Loyalling Implementing the Idea of Fearless Advice

by Kent Aitken

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Here's my entire hand for this post, laid on the table: the idea of Fearless Advice, Loyal Implementation makes me deeply uncomfortable.

The idea is that public servants provide advice, elected officials make a decision, and public servants then implement that decision, regardless of whether or not they agree (Nick has written in the past that the principle "isn't reserved for ministerial briefings" and applies throughout the public sector). It stems from this section of the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector:

1.2 Loyally carrying out the lawful decisions of their leaders and supporting ministers in their accountability to Parliament and Canadians.
1.3 Providing decision makers with all the information, analysis and advice they need, always striving to be open, candid and impartial.

However, the pithier version is well-entrenched in the minds of public servants. The phrase comes up everywhere, from office hallways to speeches from the Clerk of the Privy Council. However, compared to the source material, we've changed the order. But the real problem is that we think there is an order in the first place.


Theory and Practice

To be clear, I have zero issue with either of those two provisions. In fact, without them, the whole thing falls apart. Legitimately elected representatives make decisions based on the democratic logic that our system provides adequate information flows, contains sufficient checks and balances, and affords the opportunity to balance short- and long-term needs, regional and demographic demands, and public sentiment with substantive evidence.

However, the idea that fearless advice stops when loyal implementation starts is dangerous, and seems all too common ("they're sequential", I heard recently). We revisit the foundations for every policy and program eventually; when does a decision "end"? If new information comes available that impacts future actions, the past decision is a sunk cost, to be disregarded in weighing current options.


Fearless Advice and the Management Zeitgeist

The language that fills discussions about the future of the public service is of agility, continuous learning, and innovation - continuously exploring the adjacent possible of the new scenarios we enter (see: Where Good Ideas Go To Live And/Or Die):

• 8th Annual Report of the Prime Minister's Advisory Committee on the Public Service
• Twenty-First Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada
• Destination 2020

Recent decisions are not exempt from lessons learned, iteration, and improvement, and as such should not be exempt from fearless advice. It's in the implementation that we learn many of the truths about a decision's impact.


Misplaced Confidence

The other issue with the sequential approach for advice and implementation is the degree of confidence that it places in our ability to communicate and decide.

We can write advice amazingly precisely and thoughtfully, but unlike a conversation cannot correct misconceptions when we see them in others' facial expressions and body language, which we all do daily. Anyone that has ever re-drafted their own writing knows it never gets to perfect.

.@oao21 Q:Ever write crap and know you're writing crap? A: Pretty much every first draft. Q: What'd you do about it? A: A second draft.
— Rick Riordan (@camphalfblood) February 7, 2014

And if we are delivering advice in person? In practice, all conversations are first drafts.

Or, one could point to the evidence that willpower is a depletable resource. Or that hearing about large sums of money affects our judgement about money. Or that people are still biased towards certain names. Or that being reminded of negative stereotypes hurts people's test performance. Or that being tired impairs our judgement as much as alcohol. Regardless, we have quirks. We can reasonably rely on people to be effective decision-makers. But we can't rely on them to be effective decision-makers at every moment, and as such shouldn't shut the door on fearless advice once given.


The Rudder Straight

This is all perfectly consistent with the Values and Ethics Code, adhering to both provisions. It's urging a course change, while dutifully keeping the rudder straight. It's when we stop urging that the system falls apart.

Trust is the only thing that scales

Sometimes the best thing you can share is real life advice you've given someone. What follows is an email [almost verbatim] I sent to someone who asked me about the blurring line between professional and personal lives online (emphasis added):

My first impression is that this [person] is doing something awesome [online]; and that I wish the [organization] would find a way to leverage [their] passion for outreach/recruiting purposes (i.e. bring [them] into the fold officially rather than keep [them] at arms length); but that might just be wishful thinking.

'paranoia' by katiew

My professional opinion is that your responsibilities as a communications adviser to monitor this particular situation ends at advising [them] to read the TBS guidelines and remind [them] of [their] responsibilities under the Code of Values and Ethics (and any other unique codes of conduct within the organization).

My reason being that you may be able to police [their] activities now, but if everyone in the [organization] started blogging tomorrow could you scale that approach to your entire organization? Trust in the professionalism of your workforce is the only thing that scales across the entire organization and the only thing that pays dividends in the long term. [This person] is obviously engaged in [their] work, does the organization really want to risk alienating [them] over this?

As you may or may not know I've been blogging about the public service as a public servant for the last 4+ years without major incident. As long as [they are] willing to accept the consequences of [their] actions, whatever they may be, I see no harm in letting [them] continue.

PS - I only got one Guerrilla Renewal submission, here it is, and it is awesome.







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

Weekly Column: New Thoughts from an Early Adopter

The first time I came across the work of Andrew Keen I was watching The Agenda with Steve Paikin. I recently picked up a copy of Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. Thus far I must say I find it a very interesting read.

