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.

Risk, Failure, and Honesty

by Kent Aitken

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Last year Nick and I went down a long rabbit hole on the idea of the faceless bureaucrat (see: Embracing Authenticity Means Embracing Complexity). There's a maxim that bureaucrats are rightly anonymous, in that it facilitates professional, non-partisan advice, but I've been wondering if the foundations on which that maxim rests are shifting. We're in an era of hyper-connectivity, citizen engagement in governance, and an increasing recognition that end users' needs should be the starting point for policy and program design. In other words:

• The public service (and the public, for that matter) is made up of people
• People not in government can be trusted, invaluable partners in governance
• The starting point for solutions should be a genuine understanding of the problem

All of which begets pretty fundamental questions about the relationship between government and citizens. One that Nick and I did not thoroughly cover is the approach government takes to honesty, problems, and failure.

Recently, David Emerson suggested that public service needed to adapt quickly to the state of the world, and the article was summed up with the headline that Public servants risk becoming policy dinosaurs. Is this a problem we have to face?

Well, the strongest language that we tend to admit to is that we face challenges and that there are risks. We don't have problems, we don't have failures. So it can't be a problem.

That said, over the last year, there has been talk about adopting Engineers Without Borders' Failure Report model, one Crown Corporation has admitted the need to reinvent its business model, and the idea of change labs has spread, a model dependent on a laser focus on problems, as well as experimentation and iteration based on past results, including failures.

It seems as though we recognize that honesty is needed about the problems that we're facing, so that we can bring to bear the appropriate resources to solve them. And yet, the language stays firmly fixated on opportunities and innovation, never on problems or failures. When multiple people approve documents, it becomes very likely that at least one of them will soften the language.

Innovation requires taking chances, and chances can lead to failures. Any system that involves humans, no matter how reliable, will generate mistakes as a matter of statistical inevitability. It's okay. And small failures, if done well, will contribute to consistent successes. And until a would-be innovator can as easily summon anecdotes of failures being accepted as being maligned, we're stuck with the safe road or, at least, pretending to others that we're on it. Either of which is exceedingly hard to learn from.

I think part of it is the Shopping for Votes approach: defenders of soundbite-based communication argue that average Canadians don't have time for complexity, and won't appreciate the nuances of real, gritty problems. To boot, every piece of even internal communication can suddenly become external through Access to Information. However,there is evidence that experts that own up to their shortcomings, or demonstrate a degree of fallibility, can be seen as more credible and reliable (and certainly more likable) than those who maintain an strictly stoic veneer. Nick once suggested that a culture of acceptable failure could be a competitive advantage.

And the decline in trust in government would suggest that in general, the problem-free communication approach isn't working ideally. It may be worth considering the possibility that we systematically overestimate the risk of admitting to problems and failures, and underestimate the longer-term risks of losing trust and credibility - and the risks of inappropriately intervening on ill-defined problems.

It could be a tragedy of the commons effect, in that individual actors know that long-term stewardship requires a certain approach but are incentivized to take a different one. In that view, it's not so much a question of whether we should embrace an honest focus on problems, or that our communications model needs to evolve, but a question of how we normalize those admissions of humility and humanity.

When everyone around you is touting success, who goes first on failure?

If it is a tragedy of the commons, the answer is less in the culture change and more in altering how the market works.

Impossible Conversations: Shopping for Votes

by Kent Aitken

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Susan Delacourt's Shopping for Votes led, hands-down, to the most spirited discussion we've had. I called a time-out at two and a half hours in, and while a few people had to attend to other concerns, a solid handful of us talked about this book and the political ecosystem it describes for almost four hours. Lighter on reviews than usual, though:

George Wenzel:

Delacourt’s thesis is that consumerist marketing techniques have pervaded modern politics. She highlights how Canada’s political parties have devolved from ‘big tent’ politics toward micro-targeting. All parties spend significant funds in their marketing efforts, including data-gathering of the electorate - supporters and opposers alike. The party with the best data and marketing machine wins. Unlike the populism of years past, the modern-day effective political party gets its votes by salesmanship rather than statesmanship. The result, unfortunately, is that politics are reduced to the least-common denominator - a high-stakes popularity contest with the nation’s future at stake. 

Nick Charney:

Whether or not you agree with the underlying narrative about consumerism overtaking civics (e.g. citizens becoming taxpayers) in the political realm, Delacourt’s treatment of recent electoral history is reason enough to pick up the book. It sheds considerable light on the evolution of data driven politics that dovetails with the rise of New Public Management (NPM) making it the perfect – yet unintentional – companion piece to Savoie’s What Ever Happened to the Music Teacher?  Shopping is a must read. 

Kent Aitken:

I read this book then immediately dug into our next, The Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael McMillan, a one-two punch that is, frankly, a bit of a downer. Neither contain foreign ideas, but the methodical exploration is worthwhile. In Shopping for Votes, the crucial idea for me was the shift from political advertising - highlighting the virtues of what’s on offer - to marketing - arranging your product around the willingness of possible buyers. It’s particularly concerning depending on whether those marketers consider the market to mean voters, or the sub-population of voters that has the greatest influence on a given election. My one complaint is that I found myself wishing that Delacourt wandered into the surrounding political ecosystem, but the book stays laser focused on the increasing use of consumer advertising techniques including, as Nick wrote, the use of data in politics.

Regardless, I absolutely recommend reading Delacourt’s work.

The question from this book that I think will hang for a while, including throughout our next book, is the relationship between Canadians and their governance: Delacourt paints it as a trend from citizen to consumer or taxpayer - and whether that is indeed accurate, or still the trajectory, has significant implications for how we approach systems like the one described in Shopping.