What Innovation Feels Like (Part 3: Try Honesty)

by Melissa Tullio

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Actual conversation.

Me: We need to project manage this thing; it's pretty complicated. The problem is we don't have tools to collaborate beyond our own team. Why don't we use Google Drive for the project tracking?

Them: It's against IT policy.

Me: There's nothing confidential or sensitive in a tracking doc, and we won't have a public link.

Them: It's better to follow policy. Let's just use what we have.

Let's just leave that here for now.

When saying "no" to absurdity is not an option

I've written in this space many times (and on other spaces internally) about our risk averse culture, which is rooted in fear. Nick has a blog post from several years back on how risk has become an excuse to do nothing (see: Risky Business: Deputy Minister or Bust). This passage describes a culture that still exists today:

I think we have created a cultural safe haven for poor decision-making at all levels. A metaphorical space where public servants of every type can throw up their hands in resignation, claiming they didn't do it, like children standing over a broken cookie jar in the kitchen attempting to absolve themselves of their responsibilities.

The thing is, a cover-your-ass culture not only supports bad decision making by managers/leaders, but has the added perk of completely disengaging staff in the worst way: over time, it takes away our natural instinct to ask "why" when being asked to do things that are absurd. When staff become afraid – or worse, apathetic – to critically questioning things that don't make sense, the cycle of stupid decision making is never broken.

There's a great blog post by Matthew Taylor, who provides advice to the UK government, that talks about the outcomes of a cover-your-ass culture: "you could see the officials wrestling with the need to provide a reality check but all too often deciding it was better to nod sagely than look career-threateningly unhelpful."

The pernicious impact of self-censorship at management levels is how it seeps down to staff. I felt compelled to write this post because I've noticed that I'm catching myself self-censoring more often these days. I'll be tasked with writing a communications strategy for some announcement, and while drafting the key points about the announcement, I'll find myself writing things that I know our minister's office wants to hear, because I know that if I try to get the plan through approvals without that language, my manager or someone above him will change it anyway. This is pernicious because at that point, there's a real possibility that my role as an apolitical public servant is being compromised; I'm unconsciously weaving in political language into a non-political product.

Seek Forgiveness, Not Permission

When asking "why" makes you the thorn in people's side, or the odd-man-out, or the "complainer" – and/or when you ask "why" and people agree about the absurdity of things, but nothing changes – something is deeply wrong. A culture that makes "why" a dirty word is a place that has stopped thinking critically.

Barriers to asking higher order questions means the policies you're writing might be solving the wrong problems because nobody spoke up to ask whether we're asking the right questions. It means the key messages you're writing might be totally off base, because nobody spoke up to ask what audiences we're really trying to influence, and what outcomes we want to achieve from the messaging. You can't move hearts and minds when your heart's just not into it because you've been beaten down into the role of some ineffectual yes-man.

The Google Drive example I started this post with is just one small manifestation of the inability (or, perhaps, some learned behaviour of willful blindness) of many people in this system to weigh the cost-benefit of taking certain risks. In truth, there were valid reasons for not using Google Drive (e.g., cultural problems – you'd have to train people on what a "google" is, most likely). Still, the message was "we don't want IT to find out and..." what, exactly? Tell us to stop using it? *Feigned shudder and best Hazel McCallion impression*: Do I look scared to you?

Seeking forgiveness rather than permission should be our new guiding principle inside government. In a place where IT policy doesn't give us the ability to set permissions for our own shared folders so we can work collaboratively beyond our own teams, there's room for some honest to goodness personal judgement about when workarounds are the only way to function effectively. I know that this mildly anti-establishment attitude might be a lot to ask of managers/leaders. But in general, a little bit of it would be hugely beneficial, because by bending a few rules – and demonstrating that the world inside can be a more productive place if our hands were just marginally less tied – maybe we could prove to The Rule Making Overlords that their rules are kind of stupid and need to be re-written. Or, at the very least, we could use modern tools to do our work within our small silo and do things more effectively without anybody being the wiser.

"Stop Whispering; Start Shouting"

When I started this series of blog posts, the language I used to describe how to break down these barriers to innovation was a bit startling to one of my former colleagues. He wondered why I described it as a "battle" or some kind of virtuous "fight." He cautioned me about using such language, I think because it implies the kind of relationship where I'm pitting myself against something, and in a way, that sort of plays right into the hands of the system. Instead of pitting against, or being a yes-man, maybe there's an alternative. Maybe the third way is creating the marketplace for new ideas/mindsets within the system, in some parallel structure that acts as one big workaround to the unnecessary layers of bureaucracy (people who know me know I'm doing this, too).

