Innovation is tricky, literally ...

I had the opportunity this week to spend a bit of time with Bill Eggers. Bill is the Global Director of Deloitte's Public Sector practice, is the author of numerous books including If we can put a man on the moon: Getting big things done in government, and is (most importantly) a friend. Bill constantly pushes public sector thinking to the next level and always supports his position with compelling and well-researched examples. His passion for post-bureaucratic government - a model of government that he describes as cheaper, faster, collaborative, open and agile - is both commendable and a source for renewed inspiration.


Disruptive innovation is about breaking trade-offs

In his talk at GTEC Bill argued that disruptive innovation is about breaking traditional and readily-accepted trade-offs. For example Bill argued that modern day smart phones break the historical trade-off between price and performance, citing that a BlackBerry has more computing power than the original Apollo mission. The availability of low-cost and high performance mobile devices has disrupted the market for desktop computers in countries like Africa where consumers are skipping desktops and jumping right into smartphones. The core idea of the argument is that the post-innovation environment looks fundamentally different than the pre-innovation environment, meaning, among other things, that process improvement isn't the same thing as innovation.


Connecting disruptive innovation to comparative anthropology

I recently finished reading Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World. The book, the first chapter of which is available online, uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the kind of disruptive intelligence all cultures need if they are to remain lively, flexible and open to change, or as the TED blog explains:

The trickster is anybody who’s a bit of an outsider. They’re the ones who make change. They’re not thinking about making changes, they’re almost doing it in a selfish way. But because they’re working outside the rules, they change the rules. Everything around them is always new, everything is an opportunity ...

[T]hey got to the place where they are because they worked outside the system. They do mischievous things, but they’re extremely disciplined. Because that’s the other thing about tricksters: They’re never lazy. They’re very industrious.

It’s important to honour mischief-making, in a constructive and creative way, because that’s how we effect change. And it’s so important that we figure out our inner mischief maker. That’s the creative part of us. And everybody’s capable of it.

Trickster Makes This World is also about the immigrant experience, because immigrants are, at first, outside the system, and figure out how to work with the system. And they end up changing the system.

Innovators as Tricksters?

When I was reading the book I started to connect the mental models of Innovators and Tricksters. What I'd like to do is share some quotations from the book that should help you do the same. In so doing remember the core idea above, that (1) innovation is disruptive and requires breaking traditional trade-offs, and that (2) the post-innovation environment looks fundamentally different than the pre-innovation environment.

What tricksters like is the flexible or movable joint. If a joint comes apart, or if it moves from one place to another, or if it simply loosens up where it had begun to stick and stiffen, some trickster has probably been involved... In many cultures, as we have seen, much of the play of tricksters amounts to a reshaping (disjointing, rejointing) of the world around them. (p.257-258)

You can see the from the quotation above that tricksters are drawn to joints (where two ideas or constructs meet) much as would-be innovators purposely look to separate historical trade-offs. Furthermore, you can see from the quotation below that this separation results in some re-ordering of the status quo:

In trickster's world, appetite is a pore-seeking power, and thus appetites prophesy. Their prophesy reveals the hidden joints holding an old world together, the hidden pores leading out. If you don't believe me, try keeping Hermes away from your cattle; try keeping Monkey out of the orchard when the fruit gets ripe. This is the first part of trickster prophecy - appetite seeking the pores of artifice - and it brings directly the second part, the revelation of plenitude. Remember that Krishna, the thief of butter and of hearts, does not steal because the objects of his desires are intrinsically scarce. He steals because they are abundant but human order has limited them. (p.292)

Not only are tricksters drawn to the joints but they actively trying to expose them (if hidden) or exploit them (when not hidden). What interests me here is the latter part of the quotation which indicates that after the trickster breaks the traditional trade-off (the joint) he or she reveals plenitude that "human order" (law, culture or convention) has limited. This makes perfect sense in the context of Bill's example about smartphones that I invoked earlier. Breaking the trade-off between price and performance has contributed to the massive growth of mobile, and has fundamentally reshaped our lives.


