Category Archives: Culture

Letting go for high performance leadership

Posted on by
2

© Chris Lamphear, iStockphoto

In Gov 2.0 circles I often hear that organizational culture needs to change. If you think about that you will realize that people need to change. If you think about that you will realize that you have to change.  Last year I heard the story of a public servant leader who discovered that sometimes by letting go, you get better results. I think it is a good example of the transformation many of us need to consider for ourselves.

Two years ago, Angelina Munaretto took leadership of the Applying Leading Edge Technologies (ALET)  working group within the Canadian government. This horizontal, mostly voluntary group was established to explore ideas around the use of social media and Web 2.0 tools for the government communications community.

At the outset, the group was structured in a traditional way and using government hierarchy:  a  Project Manager, two sub-working groups with co-chairs, and an advisory committee. Work began on defining the deliverables, finding members for the working groups and then working towards meeting the needs of this  defined structure.

What nobody counted on, but in retrospect is not surprising, is the level of interest, passion and commitment exhibited by the entire government community in response to the global trend towards Web 2.0. All areas — not just communications, but programs, IM, IT and human resources — wanted to participate in some way. Those who were involved in applying the tools on a day-to-day basis started suggesting new projects that would help advance their programs, communications and use of Web 2.0 tools. The community grew into 150 people and 36 departments and agencies represented. Five departments seconded employees to work on deliverables for the community at no cost to the project.

Says Angelina: “We moved from being a community of practice who met to deliver pieces of work, to a group of professionals who wanted to make a difference.”

I know which one of those scenarios I would prefer, what about you?

Resources were needed and community members were stepping up to volunteer to help the ALET group meet the needs of the community. More people and more resources called for more management capacity, but there was simply no additional capacity. The working groups could no longer be managed within the traditional project structure. More management capacity was required but was simply unavailable. Angelina soon found herself in a position where a shift was required.

What this meant for Angelina was that she had to adjust her leadership style. No longer would she define tasks and delegate responsibilities  – she could suggest broad areas of work or needs that the community was articulating, but this was highly different.  When community leaders stepped up and offered their expertise and leadership, Angelina moved to providing secretariat support and broad guidance on the overall outcomes sought by ALET. Members of the group were given autonomy to shape the products they were producing.  It became less about leading the group towards the completion of a deliverable to more about facilitating the collaboration and contributing where help was needed . The deliverables were defined by the needs of those working on them, instead of the project leader. In personal terms, Angelina had to relax her expectation of control.  She also had to learn to trust people to do the right thing, sometimes with very little direction  – and learned when to offer help or check in to ensure that people had what was needed to complete a deliverable.

What she found was that when a group of people are motivated and given the autonomy to take direct action, the results can be impressive. What had started as a management team…led by Angelina became a relatively self-sufficient group that produced impressive results including an extensive research document which provided essential input into policy development, a social media toolkit and numerous guides to using a wide variety of social media. The most tangible result though was getting Departments to share key development documents for use of social media so that the community could re-use these for their own campaigns. The work that started with ALET planted the seeds for a vibrant communications community that continues to grow, share best practices and build guidelines to help others.

Angelina has now moved to Library and Archives Canada, where she is the Manager, Digital Engagement and Social Media. ALET continues to thrive under new leadership and the resource pages on GCPEDIA continue to be some of the most visited.

When I look at this case, I see a perfect example of intrinsic motivation as described by author Dan Pink, there is a wonderful RSA animate video that captures the essence of his message on You Tube. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc]

The project, in spite of being run differently than a traditional government project, was highly successful – mostly due to Angelina’s ability to stop trying to control the project and instead to facilitate the collaboration and articulate the greater purpose. She gave the members of the working group the autonomy to make progress on something that would make a real difference.

In my mind, this shift is an example of what needs to happen with leaders across the public service; from a mentality of command-and-control to one of creating a collaborative culture. Angelina’s example demonstrates that when people are given the autonomy to work on something that motivates them and is in service to something larger, whole communities can benefit.  And really, isn’t that what being in the public service is all about?

I would like to thank Avra Gibbs Lamey, a communications professional and contributor to two of the sub-working groups under ALET, for co-authoring this post. Avra can be found on twitter  @gibbslamey.  Angelina can be found @AngelinaMunaret .

What is Public Service culture?

Posted on by
2

Oct. 2013 UPDATE:  You may also be interested in this post which delves a little deeper into the idea of public service culture and Gov 2.0.
———————

I am preparing to facilitate a workshop on overcoming cultural roadblocks to Web 2.0 at the Social Media in Government conference in Ottawa on Sept 27-03.  As part of the background for the discussion, I am trying to synthesize three things.

