Unsolicited Thoughts on Destination 2020

by Nick Charney

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On Monday, the Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters released Destination 2020, the response to the government-wide Blueprint 2020 engagement process. The report comes on the heels of both the 8th Report from the Advisory Panel on the Public Service and the 21st Annual Report to the Prime Minister (See: Thoughts on the 8th Report from the Advisory Panel on the Public Service). While I could just cut to the chase and offer my take, there's actually a lot at stake here so I have to tread lightly.

A couple of high level thoughts

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.

That fundamental change we've been talking about

Visual notes taken by @Prugelmeister at #goc3

Wednesday I attended Collaborative Management Day.  The highlight of the day for me was watching the Clerk of the Privy Council listen intently and respond genuinely as a handful of public servants from across the country asked him questions, sought his support and even expressed their frustrations.

The man has a tough job, and carving out time is obviously difficult.  I think having the Clerk participate in a dynamic exchange rather than simply swooping in and delivering prepared remarks was a stoke of genius and speaks volumes to the man's integrity and openness.



The most important thing he said

Looking back, I think the single most important thing he said was (and I am paraphrasing a bit, see tweets below for alternative/complimentary interpretations) that while austerity and uncertainty can be paralysing we must recognize the opportunity to fundamentally rethink our business models.  The statement obviously resonated.



In a recent contribution to Metaviews I offered a similar argument, saying that:

We need to cut through the noise of ‘greater efficiency through greater collaboration’ and the rhetoric of ‘doing more with less’ and focus instead on doing things fundamentally differently. Given the profound impact of digital communication technologies on our society, I think that doing things differently starts with cultivating a better understanding of how digital is reshaping what citizens expect from their public institutions and how public institutions can best respond to those needs.

But understanding is one thing, and moving beyond the rhetoric requires more concrete action(s).  What kind of action?  Doing things fundamentally differently, at least in my view, requires disruptive innovation, innovation that breaks traditional trade-offs and establishes entirely new operational models.

But can disruptive innovation actually exist in the public sector?  While many public servants I speak with agree that fundamental change is required most of them look at innovation as process improvement and gaining efficiencies rather than at more disruptive approaches to innovation. In their view, and I tend to agree with them, there simply isn't much support for a more radical approach to innovation.


Disruptive innovation through market mechanisms?

Having just read Public Sector, Disrupted, I think I have a better understanding as to why there is so little support for more disruptive approaches to innovation.  The report hinges on the idea that:

Creating the conditions for disruption will first require policymakers to view government through a different lens. Instead of seeing only endless programs and bureaucracies, the myriad responsibilities and customers of government can be seen as a series of markets that can be shaped in ways to find and cultivate very different, less expensive-- and ultimately more effective — ways of supplying public services

The report goes on to describe that in many cases the (United States) government enjoys significant buying power; buying power that, if shifted could topple slow moving incumbents and favour innovative upstarts.  My reading of this, and feel free to jump in here, is that disruptive innovation within this context requires not only that policy-makers apply a market lens to their analysis but that they actually become far more active in those markets themselves.  In my view, this approach quickly enters the realm of partisan politics, a place where even the largest proponents of disruptive innovation dare not follow.

Furthermore, while this approach may work for large national governments like the US government, I seriously doubt it would work for smaller municipal governments like that of say the City of Ottawa.

Check out the report and circle back here with your comments; I'm particularly interested if we can unearth some more tangible (e.g. using policy / regulatory levers) ways to disrupt the public sector, and finally achieve that fundamental change we've been talking about.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

Now What?

Full disclosure: I was recently sent advance copies of two reports (canada@150 c/o the PRI and Road to Retention c/o the Public Policy Forum) and asked to blog about them. This is that post, sort of. Rather than waxing poetic about the reports themselves, I will simply offer up a quick observation on each, and then explore what I think is a far more important question: now what?


canada@150

Admittedly, I didn't read the entire canada@150 report. It’s a behemoth size-wise (I recommend the coles notes version). Rather than skim the entire document haphazardly I zeroed in on the vision of the public service in 2017, which was well-articulated and worth the read. I went so far as creating a data visualization of it:



The nice thing about the visualization is that it helps you get the sense of what the essence of the vision was, is interactive, and offers a lower barrier to entry to prospective readers.