Innovation is tricky

 If we follow the joining of these ideas to their natural endpoint, would-be innovators (tricksters!) could learn a few things if they approach Hyde's book as a tactical manual. By this I mean that innovators should endeavour to draw ideas from from anywhere, adapt as circumstances require and look at issues from a multitude of vantage points:

[Unrequited] belief is single minded and cannot do what trickster does, open the corridors of humor that allow the mind to toy with itself and with its creations. Along with the revelation of plenitude, then, comes revelation of a complex, joint-working consciousness, one that can always find those corridors of humor, one that will play with any concept, no matter how serious it seems, and one that can create new artifice if need be, that can turn to shaping when it tires of shifting...

The landscape is constant potential for that travelling intelligence, because the present situation is always dissolving and things that the horizon once obscured are coming into view. That intelligence belongs to the wanderer who has heard the same object called different names in different cities. It belongs to the time traveller, the immigrant child in all of us. (p.297-298)

Literally ... 

After having read the book, not only do I agree that Trickster makes this world, but I'm starting to think that it may just make an era of post-bureaucratic government too. If you are interested in hearing a bit more about the Trickster I suggest you watch Emily Levine's TED talk (embedded below) called "A Trickster's Theory of Everything", its actually the reason I picked up the book in the first place.











Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

Tricksters, Hackers, and Schemers

by Kent Aitken

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In literature, trickster characters are the rule-breakers. They cross boundaries, put others outside their zones of comfort, and question authority. They "playfully disrupt normal life and then re-establish it on a new basis." They're often set in a world such that the rule-breaking appears, to the audience, to be understandable - if not downright virtuous.

In society, the tricksters might be the civic tech, NGO, social entrepreneurship, and hacker communities. Hackers, in this view, are those who take things apart to understand them and reconstruct them to suit their needs, be it technology, institutions, or machinery (try these pieces by Tanya Snook or David Fleming for this take). Dealing with government is just one lever to pull towards achieving their goals.

Inside organizations the tricksters may be called innovators, or perhaps mavericks or "rebels at work." Less flatteringly, they might be called "headstrong" or "naive".

There's always conflict between tricksters and those around them, including other tricksters with different levels of willingness to break the rules. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (the character in the image, above) revels in tricking farmers out of chickens until he realizes that his actions are endangering the other animals in his community by provoking the gun-toting farmers. In many stories, a common theme is discord between members of the counterculture: some people are willing to do anything to reach their goals, and their friends have to stop them from compromising their principles. Ideals and goals don't always get along.

Wither rebels?

Brett Scott's recent piece The hacker hacked gets into the conflict faced by the first group, those outside large businesses or institutions. 

"We are currently witnessing the gentrification of hacker culture. The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class. It began innocently, no doubt. The association of the hacker ethic with startups might have started with an authentic counter-cultural impulse on the part of outsider nerds tinkering away on websites. But, like all gentrification, the influx into the scene of successive waves of ever less disaffected individuals results in a growing emphasis on the unthreatening elements of hacking over the subversive ones.

 In this setting, the hacker attitude of playful troublemaking can be cast in Schumpeterian terms: success-driven innovators seeking to ‘disrupt’ old incumbents within a market in an elite ‘rebellion’."

(See also: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads." - Jeff Hammerbacher)

I highly recommend reading the full piece. For one, it's as a fascinating take on the arc of the technology and digital world - once considered a disruptive, democratic, playing-field-leveling force. Two, there's an obvious parallel for anyone trying to remake an organization around themselves.

The trickster's dilemma

Akin to hackers being subsumed into the tech entrepreneurship scene, change-wanters will face a practical dilemma in efforts to drive change. Sometimes, after years of suggesting X project, someone will say "Ah, now you have your chance to put your money where your mouth is: we'd like you to do X. But by our rules." This invariably means that you won't actually get to spend much of your time on X, instead worrying about HR, finance, proving the value of X, building partnerships, and navigating internal politics. And you'll realize that they're using a different definition of X. But, you're finally getting the chance, so you can't rock the boat now. You need to succeed, even if it's not exactly what you wanted to succeed at, to gain the credibility for future such projects. Besides, if you decline the opportunity they'll ask someone else anyway, and it won't be done as well. You're stuck.

