfairness, policy proposals will be closely watched by an ecosystem of stakeholders: groups responsible for related goals in government, lobbyists, NGOs, and think tanks

On the surface, this sounds like the zeitgeist: experimentation, innovation, and collaboration. However, the "try stuff" here refers to large-scale national policy, not pilots: "trying stuff" on, say, tuition subsidies has a massive impact on people's lives. And the role of that "ecosystem of stakeholders" isn't collaboration: it's recommendation, or advice.

Recommendation-Based Governance

In the last post, I linked to Yves Morieux, who breaks down the economics of multi-stakeholder decision-making: where one person owns the decision, but not the inputs required to make it. He paints a portrait of a car manufacturer, in which the lead designer must satisfy the organizations' experts in noise reduction, fuel efficiency, repairability, safety, and much more. It's easy to imagine how fuel efficiency and safety could be at odds: do you make a car lightweight, or an urban armored personnel carrier? So we have a designer, whose bonus but not core salary depends on performance pay that is based on competing goals decided by 26 different people. Which makes their incentive to care about any individual one of those goals very close to zero.

Recommendation-based systems do nothing to address the asymmetry between the incentives of those involved. Put simply: recommenders don't get paid to contribute to the best outcome. They primarily get paid to promote the variable they represent, as loudly and voraciously as possible. They do not get paid to look for compromises, concede when others make valid arguments, or even to develop long-term relationships and credibility. In the above example, the safety expert's concern is chiefly to understand the optimal outcome from a safety perspective; it's the designer's job to worry about how to square that with fuel efficiency. 

Why is this? It's partially innocent bias: people care about what they know about. I'm sure far more than 50% of the population thinks their expertise is of above-average importance. But more so, it's that the people that hold recommenders to account are a step removed from the decision space themselves, and likewise rely on oversimplified elevator pitches for setting goals. It doesn't help that recommenders rarely receive any feedback about the results of their role in the decision.

Recommendations exist in a partial vacuum, whereas decisions exist in an ecosystem. 

So what's the solution? Morieux proposes six elements (paraphrasing):

1. Ensure that players in the ecosystem understand what the others do
2. Reinforce integrators
3. Remove layers
4. Increase the quantity of power so that you can empower everybody to use their judgment
5. Create feedback loops that expose people to the consequences of their actions
6. Increase reciprocity, by removing the buffers that make [people] self-sufficient

In other words: make people meaningfully responsible for the outcomes of their work, make people responsible for collaboration, and make sure they can see and understand the ecosystem.

No amount of communication or planning can solve this issue entirely - the change has to come in how power is distributed and used.

Get Meta on Life

by Nick Charney

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The elegant beauty of Kent's most recent reflection (see: Get Meta on Engagement) is that, well beyond the realm of stakeholders, its logic is applicable to the realm of self.

Life — I am learning — is about far more than being available. It's about contextualizing that availability within a larger narrative. It's about taking the time to thoughtfully examine why you think a certain way and ultimately how that informs your decision making.

Exposing oneself to new experiences is then critical. If your experience is singular then your context is narrow. We often forget this and accept our own experience as an experience shared by others, forgetting that divergence, innovation, and personal growth all happen on the boundaries of our experiences, not at their core.

The Stanley Parable (video game)

Perhaps this is top of mind having just returned from the Yukon, working, living and socializing under very different circumstances than those I am accustomed to. I met dozens of people, all with unique histories, deeply committed to their work and marked by a heartfelt hope for the future. I've had the privilege of meeting thousands of civil servants from all over North America and I can say with complete and utter confidence that I have never met a more collegial team than the one I spent two days with in the North*.

When someone questioned why I would voluntarily go to the North in December (on Facebook) the answer was simple: any opportunity for a policy person like me to step outside the Ottawa bubble and work directly with stakeholders is an absolute no-brainer.

And, again, it's a no brainer for precisely the same reasons Kent articulated in his piece this week. A periodic testing of assumptions — in work or in life — is useful. Seek them out, don't shy away from them.

In other words, get meta on life.

