On Breaking Bread

by Nick Charney

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Every day at work around noon someone gets up in the office and turns to someone else and asks "Are we breaking bread today?"

The question ripples.

Within five minutes the kitchen is full of people.

We eat.

We laugh.

We voice concerns and celebrate triumphs.

We laugh a little more.

The true measure of office culture is whether people gather and break bread or swallow sadness alone hunched over their keyboards.

tl;dr - break more bread.

Happy Holidays! Now Watch This!

Work tends to slow down around this time of year as fewer and fewer people are in the office. If you find yourself with some downtime at your work station I suggest you make some popcorn, assemble a few of your colleagues and watch this video entitled "Why Work Doesn't Happen at Work". Who knows with everyone gone you may actually have the bandwidth to stream it from your otherwise archaic government workstation.

Thanks everyone for your ongoing support, see you in the new year.

Cheers.

- Nick

This column was originally published to cpsrenewal.ca by Nick Charney.

Vlog: Highlights from my Interview w/@FusedLogic at #Govcamp

Last week I had the opportunity to attend Govcamp, in addition to listening to the panel and participating in the break out sessions, I also had the opportunity to sit down with Walter Schwabe from FusedLogic for an hour long interview. The video below is 10 minutes of the highlights from that interview.



If you are hungry for more video content I would encourage you to check out both the panel discussion and the 3+ hours of interviews with the likes of people I admire personally like David Eaves, David Hume, and Chris Moore and of course John Weigelt, the man who made Govcamp possible.

Also if you are in Toronto on June 17th, I would encourage you to find a way to get to Govcamp Toronto, word on the street is that it is going to be a blast.

All I Really Need to Know (About Collaboration) I Learned in Kindergarten (Last Week)

Last week I volunteered in my daughter's junior kindergarten class. Afterward I realized that building online communities is not all that different than building trust with a large group of children. In the column below I will speak directly about my experience in the classroom; while in many cases the corollaries will be self-evident I have purposely employed parentheses to make the analogy more explicit.


Introductions and Credibility via Association

My afternoon in the classroom started with a simple introduction: “Today we have a helper in the class, his name is Nick, he is Larkyn's dad. Can everyone say hello to Nick?” … which was met with a resounding “Hi Nick!” from the children.

In retrospect, the introduction builds my credibility in two ways: the first is that it was issued by the teacher for whom there is an existing relationship of respect and authority within the organization. The second is that the introduction included a peer connection–in this case my daughter Larkyn. The combination of authority (teacher) and camaraderie (Larkyn) created a certain degree of comfort between us despite the fact that we are essentially strangers.


Building Trust One Person at a Time

After the introduction I was on craft table duty. I was tasked to help the children make a hand print using paint and construction paper. Essentially this involved me giving directions (a framework), providing materials (the tools), making the print (the expected behaviour) and of course, cleaning up.

The process by which the children were selected to do the activity was akin to the process anyone should follow when they are looking to build support for an initiative. The students didn't maul the table all at once, nor were they told to come under their own volition; but rather they proceeded one at a time, starting with Larkyn. Starting with my daughter was incredibly helpful because she was my strongest link to the rest of the class. Each child who completed the craft not only selected the next child to complete the craft but also notified them. The key to understanding the success here is that in each case the student who just completed the craft freely selected the person the next person to undertake the process. I think it is fairly safe to say that students chose the subsequent student based, at least in part, on affinity. This approach (to community building) creates a cascading effect whereby each subsequent participant took my direction (advice) readily because they were referred by someone in their peer group.

As a class helper (community manager), this one–on-one interaction also provided me an incredible opportunity to learn about each person in the class (community) individually. I learned their names, which hand was their dominant (work style), their comfort level with having paint on their hands (tolerance for change), their ability to clean up after themselves (self-sufficiency), and who they considered their closest friends in the class (relationship map).


Play Where the Community Plays

I was then advised by the teacher that I could play bingo with the children after their snack, and was given the requisite materials to do so. I asked the kids if they wanted to play and while they said they were interested, they immediately dispersed after their snacks, electing to play with something on the other side of the room instead. Instead of hollering at them to come play bingo I just left the table and walked over to where my daughter was playing with three other friends. We started to play house but after a few minutes of interacting with them on their terms, I told the kids I was far more interested in the large set of cardboard building blocks along the wall. They weren't really interested but I asked them if they minded if I explored the blocks in order to see if they could be put to good use (permission for a proof of concept). They didn't have a problem with it so I began playing (experimenting) with them. I started by walling myself in with the blocks and then I knocked them down in a somewhat raucous manner.