Last year I had the opportunity to speak on a topic I was passionate about and I was pumped. When I accepted, I heard the parameters: it was an "un-panel," and I'd be "randomly" selected from the audience to ask a question and then join the panel. My question was scripted and a speaker would magically have a presentation ready to answer it. I backed out, but the principles versus impact debate is rarely so lopsided.

So you believe in change and doing things right. But do you do things less than right for the opportunity to do things right in the future? Or dogmatically stick to your guns, but end up alienated from the organizations and people that can facilitate progress? Do you stay as a garage hacker, or join an organization that limits your freedom but expands your impact?

Ryan Androsoff was recently musing about whether the W2P (web 2.0 practitioners) community in the Government of Canada had withered, and he captured the discussion. It seems I'm not alone in viewing the people in that community as innovators and schemers, but that they've moved on to "operationalizing" their goals or simply "doing."

In the US, the Presidential Innovation Fellows program exists to get bright and talented tech experts into government to revamp systems, build tools, and shake established mindsets. My anecdotal evidence from conversations with public servants south of the border is this: one, that the "not-quite-in-government" position allows the freedom to question established practices and push through solutions. Two, that institutions have had problems following through and maintaining Fellows' projects after they leave. The program was made permanent this week, which could help the latter problem - but might hurt the former advantage.

For the Fellows and W2P, there's a power in being distant enough from portfolios that you can truly speak your mind. Once institutionalized, operationalized, or made responsible, these Fantastic Mr. Foxes may realize that other animals are counting on them and that playing with the rules - even if virtuously done - isn't the right approach anymore.

Which is not to say that accepting positions of responsibility is inadvisable. It's actually the core of the public service ethos. It's why we're here. If you have a meaningful job and your work actually impacts citizens then it comes with responsibility. But there will be constant tension: is the value you had as a trickster being left behind?

A last word about naiveté

Naiveté is the true enemy of tricksters, hackers, and schemers. But it comes in two different flavours.

• Failing to understand or appreciate the value of "the way things are". Ever complain about something and have a friend respond "Actually, there's a perfectly good reason for that"? The more you learn about something, the more you'll see both its flaws and its virtues. If you're trying to change things, you have a responsibility to understand them.

• Failing to understand or appreciate the value of ideals. There's a reverse-image naiveté to the above and it manifests in Machiavellianism, acting as though everything is strategic, pragmatic, and political. As bad as the naive tricksters, the naive institutionalist can't tell when the tricksters are right, and falsely believes that the rules of the game can never change.

Monday Book Review: Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde

Basic Info

Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde

Why I bought it

"from the ink of the text ... " by ๓ậтëø 

After watching Emily Levine's TED talk I knew I had to read this book; my only regret is having waited so long to actually do so.

How it connects to the public sector

While the book itself is technically an exercise in comparative anthropology, Hyde's ability to explain the disruptive side of the human imagination in great detail makes the book incredibly relevant for anyone looking to re-imagine the status quo.

After having read Trickster, I wrote a pair of posts that explicitly connected disruptive innovation with Hyde's anthropological arguments; in fact, Innovation is tricky, literally ... and Finding Innovation are two of my most heavily trafficked posts from last year (despite a noticeable lack of comments).

What you will get out of reading it

I honestly can't explain just how important this book has been to me personally and professionally. I read it at a time when I was in a bit of trouble at work (long story) and being able to contextualize my experience within the narrative of the book gave me some much needed perspective.

If you are interested disruptive innovation, this book will not only shape your understanding of the discipline, but will also outline what you can expect if you are successful, and just as importantly, what you can expect if you aren't.



Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

Finding Innovation

Last week I tried to connect the idea of disruptive innovation to Lewis Hyde's anthropological analysis of the mythological trickster. The comparison hinged on a couple ideas, namely that both are focused on the breaking of traditional trade-offs, and that breaking those trade-offs results in a re-ordering of the status quo, a re-ordering that reveals a particular abundance that was previously hidden by man made structures or convention.

I also argued that would be innovators could learn from Hyde's work on the trickster by reading his book with an eye for insight into their behaviours, but it can also be read in a way that helps you find the innovators.

Badi b/w by Emilia Tjernström [Arriving at the horizon]

If you are looking for innovators ...