*As an aside, the North is an incredibly important part of our Canadian identity and I would encourage you to visit it at least once in your lifetime. I honestly think it will make you a better Canadian. Possibly even a better person.

What I did last night instead of blogging

I miss colouring; don't you?

I've been chewing on a lot of things this week; but instead of sitting down and writing, I sat down with some of the people that matter the most to me.
I sat down and coloured a picture with my kids; something I haven't done for a long time.  My daughter commented about how happy she was that we were all at the table together enjoying the same activity.
I sat down with my mother and we talked a bit about how my folks are doing and what's coming down the pipe in the near future.
I sat with my wife and talked about our immediate concerns: my experience chaperoning our son's field-trip; some of the challenges she is facing in her current role as an acting manager within the provincial civil service; and the ongoings of her class that night (she is currently completing her Master's of Education).  Then we just poked around on reddit for a bit, laughed hard, joked around some more as I tucked her in, and laughed even harder.
I sat down with one of my oldest friends to shoot the shit, take a load off, and play some video games.
And finally, I sat down with myself and wrote this simple note that I wanted to share with you:  

Remember to nurture your relationships, its often far too easy to forget how important to you they really are.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

5 Tips For Public Servants Using Social Media

Here are five quick tips on how to manage your social graph as a public servant:

1. Pro-actively disclose

Generally speaking it is good practice to tell your employer (or prospective employer) of any activity that is at the periphery of but related to your official activities. For public servants I think that runs the gamut from blogging about related issues on sites like this one, to sharing links with colleagues on Twitter, or participating in discussion groups on Govloop or LinkedIn.

I am of the opinion that proactive disclosure of online activities is less important when those activities are far removed from your professional life. I doubt the powers that oversee the machinery of government care if in addition to your day job you happen to run a local food, exercise, lolcat blog.

Finally, don't go running to the very top of the organization to disclose your activities, simply disclose them to the closest logical individual up the food chain from yourself.

2. Be careful what you link to

This is where I see the most confusion. I've seen a number of people on Twitter link to their department or agency right under a bio that reads "all views my own".

My advice is to not link to any official government website on any of your social media unless you are acting as an official spokesperson for the organization.

Also, and this one is overlooked often, don't provide a link to your social media (e.g. your Twitter) in your official organizational email footer. The implication is that your use of the service is as official as the position you occupy, your phone number and mailing address, when in fact you cannot conduct official business in that channel (especially with external stakeholders).

The same goes for your avatar, don't use anything with government logos in it (like a photo of your ID badge) it conflates you with the department or agency for whom you work.

3. Have a disclaimer, but don't hide behind it

There was a number of blog posts and Twitter chatter in the last few weeks about the subject of disclaimers. Here's my take: a disclaimer doesn't absolve you from being an idiot. Much like you can't claim ignorance if you break the law an online disclaimer isn't a shield. It doesn't protect you or your employer, it only creates a small modicum of distance between the two by telling people that you are not authorized to act as an official spokesperson for your organization.

4. Excuse yourself from conversations that you feel uncomfortable about

During the last election one of the federal political parties responded to one of my tweets about open data. The conversation quickly turned partisan. My reaction was to simply tweet that given my role and responsibilities as a professional and non-partisan public servant I was unwilling to engage any further; an explanation that was readily accepted by the party in question.

If you are pressed even after you excuse yourself, just stay silent, let anyone watching it play out draw their own conclusions. I

5. Don't bitch about work

Venting may feel good now, and a status update is so easy that its often we get caught up in the moment, but there aren't any private places online where you can complain about your employer.

Good rule of thumb: don't say anything online that you don't have the wherewithal to say in person because you will be held accountable by someone somewhere down the line.

Like mom said, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect
[image credit fisserman]

Weekly Column: The Experience Trap

I, like many others - perhaps like many of you, have run into problems within the public service because of my "lack of experience".

I call it the Experience Trap. Have you ever run into it?

Someone looks you in the eye and says something like, "Nick, you need more experience doing this in order to get this position, be assigned this task, etc."