Scaling Participation and Activity Levels Naturally

What I learned was that building the castle wasn't going to incite interest (high barrier to entry), but knocking it down was (low barrier to entry). The prospect of being able to knock down a second iteration of the castle was enough to secure the attention of four of the children (early adopters). Given that the attention span of these new converts was relatively fragile, our first castle (project) was fairly simple. We used no more than half the blocks available and the castle was completely devoid of any windows or doors (had only basic functionality). The building process itself took only minutes (expedient). Despite the relative simplicity of the activity and the low number of participants it quickly started to scale as the students became evangelists for it.

The key here is that I didn't push any of the students to recruit others but rather we scaled naturally. In some cases children self-selected to actively bring in their friends; in others, observers simply decided to join the fray based on what they saw. In both cases the initial hook was the same: a chance at knocking down the castle. As our numbers scaled so did the number of blocks we used, how elaborate the castle itself was, and the rules that governed that activity. While I provided advice, all of the aforementioned factors were ultimately determined by the participants through a self-emerging consensus.


Learning from Detractors

The benefits of allowing the group to determine its own code of conduct is that when there is a need to amend the rules of engagement it is felt more bluntly by participants. For example, the look of panic on a young boy’s face behind the wall screaming “I have to pee!” (the detractor) was enough to not only cause the immediate destruction of the structure by the community but also to prompt a new strategic choice: the mandatory inclusion of doors and windows on all future iterations of the castle.


Emerging Enablers

In the final iteration of the castle I started to see enablers emerge. In particular three individuals stepped up and played more active (yet different) roles: Larkyn, Jacob and Ethan. Larkyn was on crowd control, she determined who was in, who was out, she made sure people were sitting, and that they weren't knocking down the structure prematurely (guidelines for behaviour). Jacob was bringing me the building materials, starting with the largest blocks down to the smallest so we could maximize the efficiency of the structure (usefulness of the platform). Ethan was building with me. I took the time to teach him how we could build the tallest and sturdiest structure given the materials at our disposal (community manager).

On the final iteration we had approximately 20 children in the castle, and 3 enablers emerged to facilitate the larger group. Interestingly, participation rates were not too dissimilar from the 90-9-1 rule of internet participation.


Expanding the Scope

For the most part, when the teacher told us to clean up it was all hands on deck. While that was not surprising (they are told daily at that time to clean up), what was interesting was that when we moved outside to the playground the majority of the kids looked to me, Larkyn, Jacob and Ethan (the enablers) to choose the games to be played given the change in the environment. In short, the community generalized its decorum to a different set of circumstances.


Parade of Hugs

When I left at the end of the day it was a parade of hugs. Everyone wanted to thank me for the spending the time in the classroom (kudos for a job well done). In retrospect, I'm so glad I took the time to thank them too (because reciprocity is so important).

[image credit: woodlywonderworks]

Column: False Assumptions About Working Openly

One of the cruelest ironies of the public service is that public servants are reticent to share while simultaneously pointing to poor communication and/or incomplete information as the biggest hindrance to their work. I hear about this irony almost daily, be it in anecdotal discourse with colleagues or appearing in more structured ways such as employee opinion surveys. What is most unfortunate about this cruel irony is that it makes certain web 2.0 technologies, such as wikis, a difficult sell to many public servants, public servants who would otherwise have a lot to gain by using them. Sadly, and I don’t want to dissuade you here, but if David Eaves’ assessment of the hype cycle is correct, then it’s about to become a much harder sell.


The Push Back

Whenever I explain public service wikis to public servants the push-back is usually immediate: people are very much opposed to opening up their work in a manner that would make it readable by any other federal public servant (in the case of GCPEDIA) let alone editable.


The False Assumptions

However, I think that there are a number of false assumptions that people have about working in a more open manner. I say they are false assumptions because they are generally offered up by people who aren't working openly. With all due respect, who knows more about working in an open manner - those working in that manner, or those making excuses not to? Here are the assumptions:

• Assumption #1: People are interested in your work enough to search for it
• Assumption #2: Once they find it they will take the time to read it
• Assumption #3: Once they read it they will likely decide to edit it
• Assumption #4: Whatever edits/contributions they make will decrease the quality of your work

The Facts

Regarding the first assumption, my experience has been quite different. I am unfamiliar with the majority of the work going on inside GCPEDIA, as are most users, I suspect. What people are familiar with however is what they have either interest or expertise in. The messy nature of the wiki and the vast amount of information therein means that one can really only get to something that they are actively looking for.