Look to immigrants or nomads. Those who are new to your organization or those who move around a lot may in fact be your most innovative. New arrivals bring fresh eyes, instinctively connect their new experiences with their previous ones creating a new middle ground for the organization to explore.

Look to people who can take more than a single world view. They have a diversity of interests that drives them to read things from and maintain relationship in different sectors. As a result they bring in ideas that seem foreign to many but yet always seem to contain some nugget of merit.

Look to those who are willing to start from square one, willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and challenge the fundamental assumptions that dominate the discourse. People who don't simply tear down straw men but build something out of bricks and mortar (or in a digital era perhaps I should say "1s and 0s") to replace it.

Look to people who are good communicators. People who make you feel at ease about things that you are usually uneasy about, who easily bridge the gap between those at the working level and senior managers, knowing how to couch their words with either group.

Look to the people who are comfortable with change. They see everything as an opportunity and welcome whatever the newly reshaped world has in store for them.

Finally, look to the troublemakers. The peoples whose transgressive nature exposes the more deeply problematic roots of more systemic and pressing problems. They use intellect, humour and satire whenever possible, nothing is off limits, and as a result they wind up getting into hot water now and again.


Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca subscribe/connect

Inverting Thoughts on Thinking

by Nick Charney

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Last week I quickly threw down a video from Geoff Mulgan at Nesta in the hopes that you'd watch it (See: Thoughts on Thinking).  At the time I had a bunch of notes sketched out on a pad of paper (yes I still use those!) but didn't have time to pull them together into something coherent.

This week I wanted to share what I took away from the video because, as I indicated previously, there are some great nuggets of information in there. Mulgan divides up policy process into three parts:

1) Creating Mutation

Mulgan starts his presentation by arguing that novelty is the purview of iconoclasts and radicals; it's an explanation that conjures up support for the innovator as trickster hypothesis (See: Book Review: Trickster Makes This World, Innovation is Tricky, Literally and Finding Innovation) given that, tricksters seem well positioned to:

• Reassert old ideas and infuse them with new ones 
• Apply a different lens altogether (e.g. carbon)
• Ask new types of questions (e.g. can it be a market?)

Whereas, as Mulgan argues, conformist institutions aren't a good source of creative mutation given that new ideas, by their very nature, have no evidence to support them.


2) Selection Principles

Mulgan goes on to outline a number of selection principles that determine which ideas tend to make the cut and which ones don't. It's likely not a coincidence that he starts his exploration by naming political convenience and ends it with evidence and reasoning. While I'm not trying to situate the two on a dichotomous spectrum I did get the sense that his ordering is purposeful and informed by his experience.

In an ideal world there is obviously at least some synergy between these and the other factors — coherence, 'appealingness', and the failure of alternatives — that Mulgan names. He goes on to explain that one of the core challenges of the selection phase is the tendency to promote a particular narrative structure (that which fits the mould, sustaining, do more with less innovation) rather than on what evidence supports (that which breaks the mould, disruptive, do different with different innovation).


3) Replication  and Spread

According to Mulgan, policy ideas that make it through the selection process require translation by intermediary bodies to enter into the policy bloodstream and that alternative approaches more easily replicate in the wake of failure created by an excess of orthodoxy. In other words, a history of failure creates a climate more ripe for disruptive innovation rather than one that has even a modest history of successful incremental innovation.

What if we reversed their order?

While Mulgan presents the above as sequential stages (e.g. moving from creative mutation, to selection principals, to replication), I wonder what would happen if we simply reversed their order? If we stand Mulgan's explanation on its head, the path to policy innovation seems to be:

1. Look for a policy area with a deep history of failure (because the ground is fertile) 
2. Identify intermediaries with a vested interest in the solution (because they will help you)
3. Identify solutions that meet selection principals (because decision makers will support it)
4. Apply a new lens that creates the mutation (because it leads to innovation)

Flipping the process — putting support first and ideation last — looks like a faster track for policy ideas and I'm interested in hearing if anyone has any tangible examples that I can learn from that have put this type of approach into practice.



Note: I've decided to re-embed the video below in case you missed it.