I have. In fact, nothing motivates me more to accomplish something than being told I can't, or that I need to do X and Y before I can do Z. In these situations, my response to the experience trap is always the same:

"If you don't give me a chance to try it and prove myself, how will I ever get the experience I need? Besides, if I only ever work on what I am doing now, how do I move to where I want to get? There is an opportunity here for both of us: me, to learn and apply new skills and you, to reap the benefits thereof. You either need to give me a shot to prove myself or I need to look for a manager that trusts me, one that is willing to stretch me with tasks that are a little beyond my initial capacity. Did you get to where you are by keeping your head down or by taking on new challenges?"

If they say "by keeping my head down and following orders" that should be your red flag right there, and if I were you, I would immediately start looking for a new manager.

If they say by facing and learning from new challenges, ask about how they got those chances.

Was it a good manager who saw something in them? If so ask your manager what it is that is preventing them from seeing those similar qualities in you.

Was it a risk they took on their own? If so, ask why they did it, and would they advise you to do the same? How did it impact their manager at the time? Wouldn't they rather be involved than sidestepped?

Either way, start that conversation and see it through. You might learn a lot about yourself, and maybe even enlighten your manager.

Holding people back by refusing them stretch assignments isn't new, nor is it something that is limited to new or young public servants. People of all ages, with varying degrees of tenure and experiences are denied chances to face new challenges due to the experience trap. Sometimes, disarming that trap may mean having some difficult conversations.

Have you run into the experience trap? How did you get out of it? Share your thoughts and experiences by leaving a comment - it might just help get someone else out of the trap.

Weekly Column: A New Adventure

Sometimes I get so caught up in the speed and utility of social media that I forget the basics.
I’ve been a bit concerned lately, that perhaps the focus of this blog was shifting too far away from its roots. I took some time and flipped back through some of the weekly columns. So far the writings here have run the gamut from recent gems like how to use Twitter to be a better public servant to some more basic reflections about renewal.

I think the reason it is so easy to get swept away in the tide of social media is because the type of communication it facilitates feels so natural (at least for me). Moreover the social media mantra of "share!" is something so simple that, in my opinion, cannot be shouted enough from the soapboxes of "open bureaucrats". Finally, if renewal is truly a conversation, then all these posts, varied in topics as they are, are simply a small part of the renewal conversation.

Unfortunately despite the ease of use and utility of social media, it can't do or be everything. It can't, for example, help me plan my career or advise me on what the best next steps are for me; even when my use of it undoubtedly had something to do with the opportunities before me.

You see, to be perfectly honest, I am facing a bit of a dilemma and I don't know what to do.


Pen and Paper

I guess step one is to, as my wife suggested, sit down with a pad and a pencil and write out the dreaded 5 year plan, then the 10 year, 15 year, etc. Yet, despite providing similar advice in my scheming virtuously presentations, I am much more of a create-it–on-the-fly-and-see-what-happens kind of guy. So sitting down to do "the plan" is not really my style. The other piece of advice she offered me, one that I am more likely to heed closely, was to break out my ‘lessons learned the hard way’ file and see if they can help to provide any insight into where I do and don't see myself going in my career.

People often say that being in demand is a good problem to have. While they are probably right, the difficulties in making decisions are heavily nuanced, especially given that the options being considered are similar in some respects but very different in others - like apples and oranges.

Without getting into the details of my particular situation, I do want to share some of the things I am considering in hopes of expanding both that which you consider to be relevant, as well as providing you with an opportunity to alert me to anything I have missed. Note that the order below is not deliberately prioritized but is in the order I originally wrote them out, which may in fact say something about how I prioritize them.)


Considerations

• tasks, responsibilities and opportunity to lead
• trust/freedom to create my own space
• prospects for making an impact
• manager and direct colleagues
• work-life integration
• classification (and thus salary)
• layers of approval
• location (geographic, proximity to home and commute time in relation to current)

All of the above peppered with ongoing advice and experience of others (in no particular order) including @dbhume, @pcollin, @mcmphotography, @ContrarilyYours, @dbast to name but a small few...

So what did I miss?