But the truth is that I tend to use combative language because that's exactly what the experience feels like, day in and day out. The process of bringing new mindsets into a very entrenched system is an ongoing challenge. Sure, it's a bit of persuasion, a bit of generating goodwill/allies, and a bit of art. But mostly, it feels like a bloody fight, and some days I'm so exhausted I want to give up.

And the real truth is that the work of changing cultural norms within the system isn't one person's job. There's no way I can do this alone. I wonder sometimes if anyone else is up for this fight.

What Innovation Feels Like (Part 2: Lack of Trust)

by Melissa Tullio

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Public servants go through a rigorous process to become full-time, permanent employees. I won't get into detail, but it usually requires a lengthy HR process with at least two to three stages of vetting to find the right person for the job. And then, if you’re one of The Chosen, you’re on the inside. Yay, you; your knowledge and expertise were tested against dozens, sometimes hundreds, of other candidates, and now that you're inside, you can get to work and start making use of all that creativity, energy, and expertise you've been specifically chosen to provide. Right?

The experience on the inside is very different than what you expect. When you try to provide that expertise, you’re beaten down by process, by politics (big-P), or by conflicting personalities (little-p). You thought you had something to offer the world, to make things a little bit better for people you’re serving, but by the time you’re able to get something you create through the processes, it doesn’t at all resemble the passion and energy you put into it.

When good people are crushed by process

Most of what we do as public servants resembles the following.

Step 1: Create this [product]. Use your knowledge, expertise, evidence, research, and best advice to create it.

Step 2: Next, slap this template approvals form on top, which requires (minimum) 10 signatures to be approved, and get every single pair of eyeballs listed on that sheet to give you their two cents on it.

Step 3: Use outdated linear proprietary approvals mechanisms to track and incorporate remarks, changes, vague comments, and illegible handwritten markups from all parties involved. Update. Revise. Update. Revise. Co-ordinate/negotiate changes among parties.

Step 4: Lose track of version (due to outdated linear proprietary approvals mechanisms). Backtrack to find original version buried in an email. Re-incorporate all changes you just lost. Repeat.

Step 5: (Miraculously and with much lost sleep) Meet deadline, feeling mangled. Start at the beginning for the next one.

Don't get me wrong; the product we start off with isn't ever perfect, and none of us should be immune to critical feedback, or fresh eyes to take a look at something to make it better. But if you step back and look at the baked-in approvals process, underlying it is an inherent lack of trust (perceived or real, which is basically the same thing to the experts that are hired to provide their best advice).

My Big Idea

Earlier this year, I pitched an idea to change the way we do approvals. It's an interesting play off of one of Kent's posts from the summer – see: Government, Citizens, and Power. What I proposed (without realizing it) would be something like applying the IAP2 spectrum internally to our processes by empowering staff to have a real stake in outcomes and decision making in government.

This approach would start with cross-functional/cross-ministry teams (5-7 max) of senior advisors – those responsible for developing products/policies at the ground level. Some authority would be relinquished from decision makers so that teams are expected to reach all final decisions on the products/policies they developed (ie, ditch the approvals sheet/mechanism all together).

The role of deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers, and directors would shift: they'd be expected to provide feedback and direction as an advisory committee (which would be decided on before the project begins, meaning leaders from different ministries might be assigned to certain projects, depending on the nature of the work). This advisory body would check in periodically with the project team, and the feedback they provide would be more holistic, bringing in perspectives from all ministries/areas identified as "leads" on the project.

Managers/supervisors would be included on teams as quality control agents, and to ensure advisors have all the information and context they need for any piece of the products/policies. They would also play a facilitating role, determining who teams might need to work with to do their work.

An early sketch of the project flow looked like this (I'd revise this and move DMO (deputy minister's office) and legal to the advisory committee):

I'd also add to this: project teams and advisory committees would include experts (lived experience counts) from outside of government, too.

There's more to explain about how I see this proposed process working in real life (hint: we'd have to change how we do our work, too), but I'll leave it for another day and another blog post.

Let It Go

(#sorrynotsorry for the earworm.)