Our Search for Meaning

by Nick Charney

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Understanding how you derive meaning from your work is incredibly important. But that understanding only comes with experience, or more rightly experiences — breadth, depth, variability, trial, error.

It takes both successes and failures.

Exposure. Reflection. Self awareness. Vulnerability. Honesty, with yourself but also with others.

Understanding what brings you meaning in a visceral way — which is to say when you feel it in your bones — can be an incredibly empowering experience. It can help you dial in your career, cut the noise, and focus on what is driving you in the service of a larger mission.

It can also be frustrating. 

If you aren't deriving enough meaning from your work, you start to wander, get distracted, and lose sight of of how your work connects with those around you.

The easy part -- what I find meaningful.

Personally, I derive my meaning from — and forgive me if you've heard me pronounce on this before (i.e. See: Innovation is Tricky, Literally and/or Finding Innovation, and/or Book Review: Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes the World.) — from being a 'trickster', from being the conduit between different groups of people, introducing new ideas, translating knowledge between them, and bringing new ideas to life.

It's why I'm fullest when I'm meeting directly with stakeholders, briefing senior management, helping public servants scheme virtuously, or mixing it up with my team during times of personal and professional growth.

In short, I thrive in environments that are high volume and high velocity, in the collision prone spaces where new ideas and relationships flourish.

The hard part -- shaping meaningful experiences for others.

I've been thinking about the role of meaning not only in my own personal context but also in the context of managing a team. I feel as though — and views may vary — that as a manager I am responsible not only for not only finding meaning in my own work but also helping my team find meaning in theirs.

This latter part is complicated. What if what drives your team isn't what drives you? What if team members differ significantly when it comes to what they determine is meaningful? How do you steer work in a way that maximizes meaning and employee engagement on a daily basis?

Some incomplete thoughts.

First, you need to accept that shaping meaningful experiences for your team is a part of your role. Some managers would argue its not their job to worry about such things but I disagree, understanding that this is no small feat, that it takes work, and can often be resource intensive.

Second, you need to recognize that your ability to actually deliver on this part of your role is often severely limited. At best managers can help shape what people find to be meaningful experiences.

Third, you have to engage in explicit conversations about meaning and motivation with individual team members and reconcile the needs of each individual team member with the overall needs of the team. Again, no easy task, and honestly something I could be much better at.

I want to talk with more managers struggling with this issue because I'm not sure its something organizations are taking very seriously at the institutional level, that is to say helping employees understand and find meaning in their work might not be a widespread management practice.

As always, if you are interested in discussing these issues, please let me know.

On Transformational Leadership in the Digital Era

by Nick Charney

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On Monday I had the opportunity to speak to a room full of Ontario Public Servants about Innovation and Digital Transformation; my Prezi and speaking notes are below.



Good morning everyone.
My name is Nicholas Charney.
I am currently the Director for Engagement and Innovation at the Institute on Governance (IOG); which is just fancy way of saying I got to pick my title.
Before I launch into my remarks this morning I feel as though I should be a good corporate citizen and tell you a little about myself and the IOG.
We are small not for profit organization whose mission is to advance better governance in the public interest.
We pursue that mission through our virtuous circle of advisory work, courses and research programs.
I'm a policy professional by trade and am currently on a two year interchange from the Government of Canada where I've spent the last 8 years working at the confluence of people, public policy and technology.
My core responsibility at the IOG is to help build out or digital governance applied research program.
The program is based on the premise that two forces – digital and governance – are meeting like tectonic plates, shifting the landscape and giving rise to new peaks and valleys around key governance questions that all citizens need to be concerned about:

• Who has real power?
• How should decisions be made?
• How can all players make their voices heard and ensure that account is rendered. 

