Three thoughts on leaders and leadership

by Nick Charney

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As you likely know I joined the Institute on Governance (IOG) via an interchange in January of this year.

I've since taken on additional responsibilities, a new title and started the IOG's Executive Leadership Program. In fact, the program kicked off this week with a two day executive retreat.

It was an incredibly rich two days but rather than sing the program's praises, I wanted to quickly share three of my early takeaways from the program (which I scribbled down in my learning journal):

1. Leadership is a process of influence that happens in a group to achieve a result. 
2. It is about resilience, both personal and institutional, good leaders are able to turn the former into the latter. 
3. We often rely on our own strengths and talents, good leaders play to the strengths and talents of others.

Cheers (and happy Halloween!)

GCpedia's Sixth Birthday

by Kent Aitken

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Last night Jodi LeBlanc and the GC2.0 Tools team hosted a community meetup which included a birthday cake for GCpedia, the Government of Canada's internal wiki, now six years old.

Typically we don't celebrate platforms or software. I suspect you rarely get people together on the anniversaries of installations.

(Though I did notice yesterday that X-Wing is getting re-released, which came out 20 years ago.)

So why GCpedia? What is it that GCpedia represents that makes it a rallying point for government employees? Specifically, the question I want to ask is what has GCpedia represented for you?

For me, it's a way to learn that the sky won't fall when you put work in the open, and that comfort sharing a little can lead to comfort sharing a lot.

It was a conduit into the realization that I was part of a much larger community than I originally thought.

And it represents a way to learn the value of being sharing processes in a safe space, which has the dual benefits of walking the transparency walk and leaving material behind for others to pick up and use. As part of a workload-scoping experiment while working on the GC2.0 Tools team, I went back through the first Collaborative Management Day pages (2010, I believe). I'd still tell people organizing events to wander back through it - collaborative principles are baked into the discussions, and the resources posted after the event are still incredibly valuable and relevant. It was, for me, the perfect example of everything that GCpedia had and has to offer.

But that's just me. You?

No Words

by Nick Charney

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There are simply no words to describe what happened in Ottawa this week; by all accounts it was unprecedented. My hope is that these events don't go unnoticed, that we use them as an inflection point and that we reflect on the importance of not only our systems of governance but our conduct within them. Our democracy is important, the sacrifices made to safeguard it must not be taken for granted and it is our duty to ensure they were not made in vain.

Thank you Cpl. Nathan Cirillo for giving your life in service of this great country, Sergeant At Arms Kevin Vickers for having the unenviable task of taking a life in service of it, and every one else – uniformed or otherwise – who took on leadership roles for Queen and Country as events unfolded.

I'll be wearing my poppy early this year, I hope you will too.