After writing this, I feel like I should write down a pros and cons list to help me through my decision…oh wait I did; and technically I didn’t use a pad and a paper, but GCPEDIA.


Conclusion

Mike told me that he felt this column was incomplete, and you know what? I agree.

This week has been mentally exhausting. Personal circumstances and juggling career decisions has taken its toll.

But I think it is important that I am willing to admit it.

In essence, I wanted to do three things. The first was to take a step back from all the social media talk; the second was to show how difficult it can be to make career choices in the public service. The third was to try to learn something from all of your experiences.

So in closing, while I may have already made my decision to embark on the next challenge (I started this column unsure and finished it having confirmed my intent to move on), I would encourage you all to leave me a comment, or drop me a line and let me know what you think.

What are some of your biggest considerations when considering your next steps?

I think that it is an important conversation for public servants.

Thanks for reading.

cpsrenewal.ca weekly column: Happy Easter and not much more

This being Easter weekend, I’m keeping this one somewhat pointed. Truth be told, I scrapped the column I had planned because it just didn't offer anything valuable to you. In the end I had to make a decision, so I followed Seth's advice.

With that, thanks to everyone who takes the time to visit our site, read us in their RSS.

If you have any questions or would like us to write about an issue, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line. Moreover if you would like to share your experiences with others in this space we would be happy to help you publish your own column right here on this blog - anonymously or otherwise.

Cheers and Happy Easter.

CPSRenewal.ca Weekly Column: Career Paths

I had a whirlwind week last week; but one thing that really stuck out for me was a conversation I had with Amanda Parr. Over the course of our discussion Amanda asked me where I saw my future in the public service. It was a question to which I don't yet have a good answer; and truth be told I haven't been aggressively pursuing promotions as of late. In fact I am routinely being screened in only to pass on the opportunity to write the exam because I feel as though my time is often better spent elsewhere.

But what really got me thinking wasn't her question so much as her assessment of where I could be, or what I could do in order to have the largest impact on the public service.

Having had the opportunity to meet and converse with both Don Drummond on the way to Toronto and my Deputy Minister (DM) on the way back to Ottawa, I began to invest more thought into the question of where I saw myself down the line and of the type of impact I would want to make.

But before sharing my thoughts, I just wanted to say how incredibly brilliant these two people are and to thank them (again) for the opportunity to dialogue with them.

I truly believe that senior managers and working-level employees have completely different experiences of their daily work lives within the government. I know that you may think it an obvious point to make, but it is an important one that I never explicitly understood as of yet.

I am not trying to say that one experience is more or less real than another or more or less important - only different. Furthermore, I think that within this difference, public servants draw satisfaction and derive meaning from their work in unique ways.

So where is the best place for someone like me in the public service?

Well I think I am slowly finding it. Understanding exactly where I want to be requires a lot of introspection: getting to know my talents, my shortfalls, my likes and dislikes. All of these things impact my decision on where to go and where to stay within the public service.

During my conversation with my DM she asked me if/why I wanted to be an executive in the public service. The more I thought about the question, the fewer reasons I had to want to be an executive. Essentially what I am trying to say, and what I wish I'd told her, is that right now I am simply not in a place where I could draw personal satisfaction from that experience of work. Furthermore I think that a renewed public service is one that helps people identify how they derive meaning from their work and help them to find the work that can best deliver that meaning. This is a fundamental pillar of any engaged and effective public service.

So for me, for now, I am more then happy trying to engage other public servants within my organization during my day job and engage public servants across the country in my night job. I said in my presentation in Toronto that I firmly believe that you can lead from anywhere in your organization if you are willing to lead from the back. I also said that if your only motivation to lead comes from your desire to be out in front, then you probably aren't going to be a very effective leader.

Personally, I'm not yet ready to lead from the front. I enjoy being where the vast majority of my colleagues are, where all of you are, somewhere in the middle.

What about you? When was the last time you gave an honest thought to where you really want to be in your career?