We've divided the research into a number of applied domains: policy analysis, service delivery, regulation and accountability.
You can learn more about the project, how to get involved and even watch the star studded panels from our launch event at iog.ca/digital.
Now, with that out of the way, there are a number of things I could say to you about digital transformation. 
I could start by saying that having the right skills is essential.
Or, that a talent-focused culture is critical.
Or, that organizational agility is the key to effective outcomes.
But I could say all of that and have said nothing.
I'd rather start out by saying that digital transformation is what you as leaders make of it.
That there is no shortage of wicked problems, demand for ideas, or need to bring them bear.
That technology and the Zeitgeist are combining in some interesting ways and changing the nature of the public service.
That these changes are creating both challenges and opportunities that require us to think differently than we have in the past.
That's what I want to spend the majority of my remarks on today: thinking differently.
I'm often told that I think differently about problems than others do.
And to be honest I'm not entirely sure it’s a compliment. It gets me into trouble with my wife and it gets my children into trouble too.
Case in point, I have a very particular view on innovation (See: Innovation is Tricky, Literally and Finding Innovation).
My view on innovation is largely informed by a book by Lewis Hyde  – a cultural anthropologist – entitled Trickster Makes This World: How Disruptive Imagination Creates Culture.
According to Hyde, Tricksters are classical cultural figures.
They represent a certain flexibility of mind and spirit, a willingness to defy authority and invent clever solutions that keeps cultures (and stories) from becoming too stagnant.

• crosses physical and social boundaries
• traveller / nomad
• blurs distinctions between right and wrong
• invents new cultural goods or tools 
• sexually over-active, irresponsible, and amoral. 
• creative liars 
• tells stories that make people laugh and inspire

Wait – let’s just redact a couple of lines there to keep the FIPPA people happy.
There we go.
Tricksters have something to say about how culture gets created, and about the nature of intelligence.
They steal fire from the gods, give it to man, and remake the world. 
In contemporary innovation rhetoric: they break traditional trade-offs, create new markets, and reveal the art of the possible.
In collaboration rhetoric: they use flattening communications technologies to cut across hierarchy, create new channels for influence and show the stark contrast between the world out there and the command and control culture in here.
Admittedly that’s how I go my start: experimenting with social media for collaboration behind the firewall.
As you can imagine I fancy myself a bit of trickster. 
I think it’s an incredibly important role, and one that I've chosen purposefully, because I'm willing to accept the risks, bear the consequences, and reap the rewards.
Now you may have noticed that this idea of innovation as tricksterism is a cultural approach to innovation rather than an institutionalized approach to innovation – say in the form of innovation labs.
I prefer to focus on the culture because whenever someone points a finger at what isn't working in the bureaucracy its almost always the culture. 
I prefer prioritizing people to structure and think that in many ways the root of many of our problems is the fact that we often prioritize them the other way around.
But rather than get up on that soapbox I’d rather show you something that tricksters can get up to when you put a little technology in their curious little hands.
In the federal government there is this thing called the Treasury Board Policy Suite.
Essentially it’s all of the rules that all federal civil servants need to abide by and is commonly referred to by public servants as the web of rules.
Here's what it is supposed to look like according to Treasury Board.

• 1 Code of Conduct - Values and Ethics; 
• 8 policy frameworks; 
• 73 policies; 
• 76 directives; 
• 56 standards; and 
• 59 guidelines.

For a total of 273 different policy instruments. 
Now I took some time and went through the suite and mapped the actual relationships between these instruments (See: Redux: Visualizing the Entire Treasury Board Policy Suite). 
Truth be told the web of rules looks more like this.
As you can see the two are very different beasts.
First a note on methodology.
There's a 'related instruments' tab on each instrument that provides a hyperlink to instruments that ought to be considered in conjunction with that which you are currently reading.
The visualization simply represents those relationships.
Size depicts prevalence, e.g. the number of connections the instrument has to others.
Colour depicts instrument type.
Line type and arrows – which are there but impossible to see at this distance – represent directionality and type of relationship. 
The first thing worth noting is that the placement of Values and Ethics is not central as it was in the official representation.
The heart of the suite is right here in what I call the culture cluster is right here.
You can see how tightly wound up it is.
And why it might be so hard to innovate in these spaces, there’s simply too much oversight and control.
The cluster is pretty much exactly what you would expect: 

• Policy on Government Security | 88# | 33%
• Policy on Internal Control | 71# | 26%
• Policy on Management of Information Technology | 59# | 22%
• Policy on Privacy Protection | 56# | 20%
• Policy on Information Management | 55# | 20%

