Round Up: Mass Collaboration and the New Transparency, MSM on the Recession, GCPEDIA and more

You may have noticed the different title for the round up. I just wanted to thank @TariqAlexander for pointing out that it may be more advantageous to our readership if we give you a sense of the content in the roundups rather then just the date.

Speaking Engagement

First of all I just wanted to let you know that I will be speaking to the National Manager's Community in Toronto on March 27th. Keep an eye on their website because I hear there will be details there soon.


Mass Collaboration and the New Transparency

I got to watch Us Now at the CSPS. It was a great film, if you want more information on it you can read Mike Kujawski's blog post. In it you will find a great link to a summary written by Richard Akerman.

It just so happens that 2 of the panelists at the CSPS screening were also on the Agenda with Steve Paikin discussing the New Transparency.

Here is a related article on how Dell uses social media to gather employees ideas and another discussion on Open Source Government Transparency Projects (#osgtp). If you are interested in these projects @NoelDickover seems to be the person to talk to.


Rules

Laura had an interesting post entitled: Assure mediocrity: create more rules. Here is a (very powerful) taste:

At a time when the government is trying so hard to become an ‘employer of choice’ and our Universities push out graduates trained in traditional communications, journalists and engineers, who among the professionals working in the government is trained in ‘bureaucracy 101′? I shouldn’t even have to understand how to escalate issues through the hierarchy to get work done, much less teach my staff how to do so. I feel like I’m corrupting people instead of nurturing their growth. I should get to talk about collaborative work practices and using social media for professional development and citizen engagement instead.

Make sure you read down into the comments as well. If you are interested in this topic, then you might want to provide some input into the Federal Public Service Code of Conduct.


MSM on the Recession

1. The Public Service is not safe from recession; and
2. Public servants in BC polled on taking ‘free’ time off to avoid wider layoffs

GCPEDIA Challenge

Here are some new pages of interest to public servants using social media on GCPEDIA. I would invite you all to contribute to them if you have additional information that may be of use:

1. Public Servants on Twitter
2. Public Servant bloggers

Speaking of public servant bloggers, I have created a single feed using Yahoo Pipes that will allow you to subscribe to all of the blogs listed in the GCPEDIA article.

Finally, @laureent wants your help fostering a discussion on Mentorship Programs in the Public service. If anyone has any resources they could contribute please visit the page and share your experience.


Two Inspirational Tweets

I just wanted to leave you with two nice little tweets that I came across this week on twitter:

1. @DGTweets: ‘Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.’
2. @micah: My hiring strategy: I will believe in you today, if you will surprise me tomorrow.

Oh and thanks to all those who commented on last week's column.

Cpsrenewal.ca Weekly Column: Blogs and the Government of Canada

There has been a lot of discussion in the public service blogosphere (the unofficial one anyway - if such a place now exists) about whether or not public servants should blog. Opinions fall on both sides of the discussion with varying caveats, and so this weekly is our contribution to that discussion.

Recently, David Eaves blogged a great piece on Why the Government of Canada Needs Bloggers (don't forget to read the comments!) that I simply had to respond to.

David's article identifies a recurring theme in his travels, namely:

... that public servants feel they are suffering from information overload. There is simply so much going on around them and it is impossible to keep up with it all. This is especially true of those in the senior ranks.

He then posits that this is the very reason that:

... the public service needs bloggers. Not to communicate with the public but to help public servants manage and understand all that internal knowledge and information.

I won't go on quoting Eaves verbatim, but I would like to address the points he raises, because they are important. (I have summarized his points in italics then responded below).


Blogs are Meta-Data

Eaves: Blogs are a filter. They sift through information, retain that which is relevant and present it in a manner that is digestible (e.g. readable and accessible) by their audience(s).

If you want to know what we are up to or what is going on in the world of public service renewal, you do one of a number of things. You come to the blog (or pull up your RSS reader), you search the tags to find what is relevant to you, or you go right to the twitter hashtag (#cpsr). As Eaves rightly points out, you are here because you are interested in what is being written and assembled here.

Think about what this blog does as its “core business” – we regularly assemble round-ups that aim to present you with interesting and relevant information because no one else is doing it (that we know of). Moreover, since we’re aggregating information, we’re generally free to present a variety of views on a particular topic. The fact that we do it here (because we love to) means that you don’t have to go out and try to get the information on your own. I assume that you come here instead because we give you the context that is most relevant to you as Public Servants.