More and more of our work in government these days depends on all kinds of collaboration: between ministries/departments, and beyond our own level (municipal, provincial, federal) or sector (private, non-profit, community-based/grassroots). The approvals system I described at the beginning of this post does not work any more. It is seriously broken. And what needs to replace it would depend entirely on trust.

Trust means letting go of control, and the current model favours (and rewards) control freaks and micro-management.

Trust means letting go of authority, and the current model presumes that traditional power structures have the final say in everything.

Trust means letting go of fear, putting risk in its place (ie, risk management rather than risk aversion, as a rule), and experimenting with stakeholders instead of believing we have all the answers ourselves.

Richard Pietro, self-proclaimed open government fanboy and all around amazing human being, recently produced the world's first short film on open government, open data, and open source. I'm going to spoil it for you (you should watch the whole thing) and skip to the end. This is what trust feels like.

"You have to let it all go; fear, doubt, disbelief... open your mind."

...and open the processes, starting with the premise that we trust the people we so painstakingly selected for the jobs we've asked them to do.

What Innovation Feels Like (Part 1: Fear)

by Melissa Tullio

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There was a comment on my last post by Martin (See: A Government that Learns By Design), and while I was nodding my head at the whole thing, these two bits rang very true:

We need to move away from a culture of CYA and learn to speak frankly of the barriers and risks associated with change.

and

Let's all start speaking real-talk.

So here’s my real-talk. I'd like to explore a series of barriers I’ve encountered being a public servant for more than seven years, and suggest some ways to overcome them.

A primary barrier to innovation is fear

I recently read something by Seth Godin, and the opening sentence is probably what permeated my subconscious and has driven me to write this blog post:

The opposite of creativity is fear.

Inside the public service, fear takes the shape of deeply entrenched risk aversion, and defaulting to a (very broken) status quo. Fear leads to bad decision making, ignoring opportunities for growth/change, and oppressing diverse talent and voices in the organization.

I’ve seen fear in action. I’ve seen leaders being chosen based on a system that favours the familiar – “safe¹” choices who think and act the exact same way as the hiring managers. I’ve seen managers “check in” with staff 50 times a day, to prevent any straying from the official plan or processes (effectively removing any possibility for creative – or even critical – thinking). I’ve seen peers mindlessly do work they’re asked to do and complain in the staff room how little sense it makes, without speaking up about it.

Each of us, at every level, is responsible for the culture of fear we’ve created (and we’re all responsible for fixing it, collectively).

What innovation feels like: a principled, shared fight

My solution to remedy the culture of fear has always been to challenge the system, to be hyper aware of illogical requests and/or politics-driven (big “P” or little) decisions, and to push back against them whenever and wherever I have the energy to put up a fight.

A seemingly benign (but, really, insidious) way to do this is to simply speak up and ask "why." I find that this simple habit seems to disarm people, and challenge them to think critically. It also creates space for others to speak up – if one person speaks up, it gives permission for others to do it, too.

More actions to fight fear

Here are pro tips that have worked for me when starting a principled fight against things in the system that make no sense.

• Pick your battles wisely. Choose to challenge nonsensical things that will have the most meaningful impact, for the most amount of people (called leverage points in systems thinking).
• Partner with at least one ally. Walk away if you’re alone in the battle. If you’re the only one who sees a problem, either there isn’t a problem; the amount of effort outweighs the potential impact (i.e., the leverage point is weak); or you’re surrounded by people who are willfully or unwillfully blind, and/or unwilling to be the change we need to be to fix this culture of fear².
• Try infiltrating official networks/communities. There are usually some safe spaces to experiment and learn from others. If there aren’t any, grab your ally and start one yourselves. (All it takes is two people).

I recognize that all these suggestions take energy and some dedication (and maybe a little bit of nerve), and an ability to look at the long game. I think I've resolved that I'm a lifer, and if I don't try to live the kinds of values I want to see our organization demonstrate (at least, some day), I should pack up and move to Hawaii and spend my energy saving whales instead (hold on... why am I not doing this instead?)

Is there a culture of fear where you work? What shape does it take? If you could imagine how the culture should be instead, what might that look like?

Next barrier to attack: lack of trust.