However, rather then offering you my own admittedly amateurish review of the book, I will instead point you to what Keen would most likely call an authoritative source (e.g. The New York Times):

Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” In his view Web 2.0 is changing the cultural landscape and not for the better. By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”

I may not totally agree with everything Keen argues in his book, but I think the conversation he has started is a very important one - one that I think we have yet to have in earnest behind the government firewall. Keen is an admitted elitist and is very concerned with the erosion of professional classes and the mass amateurization of content creation that is only possible given the spread of Web 2.0. Keen’s focus is private enterprise, but some of what he says makes sense within the context of the public sector, and to be honest, his book has me thinking about some new – or at least different - things. Given my tendency for social media evangelization, you may think that,some of these questions may seem totally out of character for me to ask, but I think an essential part of learning is considering more than one side of an argument. To that end, I ask a lot of questions below, and I hope that you can help me find some answers.


Looking Around the Digital Water Cooler

I want to share some quotations from Keen's book and then use them as points of discussion. These are excerpts that made me, wearing my public servant hat, dog-ear the page:

“... we use the Web to confirm our own partisan views and link to others with the same ideologies. Bloggers today are forming aggregated communities of like-minded amateur journalists … where they congregate in self-congratulatory clusters. They are the digital equivalent of online gated communities where all the people have identical views and the whole conversation is mirrored in a way that is reassuringly familiar. It's a dangerous form of digital narcissism; the only conversations we want to hear are those with ourselves and those like us.”

As I look around the social media and government digital water cooler I see a lot of familiar faces. Those who are currently involved have both feet wet, or are moving in that direction. However, we are the early adopters, and I think we often forget that. We forget that we really are just on the cusp of this mysterious and ever-evolving confluence of social media and government. Yet we never forget to point to each other’s successes in a somewhat congratulatory fashion, or share the latest and greatest piece of writing that bolsters our position.

Are we investing similar amounts of energy in examining counter-arguments? I will fully admit that I am guilty of not, which begs the question: what are we risking by not engaging in discussions with those who would argue against us? We social media types always focus on the importance of the conversation, but what happens if that conversation is one that is contrary to the very goals of social media? We often spend so much energy convincing people (non-early adopters) to listen to us; perhaps we have forgotten to listen to them?


Professional Classes and GCPEDIA

“Becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a musician, a journalist, or an engineer requires a significant investment of one's life in education and training, countless auditions or entrance and certifying exams, and commitment to a career of hard work and long hours. A professional writer spends years mastering or refining his or her craft in an effort to be recognized by a seasoned universe of editors, agents, critics, and consumers, as someone worth reading and paying attention to. Those in movie industry submit long hours, harried schedules, and insane pressure to create a product that will generate profit in a business in which expenses are high and hits unpredictable. Can the cult of the noble amateur really expect to bypass all this and do a better job?”

The same can be said about public servants – they invest in building their skills similarly, and have traditionally profited from doing so. This is evidenced by the current competency-based group-level classification structure. Those at the top have presumably refined their skills over the long haul to get there.

I never really understood how my fellow public servants could fail to see the value in GCPEDIA until now. Our new found potential for collaboration is truly spectacular, yet I have had many conversations with people who are opposed to integrating GCPEDIA into their business because, they say, they lose control over the process and the product. They are probably right. GCPEDIA represents a huge paradigm shift in how we do business in the government. That is why I think that David Eaves is right to say that:

"This transition - the movement from a public service that is opaque by 21st century standards to one that is transparent is going to be gut-wrenching, challenging and painful, not because it isn't technically possible, but because it is going to require reversing 200 years of culture, values and modes of operation that are embedded within the public service and deeply embedded within the political class. This isn't to say that the transition will erode the power or influence of these groups, it won't. But it will be different, and that in of itself is often scary enough to create resistance and a painful transition."

GCPEDIA challenges those deeply embedded values and modes of operation within the professional class. Note the difference. In the quotation above, Eaves references the political class, but I truly think that one of the key issues moving forward is understanding how GCPEDIA challenges the professional class structure of public servants.

GCPEDIA has awesome collaborative potential, and one of the reasons it has that potential is because it circumvents hierarchical reporting structures and organizational boundaries. Yet, if the professional class structure is being challenged, then so too must be the authority of the subject matter experts whom have built their careers along the “old paradigm”. These are the very same people whose are touted as irreplaceable by their organization, and often targeted by knowledge capture efforts prior to retirement. There is an odd juxtaposition here that I can’t quite put my finger on, a juxtaposition that has me feeling a bit apprehensive.


Thinking Through the Apprehension

Is our current professional classification system analogous to Keen’s description below?