Blogs at the Front Line

Eaves: Allowing bloggers (internally) at the front lines would provide a valuable opportunity for senior managers to see the reality on the ground.

I would go a step beyond what Eaves is saying here and argue that blogs at the front lines allow everyone (e.g. all levels) to engage in a conversation about the reality on the ground. Keeping that conversation rolling here allows people to engage the material on their own terms. They come here precisely because this isn’t a briefing note. We aren’t forcing anything on anyone. If you are interested in knowing more about the issues faced by the public service today from the perspective of a couple of relatively new public servants, then you come here to share in that experience.


Relevance, Reputation and Merit

Eaves: Relevant information rises to the top, and reputation and merit guide it there (not official or bureaucratic top down authority).

For obvious reasons we have not tried (nor will we ever try) to monetize the site. Yet, we do understand that we are building a brand by sharing stories that we can all relate to and by engaging issues that Public Servants are facing. We hope that this blog is a space that you trust, that you feel is open and that welcomes your contribution and gives you information that is relevant to you as a Public Servant.

If people considered what we write in this space solely on our substantive group and levels then it wouldn’t get very far.

The only reason that this blog succeeds is because you visit it. It’s like twitter – if you have no followers you are just talking to yourself. We need you - your encouragement, your emails, your tweets, your invitations to participate, your comments, and your participation. In short, it is your readership that makes this site relevant.

You give us that authority, the bureaucracy doesn’t. In fact, it can’t. It can’t because no one has been mandated to engage in these conversations, they don’t fall into checkable boxes on renewal actions plans.


Is Blogging Enough?

While I was commenting on Eaves’ post, I saw a trackback link to an article and found this gem (in direct response to the Eaves piece) by @hjarche on Why the Government of Canada needs Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Jarche's counter point is that the Government of Canada needs more then just bloggers – it needs a comprehensive approach to Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).

Jarche contends that:

… blogging is not enough because managing information overload is more a question of attitude than skills...

… that public servants really need PKM; [it is] a way to help make sense of the information flows that face us…

According to Jarche, PKM is made of four elements:

1. Sorting & Filtering (e.g. Feed Readers & following on Twitter)
2. Annotating and Filing (e.g. social bookmarks)
3. Tentative Sense-making (e.g. Blog posts & Twitter Posts)
4. Engagement and conversations in these venues and others

I already manage my personal knowledge in this way, and truth be told, I manage the blog in this manner. I sort, filter, annotate and file using twitter hashtags #cpsr. I condense the essence of the resource including the URL, the context, the hashtag, (and often the retweet) into 140 characters. Then I use that system to make sense of it all, I turn it into a blog post and provide context for each item I tweeted. Then we publish the post and invite conversations into this space (as well as others).


Conclusion

I think that the “business model” we use here in this space could be equally applicable to government departments looking to foster that internal dialogue around issues of relevance to its business. I am positive that the skills sets required to do this work exist in every department and in every region: it’s just a matter of putting them to use.

Jarche mentioned that he didn’t think the problem was a skill problem, but an attitude problem. I agree, but I would like to qualify that a little by saying that, in my experience, the most problematic attitude is the one that doesn’t see the value in using new and evolving skills, and by extension the value-adding processes attached to them, like blogging.

I would go even one step further and say that any department looking to actively engage their staff in that mysterious thing known as public service renewal, to consider adopting the model we have in place here, and start talking to people about the issues they care about in their departments.


Epilogue: Why We Do It

I got this email after my talk in Edmonton, it pretty much sums up my reasons behind going out and engaging people in conversations that matter to them:

Hi Nick,

I was in attendance at your talk in Edmonton last week. Your ideas and enthusiasm spurred me to do a little bit of scheming of my own. Amazingly, the results have already made themselves apparent!

Some chats with the right people at the conference resulted in a meeting this morning, which has resulted in me being selected to facilitate the Orientation to the Public Service (OPS) courses offered by CSPS. Being able to do large-scale training and facilitation is something I've always wanted to do, but they aren't really functions of my current position, so this was a huge win for me.

A little scheming and some creative pitching to my manager have given me this opportunity, and your talk was the spark that enabled me to make the right contacts and convince my boss to let me pursue this. I'll be going to Ottawa in a few months for the "train the trainer" session, and I'd consider it an honour to buy you a beer as thanks while I'm there!