Road to Retention

Despite not actually being listed as a participant in the final report, I was in fact in attendance at the Ottawa session. I quickly skipped over the contextualization in the document as I am familiar with the changing demographics in this country. I was however quite interested in the recommendations put forth. The recommendation that hit closest to home for me was the need for employers to understand that the boundaries of the workplace have shifted. I for one regularly empty my inbox, prioritize my task list and read relevant documentation on the hour commute in to work. Old school management philosophies wouldn't put any value on that work. I gathered all the text from the recommendation section of the report and put together this word cloud of the recommendations in the report.



Truthfully, I was a little disappointed in how the word cloud turned out. I don't think it necessarily conveys the essence of the recommendations (feel free to disagree). Looking back I feel as though being a part of the conversation itself was far more valuable to me than reading the report a year later. Similarly, I assume, to those who participated in the canada@150 process.


Yeah, so reports are all nifty and cool but like now what?

Great question, right? What should we do with the contents of these two reports? There are some bang-up recommendations in both. Surely they deserve a better fate than early retirement to a lonely corner of the internet somewhere?

Please forgive me, and I don't mean to sound insulting, the reports are great, but my feeling is that if we didn't have a plan to use the ideas put forth in these reports why did we invest in the process of creating them?

The problem is by no means unique to either of these reports. In my three years in government I have seen it happen over and over again. Good ideas published in reports only to gather dust.

I think the reason it happens is actually rather simple: we often set the publication of the report as the final stage of the project, sometimes we take it one step further and have a communications plan that exceeds “put it on the website”.

What I never see these reports include is a re-integration plan: how do we take these recommendations and bring them into our organizations. Don't just throw the recommendations out there, point people in the right direction, arm them with communication materials - things they can use within their own social circles, give them an opportunity to connect with other people interested in the ideas. Whatever you do, don't just set up a generic email address to field queries.

I'm not saying rush out there and set up a Facebook fan page, but perhaps you could find a little corner on the web that pulls together all the pieces of the conversations and enables broader community engagement with the ideas.

Workflows that produce reports with recommendations should include the reintegration of those recommendations born out of the ideation process. Failing to do this costs organizations in more ways than I think we understand. There are many ways to do this through outreach, tagging, and aggregation tools using currently available (and often free!) tools.

I don't want to focus too much on the communications aspect, but I am a firm believer that reintegration of recommendations and community engagement needs to be part and parcel of the process that create these types of reports. What we need is akin to a cradle-to-cradle strategy for these types of initiatives. In both of these particular cases these reports were produced from an inclusive and participatory process. My feeling here is that there is a kind of natural opportunity here. The community (even if only temporary as in the cases above) should be the primary means through which the essence of these reports are communicated, championed and reintegrated back into organizations.

There is no better way to reintegrate the findings of a report back into the business fabric than by involving those initial producers back into the fold. Surely their voices lend more credence to the contents. They speak with a conviction deeper than any blogger who was at best tangentially involved in the process. We must shift our thinking and equip participants to move forward in a meaningful way. If we don't, I feel as though we have done them a disservice: their opinions mattered enough for us to solicit them, but not enough to act on them.

Round-Up October 20

News

1. BC Public Service ranks in the Top 50 employeers in BC (ranked # 4)
2. Here are the top 100 rankings nationally, all we are saying is have a look.
3. Hard financial times could mean a freeze on public service hiring.

Other Publications

I came across this interesting read from the OECD: Cultural Change in Government: Promoting a High-Performance Culture.

Here is are a couple of excerpts worth sharing:

(Intro): No organization can remain the same without loosing relevancy in a changing society. Governments are now part of a global movement that has been described by many (Barzelay, 2001; Hood, 2000; Kim and Moon, 2002) as an era of new public management (NPM). Public cynicism and frustration with government have led to many policy developments to provide catalysts for high performance organizations. The current challenge is not to determine whether to change but how to change to increase organizational effectiveness and global competitiveness. In order to respond to such challenges, many organizations attempt to carry out various organizational initiatives. Without an alteration of the fundamental values and expectations of organizations of individuals change remains superficial and short-term in duration. Failed attempts to change often produce cynicism, frustration, loss of trust, and deterioration of morale amongst organization members.