“... to maintain their value, high-end clothing and cars and electronic equipment require not only great design and great engineering, but mystery and scarcity. What [others] call 'participation in design', I argue, lessens the real value of innovation. Are great designs truly that easy to create?”

I am not entirely sure. My intuition tells me that innovation should be fostered at all levels. But, my intuition also tells me that moving from idea to implementation may require something more. It may require the steady hand of a public servant – one who has built their career slowly and determinedly by investing in their skills over time.

If Keen's book has done nothing else for me, it has helped me understand the importance of examining what happens to professional class structure (e.g. occupational groups and levels based on demonstrable competencies) when we start to break down the silos. While we all tend to recognize the need for greater collaboration, I don't think we have a handle on how, or to what degree, new collaborative approaches (e.g. GCPEDIA) will fundamentally change the nature of how we do business.

Maybe it is time we all gave that a little more thought.


Aside about Keen

While I was sitting down to write this column, I asked Keen a question via twitter:



To which he replied:



You can click here if you’re interested in watching the interview he pointed me to.

I also just wanted to say that I followed up my tweet with an email, to which Keen quickly replied. I’d asked him if he had any thoughts on what I was thinking (laid out above). Without reproducing the email exchange, he called my points “fair” and affirmed the importance of giving them more thought in his next book.

Thanks Andrew.

Round-Up

News

PS Faces Money Manager Crisis

Blogs

Etienne has a great post into Values and Ethics.

Peter Smith shows some innovative ways to mashup government data (Part I / Part II).

Don't forget about the Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki.

Weekend Round-Up August 18th

Last week's column apparently turned some heads. Please check the comments (Thanks MC, patricecollin and Etienne Laliberté for your contributions).

FYI we are currently working on pulling together elements of the column and the comments in order to post a follow up weekly on Friday. If you have anything to contribute to that discussion please place a comment on the article and we will try to integrate it into our response.

News

Kathryn May penned an article entitled, PS ordered to hire more minorities. Here is an excerpt:

Each of the new 4,000 recruits must have a personal learning plan, including what training they need to master English or French early in their careers. Mr. Lynch's commitments revolve around planning, recruitment, employee development and enabling infrastructure, the centerpieces of his renewal strategy to ready the public service for the future.

[Update August 19: You can find letters responding to the above article, here, here, and here.]

Canadian Public Service Agency

Window on Values and Ethics is apparently back... and I didn't know they existed.

CPSRENEWAL.CA WEEKLY COLUMN: Getting Yourself Oriented to Public Service Values and Ethics

While I am no longer a new recruit, for reasons beyond my control I finally had the opportunity last week to attend the Canadian School of Public Service’s Orientation to the Public Service Over two days we discussed why the Public Service matters to Canadians, how Parliament works, how Government works, and values and ethics.

Values and ethics made up the lion’s share of the orientation session, accounting for two and a half hours of each day. What follows is a more verbose version of constructive feedback I have already left with the school regarding the session.

Now, I acknowledge up front that values and ethics are not the sexiest of topics to cover, but I also recognize their importance. A common code of conduct for public servants is necessary because it puts forth a normative framework which guides and supports public servants in all of their professional activities. It helps to maintain and enhance public confidence in the integrity of the Public Service and strengthens respect for the role played by the Public Service within Canadian democracy.

During an ethical dilemma role-playing exercise, our table was hard pressed to reach consensus, eventually settling on the fact that we could agree to disagree. When we presented our findings to the larger group they were also unable to reach consensus.

What our experience illustrated was the need for the orientation session to have a values and ethics subject matter expert to whom we could turn in order to clarify more precarious or ambiguous situations. I doubt we would have been advised to base decisions on the Globe and Mail test or to avoid befriending your subordinates because you may need to reprimand them.

[editorial note: for those of us unfamiliar with all of the government vernacular, the Globe and Mail test essentially dictates that one’s behaviour must be defensible to the Globe and Mail (and presumably its readership) should those actions come under public scrutiny. This sparked a fierce debate over the use of such a term and its implications for risk aversion and avoiding the wrath of the Globe and Mail demographic – but I digress.]

What was most disheartening about our values and ethics discussion was not the unqualified advice but the fact that the need for a subject matter expert was publicly identified on the first day, but no expert was available the second day. It may be stating the obvious, but some advice from the experts or a guide to interpreting the code would have come in handy.

There are two distinct lessons to be learned here in the context of renewal. The first is that the public service needs to realize that first impressions are the most important. The second is that the public service needs to be more responsive. This was a perfect opportunity to show new recruits how quickly government can work to correct itself – a missed opportunity.

The solution was simple – have a subject matter expert onsite the second day. This would have made a better impression on new recruits than unqualified advice (which should be withheld when it is unqualified) and it would have shown that a large organization like the federal government can adapt quickly to address concerns and make a difference to targeted groups (in this case its newest employees).