(Make sure you click that last link - it's a gem, thanks Rick)

Cpsrenewal.ca Weekly Column: Two Important Things to Public Servants

Although I have a whole slew of excuses for not writing a proper column this week (and a Google calendar and a loving wife that can back me up), I won't bother you with the details.

So, in lieu of providing you with a comprehensive article on a cutting edge issue, I would rather leave you with two short, but incredibly important things (selon-moi):

1. If you raise your hand (or voice) to complain, you'd better be willing to get off your ass to do something about it. Otherwise, I expect you to grin and bear it.
2. If you aren't willing to accept and celebrate small successes, then you will be met with nothing but large scale failure.

See you in Toronto today.

CPSRenewal.ca Weekly: WWOD?

In the vein of Etienne's latest post, here's an excerpt from President Obama's inauguration speech that I have taken the liberty of remixing in hopes to to shed some light on revitalizing the Public Service culture and, by extension, it's relationship with the people they serve.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system bureaucracy cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country Public Service has already done; what free innovative and passionate men and women can achieve when imagination and diversity is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political bureaucratic arguments that have stifled our creativity and consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government as an employer is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified it facilitates innovation, takes care of ambitions, and transfers skills and corporate knowledge before retirement. Where the answer is yes, we intend to continue to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs poor practices will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of today's reality - because only then can we restore the vital trust vibrant, diverse and innovative culture between a people within which Public Servants and their government work.

CPSRENEWAL.CA Weekly: Opinions are like ...

I recently found myself in the situation where I needed some advice vis-à-vis my career. Like anyone in my situation, I found myself turning to my peers.

Everyone I told my story to was more then happy to chip in his or her two cents, and I was happy to collect. But herein lies the problem, what do I do as a relatively new public servant when more experienced public servants give me different or even contradictory advice? In short, I was in a spot where I needed to make a dollar (quickly!) out of what made sense.

It got me thinking back to when I first joined the public service and the problematic nature of career advice for new public servants. Looking back, I think it is an especially precarious field for new public servants to try to navigate. I have said previously that I feel as though there is an implicit and immediate level of trust among new public servants that has yet to manifest between new public servants and their managers.

The result is that new hires are more likely to seek advice from people they consider to be their peers, peers who are not necessarily senior public servants or managers. It is also my experience that the new recruits whom are most in need of the advice that their managers can provide are also the least likely to seek out that advice. This harkens back to the conversation we had a while back about the importance of simple conversations taking place about the public service being more important than the official discourse -- incidentally, something that Mike Kujawski hammered home during his armchair discussion yesterday at the CSPS, but I digress.

I have spoken to many new recruits, and even some of the not-so-new recruits, who have found themselves stuck in precarious positions and now asking me for advice. Their question -- how do you tell your manager, the person responsible for assigning your work, that you aren't being challenged enough, without implying a 'management problem'? -- is pointed, and one that I cannot yet answer with any degree of certainty.

If I had to offer my own advice on taking advice (the irony!), given the title of the post!), I would say that you need to do two things. The first is trust your judgment above that of anyone else. Even if it turns out that you didn't take the best course of action, at least you took it yourself. Call it a learning experience. Second, make sure that whatever you do with the advice you are given, be it following it to the letter or ignoring it completely, make sure you trust your own judgment and make sure that you can live with yourself when it is all said and done. At the very least, I can say that that approach worked for me, in what was a difficult time in my career, albeit for different reasons.

But hey, you should take what I say with a grain of salt, because we all know what opinions are like... hey maybe you could share yours? Where do you go for career advice, how different has that advice been? The irony of asking for even more opinions hasn’t escaped me, but we want to know.

CPSRenewal.ca Weekly: Some Career Advice from a Senior Public Servant

As stated in last week’s column, being an executive member of my departmental youth organization allows me the opportunity to make contributions to the broader renewal process and to new public servants in general. This week our departmental youth organization held an informal discussion with our Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM). In attendance were the ADM, the director of ADMO, the youth network champion, and approximately 25 new public servants (including the executive of the youth committee).