(Culture Change): Human organizations build up tremendous inertia over time, and it takes tremendous initiative and determination to budge them. It takes large amounts of energy for people to shift beliefs, habits, thinking, and rationale away from how things have always been done. Such changes require a long-term commitment and sustained application of time and energy from leadership and the organization (Fitzgerald, 1988). It is also critical that the cultural-change processes are viewed as ongoing, not as a project with an end. Senior leaders should be directly supported by a personal executive coach for at least the first few years of the change process so that they can sustain the commitment and effectiveness in role modelling the new cultural behaviors. It is important to point out that if the leaders do not change, culture will not change (Crane, 2002: 205).

(Creating a High Performance Culture): High-performance organizations also recognize that all employees-both those involved directly in the mission and mission support help create organizational value and that job processes, tools, and mission support arrangements must be tailored to support mission accomplishment. A dedication to continuous learning and improvement can not only help an agency respond to change but also to anticipate change, create new opportunities and pursue a shared vision that is ambitious. Incentives that are result-oriented, citizen-based and realistic are particularly important in steering the workforce and subject to balanced measures that reveal the multiple dimensions of performance. Incentives should be part of a performance management system under which employee performance expectations are aligned with the agency missionstatement, and in which personal accountability for performance is reinforced by both rewards and consequences.

(Practical Application): ... those who lead government reform should persuade and/or communicate with ordinary government employees for better understanding and broader participation. Without such efforts, the simple delivery of reform measures from the top would be too naïve to succeed. [Enter our Blog]

(Conclusion): Cultural change could happen at different levels ranging from visible to invisible levels. A change in process or policy does not necessarily lead to cultural change. Therefore, it is fair to say that real cultural change requires that the organization's members accept the changed behaviors, beliefs, or assumptions and that the change is sustained over a relatively long period of time.

Round-Up: September 9th

I just wanted to thank everyone who attended the barcamp - it was awesome. [h/t to Colin et al for organizing]

The NRCan Wiki is by far one of the best deployed pieces of web 2.0 technologies in the federal government today. I am surprised that more departments haven't gotten on board / that the centre hasn't picked it up and ran with it as a PS wide exercise.

I know what I will be trying to champion within my own department in the next month ... better start on the 'artillery work'.


News

From the E.X. files - The Deputy has no clothes.


Research Papers

A colleague flipped me an email with a link to a recent discussion paper entitled, Will the Unionized Workplace Attract and Retain New Talent? Given our previous columns we figured it might be worth the read (FYI we are currently reading it so no opinion can be shared as of yet).


Blogs

Peter Smith weighs in on unofficial government bloggers.

Etienne Laliberté raised some great points in his blogging @ work.gc.ca post so I am linking to it again.

CSPS

The Canadian School of Public Service has decided to start podcasting:

With the launch of the new Podcasting Directory in the fall of 2008, audio and audio-video files will be available for download directly from the School’s website which will further extend the reach of the Armchair Discussion Program and allow you to learn at your convenience. Such services help to minimize the barrier of time for participants in the regions.

Not to mention it just makes good sense to allow people access to knowledge and training when it is convenient for them to access it, and in the medium they want to access it...

Round Up July 26 - August 5th

Here we go ... time to hit the ground running post vacation.

First of all we got a response from Philip Lillies, a union activist and president of a union local out in Moncton, to our second column on the role of unions. We would like to thank Philip for his contribution and encourage you all to check it out.

Barring some unfortunate incident, weekly columns will resume this Friday, with an editorial on the use of technology in the workplace.

In the News

Senator Hugh Segal, a member if the standing committee on agriculture and forestry wrote a special to the Sun on the Senate report, Beyond Freefall: Halting Rural Poverty. Among the report's recommendations is moving federal government jobs to rural areas. The National Post subsequently published this letter from a reader.

David Zussman published this piece on public service delivery and innovation.

While the E.X. files shared a story called Seeking Guidance.