As for the rest of the assumptions above, consider these statistics about the wiki version of Scheming Virtuously:

• Created on December 9, 2008
• 35th most viewed page in GCPEDIA (2,014 views)
• Edited 5 times (I personally know each of the people who edited the page)
• Less than 5 comments on the discussion page (again all from people I know)
  

The edits were as follows:

• Categorized the page
• Added a link
• Fixed a grammatical error
• Contributed two sentences of content
• Recoded the entire document to make it more accessible for people using assistive technologies

Despite my best efforts to make Scheming a dynamic page that was envisioned to solicit input from other public servants it is essentially static. So, while people are viewing it, very few have decided to edit it, and those who did added substantial value to it.


The Relationship to Open Data

This little exercise got me thinking, is the reluctance faced by the open data movement built on similar assumptions, is the experience from practitioners as contradictory to those assumptions as in the case above?

Thoughts?

Column: Enabling the Web 2.0 Worker

I am working on a presentation that, among other things, provides managers with strategic advice on how to enable Web 2.0 workers. I would like to share some of those thoughts with you. I would also like you to leave me your comments, given that you are Web 2.0 workers, around what would better enable you to do your job that I didn’t outline below?

Trust your employees with your IT resources

Provide your employees with unfiltered access to the Internet. If you want them to take full advantage of the richness of information available to them on the web, they need to be able to immerse themselves in the content. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to access something for work, only to be blocked by the firewall.

Once you have opened the door though, don’t let them wander the halls aimlessly. Have conversations about how we can make better use of the Internet, and in doing so, build a common understanding of what is appropriate and inappropriate use. Whatever you do, don’t misunderstand “common understanding” to mean “your understanding,” the learning here should flow both ways. Challenge them, and allow yourself to be challenged, because things are changing.

For example, think about the implications of this interesting statistic:

• 21.4% of Canadians smoke (via Statistics Canada)
• 56.5% of Canadians use web based social networks (combined stat via Internet World Stats and Web 2.0 Secondary Analysis - note the second link is to GCPEDIA)
  

No one would dare tell someone they can’t go for a smoke, but people are told daily not to participate in social networking. Yes the two are different activities, but they can share certain social elements. Now I don’t want to get bogged down into an odd discussion about smoking versus social networking, but in my mind if you are allowing one and banning the other, you need to be able to articulate the differences because the truth of the matter is that social networking is far more popular (not to mention healthier!) than smoking


Make time to learn about social media / web 2.0 (and everything else that gets pulled in) with your employees

Social media offers new ways of working collaboratively, and that will take some getting used to. These types of tools are still new in the government and there is a lot of learning ahead.

You may initially feel that figuring out exactly how to interact with others and manage relationships in a virtual environment is challenging. Be open with one another and discuss issues with your colleagues as they arise. Remember that these tools offer tremendous opportunities to share with each other, break down silos, better engage our colleagues and to change our work culture for the better.

Moreover, unless you work specifically in the area, most of us likely don’t have a thorough understanding of Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP), Official Languages (OL), Public Service Values and Ethics, Accessibility, etc. So why are we so quick to point our fingers at new collaborative technologies and declare that they will never work under these frameworks? I think that it is unfair to place the burden for that lack of understanding on the tools themselves because the tools don’t cause the problems; they only bring the problems to the forefront where they become considerably more prevalent. So discuss the implications of all of these frameworks when considering, designing, implementing and using new collaborative technologies, and be open to the idea that maybe, just maybe, if there isn’t a zone of agreement between the two, that perhaps it is the frameworks that need modernizing not the tools that need antiquing (Oh and then don’t be afraid to step up and start working on updating whatever you have found to be in need of an update).


Give them the tools internally where it is safe to experiment

Behind the firewall is a lot safer than outside it. Inside there is coaching, learning and room to wiggle whereas outside there is media, public perception, and little room to maneuver. My advice to you is wherever possible, create conditions which are more likely to foster successful outcomes because if space behind the firewall isn’t provided people will ultimately venture outside it.