<sup>1. Not safe at all. The status quo, and hiring people who are doing things the way they have always been done, is a major part of what is keeping everything (including the workplace culture) in an unsurprisingly bad state.
2. In which case, I’d say don’t just walk but run away from your job entirely, if you’re able to.</sup>

Pulling the Trigger on Chekhov's Gun

by Nick Charney

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Anton Chekhov was a Russian author and playwright and is largely considered one of the best short story writers in history; the term 'Chekhov's gun' is said to have come from a piece of advice he shared with other writers:

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

Chekhov's warning is simple: guard against extraneous detail
Guns are powerful images. They invoke a particular meaning, they carry with them great potential for danger and death. To give something as symbolic as a gun attention within a narrative is to signal to people that they should pay attention. However, if nothing comes of it, if it is never used, they can feel confused or let down. Chekhov's view is that every detail must have purpose and if you as an author give something significance early in a story, it is incumbent upon you to follow through and actually use it as a plot element.

The way of the gun
However, Chekhov's advice is neither limited to guns (it could be equally applicable to any detail, object, setting or circumstance) nor narrative story telling. As a principle, it applies equally well to both employee/stakeholder engagement efforts (e.g. Blueprint 2020) and innovation infrastructure (e.g. Innovation Labs). These are both highly charged areas where expectations run high and even the fine details matter.

The decision makers shaping these initiatives are no different than Chekhov's short story writers. They are responsible for crafting the narrative. They introduce elements, set the tone and set the action in motion. In so doing they create meaning and expectation, whether they intend to or not. If they don't pay close attention, a misstep or misleading detail will undermine the experience (and thus the resolve) of those working along side them.

My advice is simple
Success in these endeavours ultimately hinges on the willingness and ability of leaders to pull the trigger on Chekhov's gun.

On Friendship, Villainy, and the Social Contract

by Nick Charney

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Last weekend I piled into a car with my best buddy and drove down to Richmond Virginia to surprise a friend for his 30th birthday party. We left on Friday, drove all day, surprised him on Saturday night and drove back on Sunday. All in all it's about a 2,150 kilometre round trip (1,335 miles). It's not the first time I've made the trip and it sure as hell won't be the last time either.

Now there's a whole lot of back story here about what brought me to Richmond that weekend, but rather than share that, I'd rather speak to what I took with me when I left.

The morning after the party, Kevin (the birthday boy) came downstairs to where I was sleeping and made time to talk with me. It was important to him that we spend some time together before he had to work (and we had to drive home) he asked me why it was so important for us to come down and celebrate with him.

The answer was simple: friendships and stories.

He smiled and shared that his favourite moment of our friendship was when we just sat on the front porch last summer and did nothing but talk. Family, history, religion, politics, aspirations, successes and failures; we discussed it all.

What crystallized for me when I was in Richmond was that stories truly are at the heart of friendships, that friendships drive engagement and engagement leads people to co-create new stories together. It's a virtuous feedback loop that helps us frame how we see the world, how we understand others, and how we present ourselves to others.

I've written at length in the past about the importance of stories, argued that we ought to be more purposeful story tellers and lamented the fact that somewhere along the way the story arc of the public service skewed towards the ignoble (See: Purposeful Story Telling and When did the Public Service Become and Ignoble Profession?). What I'd like to do now is double down on Kent's claim that 2015 will be the year of the social contract (See: The Social Contract). To take a moment to remind you that you have an active role in shaping the continuing evolution of that social contract by cultivating relationships, engaging others and creating the narratives you want to work in, live in and play in.

Talk is important (See: The Villainy of Talk).

Co-creating a shared narrative is essential.

And sometimes, pausing to re-frame when necessary, even more so.


Postscript

I've invested a lot of professional energy lately in a research project on digital governance; we're holding our first large forum next week in Ottawa. The agenda is off the hook and the speakers are top shelf, and there's still room. If you are interested in attending the forum drop me a line.

Cheers 

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.

On Influence and Hierarchy in Bureacracies

by Nick Charney

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In bureaucracies we often mistake hierarchy as a proxy for influence.

But my view is that hierarchy is knowable, straightforward and discriminate, whereas influence is elusive, subtle and complex.

I consider hierarchy as akin to a hard power, influence as a soft power. And I've always been more interested in soft power then hard. My career path has been one of relationships over level and rewarding work over the greasy pole. My modus operandi (see: Scheming Virtuously: A Handbook for Public Servants) has never been about acquiring or pulling rank but rather building, safeguarding and levering reputation and ability to influence.