Conversely, if you look at the periphery, where there is likely more room to innovate you will see that there is very little of consequence out there to innovate on.
Transformational institutional change is unlikely to be found in the Workplace Fitness Program Policy, the Uniform Directive or the Policy on Workplace Daycare Centres.
That said, I'm more than sympathetic to an argument that much good could come from innovation in those areas from an employee wellness perspective but that is likely a conversation for another day.
Now I put this thing together in my free time with some free online tools that I've never used before.
I published it to my blog along with some of my preliminary thoughts.
The thing went viral – or at least it went government viral, meaning that a couple of thousand people saw it.
I got a phone call from a Director General’s office whom I've never met who wanted a briefing on my work.
She just so happened to be the person responsible for the renewal of the policy suite.
I went in to brief her and her team.
Later I went in to brief her ADM.
Everyone wanted to know why I would do such a thing?
For me the answer was simple, because the opportunity was there waiting for someone to pluck it out of the sky.
Because I crossed social boundaries and knew the policy suite renewal was coming down the pipe before it was officially announced.
Because I was an outsider and was free to experiment.
Because I was curious and wanted to blur the lines a little.
Because I was able to use new tools and technologies to create a new lens through which we could look at the problem.
Because I was looking for an opportunity to be creative.
Because I wanted to be able to tell the story.
Because that’s what tricksters do.
Pretty impressive right?
Truth be told this data visualization is fairly bush league when you think about the scale and pace of changes that are on the horizon. 
I mapped something a handful of bureaucrats care about. 
It’s the wild west out there right now.
Governments services are being compared to private sector services. The media’s business model has imploded and created a perverse incentive structure that rewards muckraking, click bating and faux outrage.
Your staff email, text, Facebook, Twitter and snap-chat, each other all day and can circumvent any attempt you make to limit their ability to communicate with someone else.
In many cases they can send a direct message on Twitter directly to a Minister. Directly to their Minister.
Their online profile can be analyzed, partisanship inferred, and then targeted for scandal through a freedom of information request
And that’s just a fraction of what’s going on. 
Everyone carries a government issued GPS device in their pocket, you could collect, aggregate and analyze that data to know exactly how big of a physical footprint you need, how to better plan public transit to your office locations, when and where elevators should rest in those office locations and even what unit should be located next to another.
And what about drones, don’t even get me started on drones.
An engineering student in Europe built a prototype of a drone that is equipped with a defibrillator.
There’s a great Youtube video, I suggest you go watch it.
This is a major technological advancement in public health.
But what about liabilities?
What happens when urban drone hunting becomes a pass time?
What about drinking and droning?
I could go on at length.
But instead I want to close out my remarks by giving you some advice on where I think you can find innovators in your organization. 
As leaders if you aren't trying to identify and groom people who see the world differently than you do you aren't doing your job effectively. 
Transformative leaders incubate the next generation of transformational people, curate their ideas and lay the ground work today for them to be successful tomorrow.
I want to close out my remarks by giving you some advice on where you can find innovation within your organization. 
Look to immigrants or nomads.
Those who are new to your organization or those who move around a lot may in fact be your most innovative.
New arrivals bring fresh eyes, instinctively connect their new experiences with their previous ones creating a new middle ground for the organization to explore.
Look to people who can take more than a single world view.
They have a diversity of interests that drives them to read things from and maintain relationship in different sectors.
As a result they bring in ideas that seem foreign to many but yet always seem to contain some kernel worth exploring
Look to those who are willing to start from square one, willing to walk away from sunk costs and challenge the fundamental assumptions that dominate the discourse.
People who don't accept that the answer "because that is the the way we've always done it here”
Look to people who are good communicators.
People who make you feel at ease about things that you are usually uneasy about, who easily bridge the gap between those at the working level and senior managers, knowing how to couch their words with either group.
Look to the people who are comfortable with change.
They see everything as an opportunity and welcome whatever the newly reshaped world has in store for them.
Finally, look to the troublemakers.
The peoples whose transgressive nature exposes the more deeply problematic roots of more systemic and pressing problems.
They use intellect, humour and satire whenever possible, nothing is off limits, and as a result they wind up getting into hot water now and again.
Your job as transformational leaders is to inspire, encourage and when necessary, protect, them.
The future of your organizations depends on it.
Thank you.