So provide the tools internally and encourage colleagues to learn how to use and appropriate the technologies to their work within the work context, and encourage them to be open and innovative in their approaches. Furthermore, don't punish them for failed attempts. There was probably a great deal of learning that lead to that failure, learning that may help you avoid mistakes in the future, and more importantly avoid them outside the firewall.

If someone in your organization proposes to implement a new or complimentary tool, encourage them to articulate their argument, to document it and champion it. This does a couple of things. The first is that it teaches the proponents about the processes involved in seeing something through while also (hopefully) building up their tenacity and resilience. It also provides everything you need when approaching senior managers for support. But in so doing make sure you take care in your approach because you want to be a virtuous schemer not a block in the system.

Finally when implementing, try to find a way to deploy quickly and at low cost, don't make them wait and don't spend millions, the technology changes too fast.

The truth of the matter is that what I am suggesting is by no means a novel approach, but simply taking full advantage of the opportunity that lies in using an established process to try to bring in something new.

If you make this a war, it will be a war of attrition, one where everyone loses

Focus on the attitudes you want to foster within the workplace without getting caught up in generalizations based on generations or you risk alienating people. The last thing the public service needs is more alienation.


Your Thoughts?

Again, please leave me your thoughts; they will ultimately help me provide better advice to others. Thanks in advance.

Weekly Column: Territory or Synergy in Government 2.0

These last couple of weeks have been interesting ones for me. I won't bore you with the more mundane details, but suffice it to say that the conversations that have been taking place have covered the full spectrum of issues around collaborative technologies, governance, and culture, and have included people from all classifications, levels, and subject areas.

The sum of these conversations has made one thing abundantly clear. It informed last week's column, and this week’s column endeavours to flesh it out in more detail. It is this:

As we embark on this journey towards Government 2.0, public servants who have built, who are building, and who will attempt to build their careers by staking out their territory and defending it vehemently (‘territorialists’) will ultimately clash with those who have built, who are building and who will build their careers by seeking out synergies and capitalizing on opportunities, irrespective of those territorial boundaries (‘synergists’).

I won’t call it a culture war. That analogy doesn't sit right with me because rarely does it add value. It is much more apt to promote division (real or otherwise) than anything else. Besides, there are way better analogies and/or pop culture references out there. We don't have a war raging, what we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Furthermore, both sides are responsible for this communication breakdown as neither side is communicating effectively with one another. Truth be told, I would actually argue that the two sides don't even speak the same language.

I myself have run into a couple of situations recently where I could do nothing else but walk out shaking my head. I am physically incapable of truly understanding why someone would defend their territory so vehemently to the point of misconstruing my offer to help as a threat to their continued relevance. Personally, I have so much on my plate on a daily basis that I welcome whatever help I can get.

From where I sit (admittedly, firmly in the synergist camp) I think that, ultimately, those who orient themselves and their careers towards opportunities irrespective of territory will eventually "win out" over those who focus on territory irrespective of opportunity. What started as a slow shift in the underlying public service culture is now being sped up exponentially by the powerful accelerant we call web 2.0 (social media and collaborative technologies). In this kind of environment, it is incredibly difficult to build a fence around something.

The logical conclusion for me is that, as this evolution continues, the ground will continue to shift in new and unexpected ways. Those who are going to be successful in this world will be those with the broadest base of transferable skills, those willing to move around and try new things, those who are connected to the larger issues that transcend functional or jurisdictional areas. In short, the rules of the game are changing and synergy is the new territory; and most importantly it is a territory that no one can build a fence around.

Column: Stop, Collaborate and Listen

Stop saying you want to be more open, and then find reasons not to be.

Collaborate at the enterprise level. Look beyond your department, push it government-wide.

Listen, this isn't about you, so put that ruler away. We aren't measuring anything here today.

Cpsrenewal.ca Weekly Column: Blogs and the Government of Canada

There has been a lot of discussion in the public service blogosphere (the unofficial one anyway - if such a place now exists) about whether or not public servants should blog. Opinions fall on both sides of the discussion with varying caveats, and so this weekly is our contribution to that discussion.

Recently, David Eaves blogged a great piece on Why the Government of Canada Needs Bloggers (don't forget to read the comments!) that I simply had to respond to.

David's article identifies a recurring theme in his travels, namely:

... that public servants feel they are suffering from information overload. There is simply so much going on around them and it is impossible to keep up with it all. This is especially true of those in the senior ranks.

He then posits that this is the very reason that:

... the public service needs bloggers. Not to communicate with the public but to help public servants manage and understand all that internal knowledge and information.

