Public service renewal: the weekly round-up

August 15 – 19, 2011

Thought of the week: Your ideas are not obvious to other people. That’s why you need to share them.

Watch of the week: a WW2-era Disney cartoon, All Together Now. This historically avant-garde collaboration between the National Film Board of Canada and Walt Disney Studios aimed to get more Canadians to invest in war bonds. (And, truly, there’s just something about seeing the Disney gang march up and down in front of an animated version of the Canadian Parliament buildings. Priceless.)

Crowd sourcing:

Maybe I am behind the times, but this week I discovered a service called Servio, with an 80,000+ strong workforce where you can crowd source your content needs. Its software carves a given task into microscopically small pieces, and then farms it out to their community of workers, who get paid piecemeal to complete each section of the task.

So, what happens when a journalist crowd sources out background research? Is hiring a team of freelance reporters to research, report, and write a story on your behalf an ethical violation?

Social:

• New to Twitter? Check out this primer on the use of hashtags
• Twitter is selling and Facebook is marketing. Or, is it that Twitter is about connecting with the people you want to know, and Facebook is about re-connecting with everyone you have ever met?
• Did you know LinkedIn gave itself permission to use your image on its advertising? Don’t want to see yourself in a surprise ad? Turn off the option.

It may be trite to say, but laughing is good for you:

• A good laugh, smile, or giggle is essential to start out the week on the right foot. Make time for it, and pass it on.
• If you live in Ottawa, you’re gonna love this video of Bhangra in the Capital. Bhangra is a combination of dances from different parts of the Punjab region, and this video breaks it out.
• I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the use of gimmicks in communication. Check out this super creative ‘pomegranate’ smart phone ad, which is really an advertisement for Nova Scotia tourism.

This post has been a collaborative effort from Lee-Anne Peluk and Nicholas Charney.You can check out Lee-Anne's blog "In the Shuffle" at www.leeannepeluk.wordpress.com

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Tactics for Change: Isolate and Influence

Go after the key influencers in your department and make them champions, unofficial or otherwise. You know who these people are: when they speak others listen. -- Scheming Virtuously: A Handbook for Public Servants

If you are trying to marshal support for organizational change, you obviously need a strategy, but you also need tactics. While strategies will differ from organization to organization, tactics can often be adopted across a different strategies.

In short, I can't write your change management strategy, but I can offer you some advice on what tactics to consider when trying to marshal support.

Sequence is important

When shopping for support you should approach the early adopters first while isolating the roadblocks, keeping the latter out of the equation for as long as possible.

Do the leg work

Find the people in your organization that see the value of what you are doing. Moreover, try to get a few of the key influencers who can help bring people down off the fence or exert pressure on those typically saying nay.

Move in on the Naysayers

Once you have a critical mass, approach the naysayers. Show them what you are proposing, show them your support base, and ask for their participation. The more pressure you can bring to bear on the naysayers, the less likely they are to continue saying nay.

Use the fear of being last

Often no one wants to be first in the public sector, but even more often, no one wants to be last.

For more tactics for public sector change, download the newly digitally remastered

Scheming Virtuously: A Handbook for Public Servants.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca
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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: Tactics Around the Table

Do you do enough to prepare for important meetings? Sure you may read the required reading and make sure you get there on time, make sure you know who else is coming, but how much effort do you really put into setting yourself up to be the person leading the charge coming out of the meeting?

You know the person I am talking about - the one who gets pulled into other related fora because the puller can sense her grit and determination; the one who people stick around to talk to after the meeting.

I'll be honest, if you don't want to be that person, this column may not be for you. If, however, you do want to be that person and want to take your game to the next level, then you may find some of what I am about to share useful. Furthermore, I know that this kind of preparatory work isn't warranted for every meeting you go to - it's up to you to decide which ones you should be putting the extra work into.

A word of caution: some of the language here is colloquial but as always, I am sharing this in the spirit of scheming virtuously. I know there is a lot at stake here, and I wouldn't want you to misconstrue my attempt to make this column entertaining as a gross simplification of what could be some very important lessons regarding tactics around the table.


Pre-Meeting Reconnaissance

As with anything, your preparatory work should start before you step into the meeting room. Of course you should read whatever documents are being presented, discussed, etc., but you should also be taking the time to figure out who all the players are around the table - who wrote what, what circles they run in, what they have influence over, how they relate to the other people around the table, and anything about their work history that may be helpful.

I am generally pretty good with keeping most of that type of information in the back of my head, but I am not afraid to bring it in writing to a meeting should I need to verify or contextualize something on the fly. If you choose to come prepared with these types of background materials it should probably look akin to a cheat sheet: small, cryptic, and not easily decipherable by a passerby.


Approach on Arrival

Whether or not you realize it, the dynamic of the meeting is always influenced by the physical arrangement of the meeting space and how people choose to make use of that space. You should aim to use both to your advantage whenever possible. There are a number of ways to do this, but my approach is to be one of the first to arrive. This provides me the opportunity to survey the space, talk to people as they arrive, and determine where I should sit based on how the room is filling up. This is a delicate balance because you don't want to get squeezed out.

You need to make some determinations about who you want to be able to see clearly around the table, who you want to be able to make eye contact with.

This may also give you an opportunity to defuse potentially adversarial situations by adopting a position next to the person you figure may take a contrary position (based on the work you’ve already done about who does what, etc.), or break up teams that are likely to have differences of opinions. Both of these actions can considerably shift the power dynamic away from the table, which easily lends itself to adversarial positions when looking across the table.

Likewise, if you are calling on allies, then you may want to position yourself in a way that calls them in from around the room. This provides people with a sense that your position is well supported around the table. The same amount of support, geographically concentrated at one spot around the table, is much easier to dismiss than support of equal magnitude that comes from all directions.


Mapping the Room

Sit down, draw the table, label the players and map out the interactions. Observe the people as much as the discussion, start to pay attention to body language because writing down exactly what people say is often far less important than writing down a key point and knowing who nodded in quiet agreement, who shook their heads in disagreement, who wrote down notes, and who didn’t.

Over time, these observations can paint a very detailed picture of how business proceeds (or doesn't proceed) around the table, and can provide tremendous insight in to how to maneuver within the relationships (amicable or adversarial) in a way that best ensures that your voice is heard and your opinions considered.


Making a Contribution

Make it good, use everything you have learned to your full advantage, and anticipate the responses of others.


Linger Afterwards

Make sure you are one of the last ones out of the room. Stall if you have to - gather your things slowly, check your blackberry - and allow people to come to you should they desire. Don't be afraid to time your elevator ride down to squeeze in a couple of words with a key person around the table. Often the meeting after the meeting is more important than the meeting itself.


Seek Feedback from Those You Trust

Don't be afraid to ask those you trust how you performed in the meeting: what you could work on, what worked, what didn't. They may be able to provide you with some useful feedback to help you streamline your approach or give you additional intelligence that will inform your actions at future meetings.


Rinse and Repeat

Remember this is an ongoing and iterative process, don't stop learning, applying that knowledge, and scheming virtuously.