Thanks once again for your talk and your work. It's people like you who give hope to the rest of us that we can effect positive change in the public service!

Regards,

GW

Hey GW – I will gladly take you up on that offer, and thanks to everyone who helped me get that opportunity to share some time with you, and again, thanks to everyone for stopping by this space. Without you, we'd be talking to ourselves.

Round Up: March 4

[Note of caution, this is fairly long round up, but I have tried to give context to everything I am pointing to, in the obvious hope that you will click through or engage in whatever discussion you feel most interested in.]


New Blogger

First of all I would like to welcome a new public servant blogger to the fray, friends meet Amanda. You can also catch an article she wrote for CGEM here.


Be Angry(!)

Apparently being angry at work is good for your career, who knew? I would caution you however that always being angry at work is probably NOT good for your career (or your mental health).


On Leaders

In continuing to foster our discussion about leadership, I came across this in a tweet by @DGTweets: Why Can't We Figure Out How to Select Leaders? Here is my favorite musing from the summary on leadership:

Some of the more interesting [questions about leaders] included Kapil Kumar Sopory's suggestion that we look for "... the person with the biggest fire inside of them...." Rowland Freeman would ask, "... how will the selected individual handle power?" Edward Hare suggested that results fall short of expectations "... because we don't understand motives (of the candidate for the leadership position) ... How many aspiring leaders are not genuine or authentic? They're the ones that scare me." These comments raise the question of how much theory tells us about selecting for harder to measure characteristics such as possible behaviors under fire and motives as opposed to skills and past accomplishments.

NB: There are also 88 comments on the thread, here are a couple of my favs:

(12) Way too much thinking and evaluating going on. Maybe we can't see the forest for the trees? I watch how people treat and support others. I knew a Coast Guard retiree that became a grade school janitor that ended up becoming head of a school district. Why? Because he knew how to treat people, connect with the kids, teachers, and parents. It wasn't about all the fancy degrees, publishing, and ego. He cared about the kids and their future. Look at the heart and soul of people. See what they do. You will find leaders... (Phil Clark, Clark and Associates)

(17) The criteria for hiring future decision-makers, beyond their education, is often subjective. In many successful cases where the new hire became and effective leader, we had to first convince the hiring authority to look beyond stereotypes and beyond their first-choice, to hire that person.

God may have created man in his own image, but business leaders who use that same measure are often disappointed. (Robert Stevens, CFA, President, Douglas-Allen Inc., Executive Search)


(39) Hiring is a skill like any other skill.

I don't fix my car brakes because I don't have the skill and I might die as a consequence... (Luis X. B. Mourao, Senior Manager R&D, Bang & Olufsen)


(73) A good leader is easily spotted a mile away. The problem is that we often ask the wrong questions, and our internal compasses are sometimes off track... (Marquen Joubert, Senior Vice President, LynRay Engineering)

I think that these comments are all pointed, especially given the conversations I have been having with people on the subject of leaders being promoted into leadership positions because they were technically competent, not necessarily because they are good leaders. Truth be told, I heard this was an issue before I even joined the Public Service.


How We Interact with the Public Should be Simple and Genuine!

I think that Seth Godin's short and simple blog post on Looking for Yes is highly relevant to any government line department.

Moreover, I think we should strive to make all of our interactions with the Canadian Public this genuine.


Reform: HR Processes

Here is an absolutely fantastic piece by David Zussman on simplifying the government hiring process, here's a taste:

... [the committee] has issued two frank assessments of the HR governance system. Specifically, they concluded that the regime was too complex and unwieldy for a modern organization in competition for talent, there were too many rules and constraints that governed the HR system, and there was too much duplication of effort within central agencies and in individual departments.


... the government folded the former Public Service Agency into the Treasury Board and created the position of chief human resources officer (CHRO) to head the new branch. The new CHRO, Michelle D'Auray (former Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans) will oversee a narrower set of corporate functions that includes co-ordinating government-wide employee surveys, monitoring the impact of demographics on hiring needs, and, most importantly, developing an integrated compensation system for the whole of government. Second, many of the responsibilities of the Public Service Agency were dispersed into individual departments, making it clear deputy ministers are the centre of the new HR regime.

About Twitter

If you are interested in knowing more about Twitter and how you can use it, here is a 10 minute TED talk on Twitter, and article that examines whether or not twitter is efficiency engine or workplace distraction.