I won't go on quoting Eaves verbatim, but I would like to address the points he raises, because they are important. (I have summarized his points in italics then responded below).


Blogs are Meta-Data

Eaves: Blogs are a filter. They sift through information, retain that which is relevant and present it in a manner that is digestible (e.g. readable and accessible) by their audience(s).

If you want to know what we are up to or what is going on in the world of public service renewal, you do one of a number of things. You come to the blog (or pull up your RSS reader), you search the tags to find what is relevant to you, or you go right to the twitter hashtag (#cpsr). As Eaves rightly points out, you are here because you are interested in what is being written and assembled here.

Think about what this blog does as its “core business” – we regularly assemble round-ups that aim to present you with interesting and relevant information because no one else is doing it (that we know of). Moreover, since we’re aggregating information, we’re generally free to present a variety of views on a particular topic. The fact that we do it here (because we love to) means that you don’t have to go out and try to get the information on your own. I assume that you come here instead because we give you the context that is most relevant to you as Public Servants.


Blogs at the Front Line

Eaves: Allowing bloggers (internally) at the front lines would provide a valuable opportunity for senior managers to see the reality on the ground.

I would go a step beyond what Eaves is saying here and argue that blogs at the front lines allow everyone (e.g. all levels) to engage in a conversation about the reality on the ground. Keeping that conversation rolling here allows people to engage the material on their own terms. They come here precisely because this isn’t a briefing note. We aren’t forcing anything on anyone. If you are interested in knowing more about the issues faced by the public service today from the perspective of a couple of relatively new public servants, then you come here to share in that experience.


Relevance, Reputation and Merit

Eaves: Relevant information rises to the top, and reputation and merit guide it there (not official or bureaucratic top down authority).

For obvious reasons we have not tried (nor will we ever try) to monetize the site. Yet, we do understand that we are building a brand by sharing stories that we can all relate to and by engaging issues that Public Servants are facing. We hope that this blog is a space that you trust, that you feel is open and that welcomes your contribution and gives you information that is relevant to you as a Public Servant.

If people considered what we write in this space solely on our substantive group and levels then it wouldn’t get very far.

The only reason that this blog succeeds is because you visit it. It’s like twitter – if you have no followers you are just talking to yourself. We need you - your encouragement, your emails, your tweets, your invitations to participate, your comments, and your participation. In short, it is your readership that makes this site relevant.

You give us that authority, the bureaucracy doesn’t. In fact, it can’t. It can’t because no one has been mandated to engage in these conversations, they don’t fall into checkable boxes on renewal actions plans.


Is Blogging Enough?

While I was commenting on Eaves’ post, I saw a trackback link to an article and found this gem (in direct response to the Eaves piece) by @hjarche on Why the Government of Canada needs Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Jarche's counter point is that the Government of Canada needs more then just bloggers – it needs a comprehensive approach to Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).

Jarche contends that:

… blogging is not enough because managing information overload is more a question of attitude than skills...

… that public servants really need PKM; [it is] a way to help make sense of the information flows that face us…

According to Jarche, PKM is made of four elements:

1. Sorting & Filtering (e.g. Feed Readers & following on Twitter)
2. Annotating and Filing (e.g. social bookmarks)
3. Tentative Sense-making (e.g. Blog posts & Twitter Posts)
4. Engagement and conversations in these venues and others

I already manage my personal knowledge in this way, and truth be told, I manage the blog in this manner. I sort, filter, annotate and file using twitter hashtags #cpsr. I condense the essence of the resource including the URL, the context, the hashtag, (and often the retweet) into 140 characters. Then I use that system to make sense of it all, I turn it into a blog post and provide context for each item I tweeted. Then we publish the post and invite conversations into this space (as well as others).


Conclusion

I think that the “business model” we use here in this space could be equally applicable to government departments looking to foster that internal dialogue around issues of relevance to its business. I am positive that the skills sets required to do this work exist in every department and in every region: it’s just a matter of putting them to use.

Jarche mentioned that he didn’t think the problem was a skill problem, but an attitude problem. I agree, but I would like to qualify that a little by saying that, in my experience, the most problematic attitude is the one that doesn’t see the value in using new and evolving skills, and by extension the value-adding processes attached to them, like blogging.

I would go even one step further and say that any department looking to actively engage their staff in that mysterious thing known as public service renewal, to consider adopting the model we have in place here, and start talking to people about the issues they care about in their departments.