While I fully admit that sometimes influence flows from hierarchy and that those who ignore hierarchy ignore it at their peril (myself included), I also believe that it is increasingly the case that influence flows from some undefinable blend of serendipity, panache and resolve. I think we tend to prefer hierarchy because it offers the illusion of certainty and allows us to ignore the fact that influence is messy and that it can be neither poured neatly into an organizational chart nor contained within the strict limits of its boxes. And so our bureaucratic cultures continue to mistakenly treat hierarchy as a proxy for influence.

A likely example most would be familiar with is the Executive Assistant (EA) who is actually more like an Executive Director (ED) than an EA.

In my experience, many EAs don't have the rank they ought to. The ones worth their salt (and I've worked with many) are in fact more like EDs. Yes, they may have the tedious task of managing an executive's calendar but they are also the only ones trusted to do so; meaning that if you are the one requesting a meeting with your boss you are essentially at the mercy of the EA.

Now, it's easy to discount them but they have better access leadership and information flows than most - just by way of where they sit. The really good ones are easy to spot: they build skills and subject matter expertise, they sit at management tables, they have their boss's ear and they follow them from one job to another (and/or spend their entire careers in similar roles).

But I digress. All of this to say that the influence isn't a corollary of hierarchy and that many ignore that fact at their peril.

My hunch 

Actors without hard power tend to be better at wielding soft power because they have to, whereas those with hard power are weaker at wielding soft power because they don't. In other words, if hierarchy privileges you, you needn't worry as much about how to influence others, whereas if hierarchy doesn't benefit you, then you need to. As I'm reflecting on this I'm wondering if there is a tipping point (not in the Gladwellian sense) somewhere along your career trajectory where your levers and/or approach changes because there are suddenly more people below you than above you within the system.

This is not a slight to those on either side of the divide, nor do I think it's a hard and fast rule. It is an observation that may explain some of the interpersonal dynamics at play within bureaucracies that so many people find bothersome; namely, executives pulling rank on folks without it and/or folks without rank disrespecting and side-stepping the hierarchy.

What do you think?

On the Trust Gap

by Nick Charney

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There's been a lot of discussion as of late regarding the so-called "trust gap" between the non-partisan civil service and the duly elected government; here's my take.

It's easy to snipe from the sidelines

Amidst the talk, the focus seems to be on the senior ranks of the public service. It's a narrow slice of the civil service and while an argument could be made that it's the most important juncture in the system it's also the one that the least amount of civil servants have any direct experience with and there's the rub. There's a big difference between first hand experience and conjecture and I'll give the former the benefit of the doubt before the latter any day of the week.

The gap is not restricted to the federal family

I've spent a fair bit of time speaking to bureaucrats in other jurisdictions lately (especially those heading into elections) and the gap is a common theme. Politics aside, the truth of the matter is that the motivations, incentives and time horizons of professional non-partisan civil servants are different than those of elected officials. That's not a condemnation, just an observation.

Unsurprisingly I'm of the view that the gap is likely little more than a natural by-product of these different world views coming together. I admit that the arrangement is inherently antagonistic but I'd argue that its more a function of design (Westminster) than of aesthetics (the colour of the banner at the helm).

The gap isn't necessarily where you think it is

I've already mentioned the fact that the focus seems to be on the senior ranks, but what about the gap(s) between rank and file civil servants? Between you the person sitting next to you? You and the person who manages you? The person who manages you and the person who manages them?

I've written in the past about trust (See: Trust is the Only Thing That Scales, On Fearless Advice and Loyal Implementation, and On Risk, Fearless Advice, and Loyal Implementation) and it's a frequent topic of discussion whenever I get behind a microphone.

Frankly, when the rubber meets the road I don't think we trust each other, at least not on the scale that we should. We're more apt to avoid difficult conversations than we are to engage in them. We are more likely to hang a Dilbert comic on our cubicle in a passive aggressive show of resistance than we are to champion a mature conversation on its underlying, and often sad, truth. We opt for impersonal emails over phone calls, typefaces over people's faces.

But the higher order question, the question of trust — genuine trust — permeates every aspect of our work with each other and the public we (civil servants and elected officials) collectively serve. Governance is trust. So what happens when, as Kent points out in Risk, Failure and Honesty, trust in government declines?

Where's that discussion? 

Where's the discussion about whether or not we ought to be citizens before taxpayers?

Public servants before bureaucrats?

Leaders before politicians?

That's the discussion I'm interested in, and that's the discussion I think we ought to be having.