  1. A working definition of culture
  2. A description of the existing and emergent culture in Public Service (Federal, Provincial and Municipal)
  3. A description of a future culture that we can aspire to create within our sphere’s of influence.

We have had some twitter exchanges about #2 and to provide a little more detail for those that are interested, here are 4 early stage slides for your perusal and comment.

I look forward to exploring this area with you.

Also if you mention my name or code SPK you can save $400 on the conference.

To stimulate adoption, just say no.

Posted on by
Reply

This post originally appeared on the Senior Fellows and Friends blog in June, 2010.

Word No, underlined by red pencil

©iStockPhoto/Kanstantsin Shcharbinski

About mid way into the pilot phase of the open collaborative workplace project, we added Karl to the team.  This is the story of his adoption of a wiki approach to preparing a large document. Karl had joined the Canadian Revenue Agency , (CRA) 6 years before, coming from the Nortel Networks meltdown. He had a background in large-scale learning, development and management and he knew this web 2. stuff was probably a good thing, he just did not know exactly how. This is the story of his initiation to a wiki, specifically the MediWiki install known as GCPEDIA. It is a story you may be able to repeat.

One of Karl’s first tasks was to prepare a formal project charter that would begin the process of taking us from pilot to enterprise solution. As you can imagine preparing a project charter in a government central agency is a significant task. There was a prescribed outline to follow, four primary authors and an executive  level steering committee of 20 or so to be consulted. In addition to the immediate circle there were perhaps 100 or so interested parties.

After obtaining the requisite word processing template from the project management office, Karl came to me to discuss the approach for developing the charter. We had a tight deadline and I told Karl that we should use the wiki to create the document.

Two days later Karl showed up with a draft. As a word processing document. He was in a hurry he said and did not have time to learn how to use a new tool. He would put it on the wiki later he said.  I was keen to see the document, but refused to look at it, telling him to “do it on the wiki”.  Apparently he did not believe me because a day later he was back with another word processed document, this time printed!  I rejected it outright. He left in a bit of a huff, probably thinking I was being unreasonable.

After a few minutes of instruction he was working away in the new tool. Some copy and paste and a little formatting and he had a rough wiki version. Commenting that maybe that was not so bad he sent a link to the small group of original authors.

Over the next few days we all contributed to the document and Karl began to smile as the benefits of writing on the wiki became obvious. No  emails with attachments.  No confusion over what version was the most recent.  A consolidated revision history and immediate notification of changes. We worked on it when we could, in the early morning or late at night, from the office or from home, I even made an edit from my BlackBerry.

In a few days we had created a version that we were happy with as a first draft and invited the larger group of executives to take part. A couple of them did, and we also had comments from interested bystanders.  By the time we got to the committee meeting everyone had had their opportunity to contribute and the document was quickly approved.

Lessons:
Most people will naturally resist change, even when they know it good for them. If there is a familiar alternative they will use it, particularly when they are under pressure. By removing the familiar, users have no choice but to try the new way.

If it is possible to make your collaboration space the only way to do something important, make it so. It will force that critical first step.

What do you think?

Do you have any adoption stories you would like to share?

Thom’s Top Ten #g2e 2010 edition

Posted on by
20

Back in May I wrote about attending Gov 2.0 Expo, in that post I promised to share some of what I learned. In short, it was an intense three days, lots of great presentations, and more importantly dozens of interesting and insightful conversations.  Here is my report.

1.  Top quote

I thought this was a very mature statement.

” web 2.0 tools are not something we need to learn to use, but environments we need to learn to live in.” Jack Holt, Dept. of Defense

For other things I thought were cool at the time you can check out my twitter feed from the conference.

2. Thou shalt engage

There is a ton of civic and employee consultation going on south of the 49th parallel. It seemed like every second presentation was about some form of engagement, mostly using the tool made available by GSA to all agencies, a good example is GSA’s own consultation.

With all this activity going on I expect we will see some more lessons learned in the next few months at WebContent.gov, but two early conclusions appeared in my mind:

  1. A broad national conversation is difficult if not impossible and of limited value.
    There are simply too many voices. Maybe when semantic analysis improves it will be practical but for now focus is essential.
  2. Follow-up is critical. You need to know what you are planning on doing with the input,  be transparent about your intentions and follow through. Be sincere and prepare for the unexpected.  See this post from David Eaves for some perspective on what can happen.