Epilogue: Why We Do It

I got this email after my talk in Edmonton, it pretty much sums up my reasons behind going out and engaging people in conversations that matter to them:

Hi Nick,

I was in attendance at your talk in Edmonton last week. Your ideas and enthusiasm spurred me to do a little bit of scheming of my own. Amazingly, the results have already made themselves apparent!

Some chats with the right people at the conference resulted in a meeting this morning, which has resulted in me being selected to facilitate the Orientation to the Public Service (OPS) courses offered by CSPS. Being able to do large-scale training and facilitation is something I've always wanted to do, but they aren't really functions of my current position, so this was a huge win for me.

A little scheming and some creative pitching to my manager have given me this opportunity, and your talk was the spark that enabled me to make the right contacts and convince my boss to let me pursue this. I'll be going to Ottawa in a few months for the "train the trainer" session, and I'd consider it an honour to buy you a beer as thanks while I'm there!

Thanks once again for your talk and your work. It's people like you who give hope to the rest of us that we can effect positive change in the public service!

Regards,

GW

Hey GW – I will gladly take you up on that offer, and thanks to everyone who helped me get that opportunity to share some time with you, and again, thanks to everyone for stopping by this space. Without you, we'd be talking to ourselves.

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: Some Reflections About Renewal

Just prior to the holiday season I had the opportunity to attend a renewal mini-workshop put on by my friends at PCO's renewal secretariat and sponsored by outgoing Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, Jim Lahey; it doubled as his unofficial retirement party, one of Jim's last attempts to spur on the renewal conversation.

This was my first interaction with Jim and let me say that, while I can't speak to his overall contributions to the Public Service in sweeping terms, his demeanour, candour and passion were inspiring. I also had the opportunity to meet some other great people, most notably Katherine Baird from the Public Policy Forum (who co-authored Canada's Public Service in the 21st Century: Destination: Excellence) and Bob Chartier, the GoC’s resident leadership expert.

There was a lot to take from the workshop. Here is just a small taste of the conversational flavour of the evening.

Katherine and I had a very interesting discussion on what the ramifications would be if we simply started to change the physical space within which we worked. How would breaking down the cubicle walls, creating open and bright collaborative workspaces while retaining a handful of shared offices for private meetings affect the work culture? Mike and I have often discussed enough, we even ranted about it once. I doubt this idea will gain much traction but if there is a manager out there willing to experiment, why not give it a whirl? You may find that your team is more innovative or collaborates more frequently if you liberate them from the physical rigidity of the typical workspace. Involving them in the physical act of tearing down the walls between them may even increase the magnitude of the impact on their approach to working together. So why not leave the accommodations people out of it? Consider it a team building exercise.

Bob and I spoke about the need to simply engage in conversations about some of the problems within our work culture(s) or rules-based systems something we don't do that well in the Public Service. More often than not we are quick to self-rationalize as to why we can't have the conversation, even if we know it is one that should be had or that could bear fruit. We need to move beyond avoidance and into engagement. Jim added that he often hears public servants say that they want to take risks without facing consequences, yet there can be no risk without consequences. We then got into a conversation around the fact that the risk adverse culture within the public service is confusing given the difficulty involved in terminating employees and documenting poor performance. If anything, we should be expecting to see more people taking risks than avoiding them altogether.

If this is not evidence of learned helplessness, I don't know what is.

In that spirit I want to try to drive the blog back to the discussions about work culture that originally prompted its creation. I don't think we have gotten away from that altogether; however I feel as though we focused a lot on technology in the workplace, and there are clearly other determinants at play.

In Jim's closing remarks he spoke a bit about leadership’s 4 components: courage, judgment, love and humility. Courage and judgment reside on one axis, love and humility on the other. Good leaders are courageous enough to get involved, to take risks, to stand on points of principle, and to call nonsense by its name. Good leaders temper their courage with judgment. Judgment, says Jim, can only be learned by making mistakes. Often the gain to one's faculty of judgment is of a similar magnitude to one's mistake. Good leaders love what they do, they are passionate and inspire passion in those around them. Yet good leaders remain humble, and know that without others, they lead nothing and can accomplish nothing.

The most important thing that I took away was something that Jim said to me when I was leaving. I was explaining that I am trying to direct my career so that I can be one of those leaders he spoke of. He looked at me and said, "Don't wait - do it now".