Ok so this is a weird little thing that just happened to me this morning on March 24, 2021.

I am doing a little early morning creative work, and trying to open an old illustrator file. The internet says I need to covert the .ai file into a .svg file. I have managed to do that easily but now I am looking for a free tool that will let me edit .svg files.  Trying to open the file from google drive, one of the options presented in the “connect more apps”  thing is something called Nearpod, an educational addon for google slides that lets you “Embed the magic of Nearpod directly into Google Slides”.  Anyway, it says it’s for K12 and I sometimes teach college, so I think maybe I should check it out – yet another diversion… 

Scanning the comments section, I realize they are kind of spammy with hashtags like #freecookies4ever and repeated posts of the same poem by someone called Abigail Enright. Thinking this is a waste of time, I am about to leave, but something motivates me to read a little of it.  So I stop and read a few lines. I find some of it deeply reflective of how I am feeling at this time of my life in this pandemic place, things like: 

My world’s on fire, how about yours?

You’ll never know if you don’t go (go!)

Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb

So much to do, so much to see

So what’s wrong with taking the back streets?

I am intrigued by the random serendipity I am feeling and my curiosity leads me to paste some of the text into search.  Almost immediately I am transported back 20 years or so as I watch a video and discover that the poem is actually the lyrics from the Shrek song I first heard with my partner and offspring in an immersive theatre in Disneyland or maybe it was Universal Studios… 

You probably recognize it.

Lyrics to the Smash Mouth song All Star, from their 1999 album Astro Lounge.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xxQs34UMx4

All of this to say, despite everything, just remember,  you’re a rock star, get your game on, go play!

At the end of 2019 I concluded an assignment with the very talented folks at the Policy Community Partnership Office. In my time there I explored the policy process within the GC and co-created a new framework for learning about policy along with a new 2 day course. I delved into topics, curriculum and learning approaches. Created some information architecture built some prototypes. I experienced enlightenment, pivots, passion, frustration and the 12 steps of why. I met tons of really smart folks and I learned a lot.

As 2020 begins I will be starting a new project, more on that if and when the paperwork comes through. In the meantime I thought I would share some reflections on what I might like to do in the new year. Some of this applies to the project I have coming up, but much of it also could apply to future projects in the next fiscal.

I would like to work on an open project. Maybe a prototype of some sort. Maybe a provocative presentation or video. Definitely something to support positive change. I would like to use evidence and data and apply critical thinking. I would like to work with a multi-disciplinary, teleworking friendly team with as little drama as possible. I would like to create little stories to support culture change.  I would like to be part of an agile network.

There is a whole lot of “I” in that paragraph, but the most important thing is what we can do together. If you have a project in mind that I could help out with, I would love to chat. If you don’t have a project in mind, I have some ideas 🙂

The listening machine prototype
Build on previous work to collect and quickly distill meaning from large amounts of qualitative engagement data.  Establish a standard for consultation data.

AI for policy formation
Prospect for data and opportunities to demonstrate the value of  AI/BigData to policy formulation/implementation/evaluation/improvement. Demonstrate a high value use case. Communicate the possible through a provocation paper or other means.

Any kind of collective curation effort
Seems to me that we could be doing a much better job of capturing and sharing key knowledge from across the public service ecosystem. For many topics I believe there are willing partners who just need some dedicated leadership.

These ideas are just starting points, if they happen to align with something you need to do that would be great, but I am open to talking about any project where I can provide value. Let’s chat and see if we can find some synergies.  

What is the Free Agent Program? 

It is an efficient way for you as a manager to get short term project help.

The Free Agents are a new model for workplace mobility in the Government of Canada that supports managers looking to rapidly and easily acquire top talent to support their short-term project needs.

You can find out more about the program and details on acquiring Free Agents by visiting the GCcollab group.

All the best to you and yours in 2020.

Yesterday I was part of a panel at the Conference Board event on Public Service Transformation with Virginie Carrier, Senior Strategist, Future Workforce Strategies, DND, and Teresa D’Andrea, Director, GC Digital Exchange, Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada, TBS.  

The topic was the Complexities and Opportunities of Culture Change and we went through a series of questions, the supporting deck is here.  I had one little epiphany in preparation for the session which I tweeted about, it might be worth some further discussion if you are interested in theory of change stuff. 

The event was held on the 4th floor of the Museum of Nature and there were about 90 people there and some interesting speakers.  

I caught two of the speakers:

John Burrett, President of Haiku Analytics did a presentation on Using Network Analysis to Map and Drive Change. He closed with a very cool animated diagram of the day in a life of 1000 Americans, check it out.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHiOYjDCMZI&w=560&h=315]

The second speaker was Andrew Graham, Professor, School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University. A former Public Servant turned academic Andrew has been researching failure and had a very interesting session on the Architecture of Failure—Why Learning How to Fail is a Necessary Step on the Path to Success. I tweeted out some highlights and he closed with a long list of Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet and what some strategies for reducing the probability of catastrophic failure.

If you are into any of this stuff I am happy to chat.

Thom

It’s about listening

At the beginning of this year, I was deep into engagement around creating Canada’s next plan for open government.