David also had a wonderful keynote at the show about open data, baseball and government. You can watch it here.

For a Canadian perspective on engagement check out what the folks at Ottawa based Publivate are up to.

3. The big systems are coming

The early days of web 2.0 are rapidly coming to a close and I am seeing more and more big systems thinking entering the conversations. This is both good and bad. The good part is when the big systems are viewed as ecosystems with permeable barriers between components. The bad part is when those big systems encourage silos and are not designed to get better the more people use them.  I am not sure if this is an observation from #g2e or just a recent reflection, but there you go – beware of big systems that encourage silos.

4. You can still do a lot with a little

The City of Manor, pop 5,800 showed us how creative partnerships with innovative thinking could accomplish some really interesting things. The image that sticks with me is the bar code stickers on the side of city trucks. Check out the presentation.

5. We have begun to move from rhetoric to results

I think it was Gwynne Kostin at the General Services Administration, Office of New Media and Citizen Engagement, who said this to me and I felt the same. Compared to previous conferences , there was not quite so much enthusiastic arm waving going on. The mood was a little more serious, a little more thoughtful. I think these are the signs of a movement that is maturing.

6. Culture change is the elephant in the room

This thing called culture frequently comes up as something that needs to change. We talk about it a bit and then conveniently move on to something else.  What I almost never hear is the idea that culture is about people. For culture to change, people need to change.

Unfortunately that means you and I have to change.

I had breakfast with the amazing culture change artist Kitty Wooley (@kwooleyy) which led to a guest blog about how hard it can be to change, even when you want. You can read the post at the Senior Fellows and Friends blog .

As a former advertising guy, I am real interested in if, and how we can influence culture change.

7. Canada is seriously behind in some respects

I had the opportunity to chat a little with Senator Kate Lundy from Australia and learned about their Declaration of Open Government based on the three key principles of Informing, Engaging and Participating. Of course Obama has the Open Government Directive and I certainly heard the mantra of Transparency, Participation, Collaboration more than once.

I look forward to hearing something similar from our government….but I am not holding my breath.

8. But we might be ahead on the inside

Of the people I spoke with and certainly in the US and Australia there is nothing quite like the Canadian Government’s GCPEDIA.  For the most part silos persist and efforts to improve internal collaboration are just beginning with initiatives like FedSpace generating a fair bit of discussion on govloop.  Incidentally I had great chats with Emma Antunes who is on loan to FedSpace from NASA, and Mr. govloop himself, Steve Ressler.

9. We need a trusted GC url shortner

It seems like a small thing, but a trusted government URL shortened is essential for gov 2.0. The US version was launched at the show  http://go.usa.gov/.  I am pretty sure there is no official effort underway to do something similar in Canada, although I understand there is a page in GCPEDIA about it.  If anyone has an update, please let me know.

Oh yes, it needs to come with metrics. Lots of metrics.

10. People will engage for their reasons, not yours

Kathy Sierra gave a great short keynote on Creating Passionate Citizens that I would recommend you watch. Who knew that pets were a gateway drug to passion?  Video of Kathy’s talk at Gov 2.0 Expo.

There is lots of other video from the expo.

11. The more things change the more they stay the same

Web 2.0 technology is fun and amazing but when you get right down to it, social networks are about connecting people, and people connect (or not) depending on how well they communicate. There is noting new about that.

There is also nothing new about the power struggles going on all over the place. A disruption is underway and people are seeking advantage. What I think is different this time, is the potential for the “power of the masses” to be put to work on positive change.  Millions of people can now come together at very little cost. I am excited about what can happen, and worried that it won’t.

I have to stop now, there is more, lots more but now its your turn.

This post also appears on govloop

Hope is important…

Posted on by
2

Hope is important, it is what makes good things possible

I tweeted that as part of a response to something from @mgifford this morning and it sounded pretty good. So I thought I would put it here for all eternity.

I could probably talk about it some more in the context of organizational change or something, but I am too busy at the moment.

Maybe you would like to share why you think hope is important?

In whatever context you like.

Thank you

Cultural risk

Posted on by
6

I was recently asked to create an executive briefing that included a high level assessment of the risks associated with adopting social media in the Government. I segmented the risks by three areas; Policy, Legal and Cultural.  The cultural risks are what interest me at the moment and they relate to the internal culture of the organization. I found myself writing and rewriting these words:
Conflict occurs between hierarchical and network management philosophies when power based on information control is replaced by power based on reputation.
To complete the risk equation, I believe the likelihood and impact of this occurring depends on the degree to which key individuals try and maintain power structures based on information control.
I am wondering if the statement captures the essence of the risk ?
Can the risk of conflict in this situation be mitigated — perhaps it is inevitable, even necessary?
Thoughts?

