Lessons from Free Agency

by Nick Charney

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You may or may not be aware that I'm a part of the first cohort of federal public servants in an HR pilot called Free Agents (internal). At its core the program is based on Deloitte's GovCloud model and seeks to treat human resources more akin to cloud computing resources: deployed just in time to solve a particular time bound and well scoped problem. The program just welcomed its second cohort of successful candidates earlier this week and I had the opportunity to chat with them quickly as a part of their on-boarding.

Here's what I had to say

I think the hardest part of being a Free Agent is having an maintaining two separate but equally important work teams. When I first started my Free Agency I told Abe (the program manager) that my biggest concern was "not having time to make 10 new friends". As a result I approached the program (and perhaps the group of people in it) with a fair bit of skepticism. In short, I thin sliced the experience and pre-determined that I wanted very little to do with what I thought was the rhetoric, administrivia and the forced socializing of the program. But over time I realized that I was wrong, the program -- and more importantly the individual people in it -- won me over. Its a strong group of knowledgeable, dedicated and risk taking public servants (i.e. its an HR pilot that could result in job loss) that are interested in digging in, learning more, and leaning into new challenges; and by and large its a group of people I wouldn't have crossed paths with if it weren't for the program.

So -- my advice to you (the next cohort) is this: take time to invest in each other, lean on each other, offer help, and seek advice. The best thing about this group of people is that you've all already demonstrated that at a minimum you share a set of common values: a commitment to public service, innovation, new ways of working, risk tolerance, mobility, flexibility, etc. There's likely a lot more common ground to explore with your Free Agent counterparts than there will be wherever you end up on assignment, don't be afraid to use it.

The Ship's Doctor, Or, the Difference Between Skill and Expertise

by Kent Aitken

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This is a quick reflection on HR and the difference between skill and expertise, but let's start with Firefly.

The show Firefly followed a crew of spaceship smugglers, each with a distinct role on the ship: Malcolm, the Captain; Zoe, the first mate; Hoban, the pilot; Inara, the "diplomat;" Jayne, the mercenary; Kaylee, the mechanic; and Simon, the ship's doctor.

The thing is, they only have so much room on board, and they only make so much money. And every additional crew member reduces the percentage of profits for the others - it's expensive to keep people on.

Therein lies the problem with the setup. Everyone pulls their weight, but it's a pretty crude division of skills: the only options for medical care, for instance, are to have no doctor or a full-time doctor as part of the crew and cut of earnings. In the middle of space, there's no scaling to needs. Everyone else could learn some field dressing and first aid, but it's a far cry from a trained, professional surgeon when you really need one.

The analogous situation for an organization's HR is the question of whether you find specialists or train generalists in new skills. The example that came up recently was about facilitation, and a colleague and I discussed the difference between a moderator - someone who can keep a conversation moving productively - and a trained facilitator, who can design a productive session and get the absolute most out of the brainpower in a room. But there are many such fields: data analytics, engagement, usability, research techniques, and on (or anything that fits the model described in the post Innovation and Rigour).

The problem is that very few teams, staffed permanently with a particular crew with a particular set of skills, need a full-time facilitator. But they also don't need everyone trained lightly in facilitation - it's like the difference between first aid and surgery. What these teams need is reliable, scaleable access to a surgeon when someone gets badly injured. Or, less darkly: reliable, scaleable access to specialized, expert skills on demand. For example, one would only bring in a facilitator when they host major meetings or workshops, or during strategic planning exercises.

The alternatives are dicey. To a point, a culture of collaboration solves the dilemma. But that requires that enough teams have these mutually dependent features:

1. They've identified a need for specialized expertise
2. They're willing to fill a valuable, rare open position with that particular expertise
3. They have enough flexibility to lend that person, on demand, to other teams

Which is unrealistic at worst, and unreliable at best.

Otherwise, there are several models proposed to solve this dilemma: Govcloud or STRATUS, both of which require a bank of expert employees who are not permanently bound to any particular program or set of deliverables. It's comparable to the "corporate services" approach (HR, finance, IT, procurement) but for non-standardized work, where expertise meets policy and program knowledge.

Regardless, the status quo has a gap that most organizations currently cannot appropriately address. But it's the world we inhabit: incredibly high standards for program and service delivery, with increasingly niche approaches to getting there, that may not fall neatly into 40-hour-per-week job descriptions. Have people squared this circle? Are there any other approaches that are working well?