Update: Gone Camping

Hi All - just wanted to let you know that there will be no column this week. I'm leaving tonight to go camping with the extended family for Canada Day weekend.

Have a safe and happy Canada Day (or 4th of July!) and we will see you all next week.

(if you are really looking for something good to read, try: Working for Government is an Endurance Sport by my friend Nina.
Cheers.

I Made a Mistake, and I Apologize

Last week I reacted too quickly. I was upset and tried to prove a point. I still think my point is valid, but in retrospect I went about trying to prove it the wrong way.

My passion got the better of me, and for that I apologize to those I was trying to prove the point to. I respect them, and they deserved better than that.

Long story short, I tried to fake-scuttle something because I thought a colleague was being treated unfairly. This colleague, my friend, a brilliant and capable man, assured me that he could handle it. I didn't doubt for a minute he could, and he did.

My passion got the better of me, and for that I apologize to him. I took it personally when it was something far more important.

It was about many of us. It was about everyone who had stepped in on the ground floor, editing preliminary wiki pages, throwing out ideas, and taking time to sit around the planning table.

My passion got the better of me, and to everyone who put in time, I apologize. My intention was never to actually scuttle the project, but rather to induce a short coma to prove my point.

The point, the one I think is still valid, the one that got the better of me, is that in order to exert influence over the project in today's environment you have to be present, you need to participate, and the participation of any one individual is far outweighed by the collective participation of others. The influence of hierarchy, especially in collaborative cultures, is eroding.

It is a point that all of you who refused to let me scuttle the project proved to me through your actions, and through your refusal to simply let a good idea die because one person couldn't participate; and for that I thank you.

Making mistakes is natural. The trick is learning from them. One of the things that I have learned through this experience is that community - friends and colleagues - tend to know more than you think, and they also cut you slack if you have social capital. Making mistakes is a lot harder when you worry about alienating those you on rely for support. It’s a lot easier when you know they will be there to help you up when you fall down.

I made things personal. I underestimated you, and overestimated my own importance.

I made a mistake, and for that I apologize.

[image credit: mysunshine]

Eat or Be Eaten

Last week I happened upon a blog post from Geordie Adams via a tweet from Tim O'Reilly. In it Geordie explains what he thinks is the major issue facing social media enthusiasts in the public sector:

“Cultural change [is] the biggest impediment to a higher adoption rate of social media in the public sector... [it] gets mentioned, everyone agrees, and then conversation turns to a technical or implementation discussion. To not [dig into culture change] is robbing important momentum from public sector social media evolution.” - Geordie Adams, Publivate (full article)

Geordie's right, I can't even recall the amount of times I have heard variations of the phrase “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Essentially, even the most well thought out strategic approaches are vulnerable to the workplace culture. It would seem that when social media meets the public sector it is culture, not content, that is king. Culture is eating breakfast in plenaries, in tweets and in blog posts on a daily basis all over the world. Initially I thought it was a great line, its retweetable, to the point, and when I hear it I implicitly understand the connotation.

Over my dead body

As catchy as it is, I would hate to see it on my tombstone. If we don't do a better job tackling the problem we might as well give up, call the undertaker and order our tombstones with that very inscription. I can see mine already:

Here lies Nick
He went quick
always circled by a vulture
its name was culture

While Geordie's list of cultural problems (failure, engagement, and transparency) is a good place to start , I prefer to start with what I think underlies all of them: complacency. It would seem that over the years many of us have earned the fat cat stereotype; even those who haven't earned it directly are now guilty by association.

Urgency

In John Kotter's Leading Change, Kotter addresses the problem of complacency by arguing that a sense of urgency is a key determinant of success when it comes to deep culture change projects. In fact, according to Kotter, urgency is so important that he decided to write another book dedicated to that very topic. Urgency, it would seem is the penultimate catalyst for change.

If this is indeed the case - and I tend to agree that it is - then we must ask ourselves, where is the urgency in the public sector right now? I can say without hesitation that after three years, I haven't seen it. Sure I've been busy, or stressed out or faced tight deadlines, and I don't doubt that many of you have too. What I mean is that there really isn't what Kotter would call a true sense of urgency: steady, unrelenting, purposeful, intense ... trying to do things a bit better all the time.

That sense, simply doesn't exist at the macro. That being said I find it everywhere I turn at the micro, I see it because I choose to associate with those, who like me, implicitly understand that urgency, that need for deep change.

Semi-Rant: I don't understand

I apologize in advance, this is where you may find me ranting, but sometimes things need to be said because these are things that I just don't understand.

I don't understand why we in the public sector are so good at accepting the status quo. We accept it even when a great opportunity to question it comes across our desk or when our gut tells us otherwise.

I don't understand why it is okay to blame the culture for our failures. It seems like a cop out. Somewhere along the line failure due to "culture" has become acceptable, completely mainstream. Any effort expended can be readily justified whenever someone exclaims: "It wasn't me it was the culture" or "The culture wasn't (isn't) ready for it". We have created an excuse for ourselves and it has made us lazy and weak. There is no other possible explanation for the prevalence of the “culture eats strategy” meme; now we hang our shame on it like a collective crutch.

I for one am done blaming our failures on the culture, we are the culture, if I blame it I blame myself. I might as well be honest and accept the blame readily instead of playing semantics. Accepting this is the first step towards moving forward.

Don't we wordsmith too much already in government?

Eating Elephants

If culture is truly the elephant in the room, we must ask ourselves how we can best deal with it. My thought is that if culture is eating strategy for breakfast, than perhaps we should turn the tide and get hungry ourselves.

So, to borrow the old adage, how does one eat an elephant [in a room]? One bite at a time.

You may not have the stomach for it, but I don't really see another viable option, we have reached the point of eat or be eaten.

[Image Credit:WallTea]