Overwhelmed

Posted on by
6

Many of you will know that we had a  great time at the #w2p two weeks ago,  it was sort of an informal after party for my three year assignment in the Public Service. Well, tonite was the more  official transition party and between the two events I have to say I am a little overwhelmed.

It was a wonderful send-off with many words of encouragement and several presentations. I will be shopping for technology with my gift card soon, and enjoying the book, Keeper of the Flame, thanks to Sue Kemp for getting me a signed copy.  Special thanks also to Corinne Charette and Peter Bruce for taking the time out of their intense schedules to come by and share some very kind words.

Gary Doucet took a break from chasing his CCC in French to visit, you should know that his support was pivotal in the early days to providing the resources to move forward with GCPEDIA. Without his vision we would not be where we are today.

I was thanked for all the good work I have done and the accomplishments I achieved, but really I am the one that should be thankful. If it was not for the many, many wonderful, committed and passionate folks who supported the concept and wanted to do the right thing we could not have done what some said could not have been done. Some of you were at #w2p, some of you were there tonite, some of you are out there.

It is a remarkable accomplishment, bringing a horizontal social platform to a highly segmented federation but it is not mine, it is ours. It belongs to everyone that participates not just for themselves, but also for the greater good. You know who you are.

A few folks I need to mention include Jeff Braybrook, who along with Ken Cochrane and Chuck Henry are responsible for starting it all way back in 2007,  and Karl Ghiara who has been the backbone of the GCPEDIA team for the last 12 months and will be the go to guy for some time to come.  I should also say that I can’t think of a better candidate to take over the executive leadership than Marj Akerly from NRCan who will be moving to CIOB. Charles de Grasse could not make it, but those of you that use GCPEDIA or GCCONNEX should know that he is the guy that keeps the gremlins at bay.

I am proud to have been part of this effort and to see the Clerk of the Privy Council start using GCPEDIA this week.  I also think that the newly formed cluster of departments coming together to finance and take business ownership for GCPEDIA and other elements of the Open Collaborative Workplace is a prime example of the new attitude and spirit of collaboration we are seeing building across the system.

I could ramble on thanking people, but think I should probably call it a night. It has been a great ride, thank you all.

Now where did I leave that consulting shingle….

Thom

p.s. whoever took pictures, please post!

Persuasion presentation using Prezi

Posted on by
3

I thought I would share my first experience with Prezi , the zooming presentation editor. Last Sunday I create a presentation for the class in Persuasion that I am teaching. From download to packaging up on my USB took about five hours.  This is my report of the experience.

I first learned about Prezi through a twitter post by Nick Charney who you may know as someone that  schemes virtuously. I am writing the first draft of this post using Dragon speech to text software on my iPhone while stuck in traffic.

This particular course has a text book, and the process I followed was one of reviewing the chapters, identifying the relevant concepts and essentially throwing key words and images down on a single large canvas. Prezi makes it real easy to reduce, enlarge and rotate elements and I found the authoring process strangely liberating because I was not restricted by the normal linear presentation format.

Prezi allows you to select some pre-formatted styles which I found to include some very nice font selections. The ultra simple text editing is fast to use but unfortunately lacks any Spell Check which is a serious issue for creative spellers like yours truly.

After getting most of the content in place and sizing it to create a hierarchy of importance and some visual flow, it was time to create a path though the material. This was simple mater of clicking on objects, when I wanted to it was easy to move nodes from one object to the other, thus changing the order of the presentation.

A couple of run throughs in play mode and some adjustments to the path and sizing of objects, (to control the zoom effects) and I was ready to go.  The application allows you to share and present from the on-line version or you can create a downloadable non-editable executable that plays from the desktop. I saved a file to my memory stick and went to bed.

ADV1616 Students enjoying their Prezi

ADV1616 Students enjoying their Prezi

Next day I presented the Prezi twice and must say it was fun. Although my presentation was almost entirely text, the variety in sizes, font and zooming transitions made the presentation interesting and engaging. After each presentation I polled the class on their thoughts and universally they liked it.

And myself, I liked it too!

You can find the presentation on-line, (start by clicking on the picture of Aristotle).   This is a rather simple example, I know that Nick is using it to come up with something much more amazing…maybe even subversive.