We asked the ADM to speak to four different things during the discussion and followed up his address with a question and answer period. There were a number of lessons learned, both in the process of organizing and in participating in the discussion, which could make up the substance of this weekly column. However, I think the most important of those lessons came in the form of advice given by the ADM on how to navigate the public service, advice that I wanted to share with you today.

Career Path and Critical Skills

1. You need to strike the proper balance between the compromises you will have to make in order to do your job and preserving your integrity, while staying passionate about what you do. You may find yourself in a difficult position, so you need to learn where you want to draw the lines. Remember that while you are never completely beholden to the system, it is not practical to completely avoid compromise. In the end you have to connect what you do, with what matters to you. Given that most of what we do is knowledge based, this may not always be feasible on a daily basis or with a straight line – but it is essential that you are able to do it over the long haul, or with a dotted line.

2. The standing assumption that the Public Service rewards conformity and not creativity is false. The government is an ideas institution, and while not every idea gets buy-in, if you put enough of them out there the chances are that some will. Managers are generally receptive to new ideas, but you have to remember that line managers are busy with the day to day activities of moving dockets and ensuring the work is completed. They often are forced to sacrifice time that could be spent discussing new ideas to the necessity of the day. If you have an idea, bring it up. If you lack a forum to discuss new ideas, suggest that your manager carve out 15 minutes in your monthly meetings for it and get it on the agenda. Most managers will be amenable to a gentle nudge in that direction because they see its value. Finally, you will rarely suffer a negative consequence for bringing up a good idea so do not hesitate to bring one forward when you do.

3. Relationships matter, a lot. They don’t matter in the sense of Machiavellian networking, which seldom pays off in the public service, but relationships matter in the real sense of working with others. Government today is increasingly interconnected and issues are increasingly crosscutting. Working inter-departmentally or informally with people you have just met or worked with in the past is thus equally important. As new public servants you should seek out people with whom you share an affinity and similar ideas. Some of your best resources in the future may be the people moving up the ranks with you right now.

4. It should always be fun at the end of the day. You might not be out saving the world every day, but overall you should understand and feel good about your contribution. If you don’t, then you need to step back and ask yourself the hard questions: is it about the job, is it the Public Service, etc? You should seek advice from colleagues, and trusted managers. In the end if it isn’t fun, find something that is.

5. Don’t obsess about your level. Obsessing about your level will burn you out and it will burn you out quickly. If you’re striking the right balance, expressing your creativity, building relationships, and having fun then the levels will come naturally. Promotion and advancement do matter, but shouldn’t be the heart of the matter. The content of your contribution is much more important and rewarding in the end. Success for its own sake is an empty exercise, one that will leave you looking back wondering what you had to give up to get it.

6. If you want to move up you need to build a base and then expand out. If you are lucky enough to be in a smaller portfolio, learn it and learn it well. Devote some time to the area and make an effort to become known as invaluable in that area. Once you are established then start to broaden your experience base. If you want to move up in the public service, experience at one of the three central agencies (Treasury Board, Finance, or the Privy Council) is critical. You also need to remember that our job isn’t just about serving Canadians, but also about serving our democratically elected Ministers. It is important to be aware of the reality Ministers face and how Cabinet works. Sometimes what counts in the long run isn’t the sexy stuff, but knowing how to run the machine.


In addition, the ADM had a couple of things to say regarding innovation and the role of youth:

7. You cannot create an infrastructure of innovation but you can create a climate for innovation. This can be accomplished by creating task teams, demonstrating receptivity, and giving employees opportunities to get together and talk to each other. Groups like youth organizations are one way in which this can happen.

8. Youth groups are a great mechanism that supports new and/or younger employees. It is great for ideas generation and questioning established systems. The government should be looking to its new hires because they can often provide valuable feedback to senior management because they may not be as prone to accepting the given order of things. There are a great number of improvements that can be made by those who come into the public service with fresh eyes.

As always, we welcome your own thoughts and perspectives on this type of public service career advice – things you’ve found in your own experience, or perhaps wisdom handed to you from others.

Additionally, if you are interested in hosting a similar event in your own department but don’t know how to get started, please feel free to contact us and we will be happy to provide you with input (perhaps even a process map or checklist).