The July 28th edition of the Hill Times has two articles in it that are of interest. The first is by Jack Cole, entitled Want to know the best place to work in Canada’s federal public service? Here is an excerpt:

"Do you know someone looking for a career in Canada’s federal public service? Do you want to know which agency is the best one to work for? Or are you a public servant already working in Canada’s public service? Are you looking for a change, perhaps to a better place within the federal public service? Do you just want to know the best place to work there, where the employees are the most engaged? These are good questions and with a little research, you might find answers, at least partial answers. You can readily find the best companies to work for in Canada through a few different sources as the private sector gives up its “who is best” secrets rather easily. But the public sector seems to want to keep this information hidden away, even though it’s publicly available with a little digging. That digging is what I did a few years ago along with a few other colleagues, when I worked in the federal public service."

While Cythnia Munster's column contains some great quotations from James Lahey (PCO) on renewal:

"[G]iven that it takes ten years or so, even in the most ambitious cases, for people to become executives, and longer than that to become deputy ministers, we can reasonable expect that virtually all of the people who will be executives and deputy ministers of the federal government in 2015 and beyond are already here, which says to me that the most important thing to do with renewal is how do we deal with the people who are already here? How do we challenge them, how do we develop them, what kind of workplaces, what kind of work do we have? Do they feel inspired and challenged and eager to come to work in the morning? Or do they feel frustrated, suppressed, unable to act on their best ideas?”

Remember - you can probably find a copy of the Hill Times in any senior office.

In the Blogs

The New Zealand Minister of Labour, Hon Trevor Mallard, gave this speech on improving workplace productivity (thanks Etienne for the link).

Colin McKay asked the question, Is a Bad Blog Better than No Blog?

Jim Mintz posted a guide to Common Sense Communications.

Peter Smith wrote on the calamity of old versus new technologies in a post on RSS Feeds vs. Email Updates.

Conference Board of Canada

The CBoC dropped two reports that may be on interest:

1. Bridging the Gaps: How to Transfer Knowledge in Today's Multigenerational Workplace
2. Workforce Renewal: New Opportunities to Transform Health and Safety Culture

You will need to register in order to access these documents but registration is free for employees of most government departments.

Canada School of Public Service

Armchair Discussion – National Capital Region
Ottawa - Wednesday, August 6, 2008
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (ET)

National Managers Community Focus Group

Bilingual Presentation

The National Managers Community (NMC) would like to hear from you!

As a follow up to the electronic polling (e-polling) survey conducted at the National Managers’ Community Professional Development Forum held from April 20-23, 2008 in Vancouver, the NMC are conducting focus group sessions with Managers throughout the country to get their thoughts on the results captured from this survey. This will be an opportunity for Managers to provide feedback and suggestions for action.

You are invited to attend one of three focus group sessions taking place in the National Capital Region (August 6, 13 and 20, 2008).

We hope you will take the opportunity to participate and have your voices heard.

You are invited to attend this Armchair Discussion on-site at 65 Guigues Street (Ottawa).

To register, please visit the School’s Web site:

http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/events/armchair/program_e.html

Discussion informelle – Région de la Capitale nationale
Ottawa – Mercredi 6 août 2008
13 h 00 à 16 h 00 (HE)

Séance de discussion de la Communauté national des gestionnaires

Présentation bilingue

La Communauté nationale des gestionnaires (CNG) veut connaître votre opinion!

Un sondage électronique a été effectué lors du Forum de développement professionnel de la communauté nationale des gestionnaires, qui a lieu du 20 au 23 avril 2008, à Vancouver. Pour y donner suite, la CNG organise des séances de discussion avec des gestionnaires de tout le pays en vue d’obtenir leurs opinions sur les résultats du sondage. Les gestionnaires auront alors l’occasion de fournir de la rétroaction ainsi que de faire des suggestions quant aux mesures à prendre.

Nous vous invitons donc à assister à l’une des trois séances de discussion qui auront lieu dans la région de la capitale nationale (6, 13 et 20 août 2008).

Vous êtes invités à assister à cette Discussion informelle en personne au 65, rue Guigues (Ottawa).

Pour vous inscrire, veuillez consulter le site Web de l’École :

http://www.csps-efpc.gc.ca/events/armchair/program_f.html