As part of this process, I was promoting events on the twitter and one of my tweets caught the attention of someone up the chain. Apparently, there was some concern that I insulting people in Cattle country, as we had recently returned from workshops in Regina and Edmonton.  I don’t know the details or the thinking behind it,  all of this happened above my pay grade and my management had the good sense not to bring it to me at the time. I only heard about it because apparently, it came up in one of Alex Benay’s regular “Ask Me Anything” events and someone related it to me.   I believe this is the tweet in question.

I view engagement as an exercise in institutional listening and the cow is an important part of that. Those of you that have been to one of my workshops have probably met Moo the interrupting cow. Moo is a facilitation device that introduces some humour to help participants be heard. I use it, along with some dog slides to set the stage for group discussion.

It goes something like this.  I would like to introduce you to Moo, the interpreting cow. Moo is the result of a knock, knock joke my kids told me years ago…sometimes a participant knows the joke which begins to engage folks. Anyway, the deal with Moo is that when you are in working in a group and someone is dominating the conversation, you can toss the cow (metaphorically) at the person to let them know it is time to let others talk.  I sometimes will give the cow to one of my colleagues to toss at me if I run over.

I am writing about this because this incident reminds me of our tendency in the public service to try and eliminate risk in everything we do. Unfortunately, this also sucks the fun out of everything we do.  AND FUN IS IMPORTANT!  Especially if you are trying to come up with creative solutions to challenging problems.

Pretty sure there is some research on this and, certainly in my experience as a facilitator and teacher I have learned that if you can make an exercise fun, you will generally get better results.  Others seem to agree, at GovMaker 2017, Hillary from Ontario expressed interest so I sent her one of my backup cows as a gift because I know they are working hard at listening as well.

But the most important thing about the cow is that it is part of a process that leads to results like this: 

I have done a lot of engagement work over the years and this is the desired result. I am also pretty sure that if more Canadians felt this way about their interactions with government things wouldn’t be so scary for our democracy these days.

What do you think?

p.s. If you like the story about the cow and listening you may also be interested in learning about the ducks and enterprise alignment. 

I was reminded this morning of Blueprint 2020 and the Chatham House party that we organized back in 2013. Reviewing the blog posts from back in the day, I notice that it looks like I never wrote the follow up bit, so here it is, five years later…

20 plus folks got together for dinner and facilitated idea generation and dialogue. Several very talented people volunteered to help make the experience  extremely awesome.

We did Lego serious play and World Cafe. We drew on tabletops and constructed 3d models of abstract social concepts. We took visual notes and created a report.

Our three top items were:

1. Decision making pushed down to the lowest possible level
2. TBS policy that mandates openness and knowledge sharing
3. Creation of a pervasive Work Market

Here is the final report that we submitted to the Secretariat. CHP2020_Aug_28_2013_Final_Report

What you think, do any of these ideas still resonate?  Have we made progress?

And I hope someone will do the same for me.

This is probably the hardest thing I have done, and that includes taking my mother off of life support. Tomorrow at 3:00 an animal doctor and her assistant will come to our house and gently put our, my beloved friend of 15 years to sleep. It is the right thing to do, no doubt, he has a cancerous lesions on his arm and he is really old for a Golden Retriever.

I always knew this would be hard, in fact I dreamed of it many times. My parents are both dead, so I have some experience with family members departing, but this is different.  This is a dog. A creature that cannot speak in a language we can easily understand yet that speaks clearly in a language we did not know we knew.

Saul has taught me many things, like patience and the acknowledgment that there are important things I cannot see or smell. That there is a connection to the natural world that is obvious to some, but very elusive to others (humans for instance).  That you can tell most of what you need to know with a couple of good sniffs of another’s butt.

I don’t want to overplay this, after all I am talking about a dog, but at the same time there was a whole lot of unexpected learning that I experienced in the 15 years I have known this animal. He has been aloof yet loving, judging yet inclusive, independent yet dependent, beautiful yet…always beautiful.  One of the great joys of my life has been taking Saul and Otis for walks and seeing the expressions of other humans as we approach..literally it is like taking beauty for a walk.  And yet the beauty does not know it is.

There is a language that dogs, and probably other animals speak that is not spoken yet is terribly obvious when you are the victim. There is no doubt when he looks at you that you have been missed, or that it is time for a walk or ITS 3:00 P M AND WHERE IS LUNCH?

There is a certain purity to taking your dog to the park and letting them be a dog. Even it it means they come home wet and stinky. Inconvenience yes. But also priceless. It has something to do with the look in their eyes and the connection with reality (aka mud).

I am very much not religious, but I am spiritual and I remember reading somewhere that pets can help you connect with the other, the greater. whatever that may be. This Saul has shown me and I know now it to be true.

There is no tragedy here, just the circle of life. It is hard for those of us that continue but perhaps not so much for him that is old in dog years.

So the pain and remorse I feel are real. I did not cry so much when my parents died. They lived a good life and went on their own terms, mostly. But this is different. This is a being that has been dependent since the beginning, yet independent. Someone, something that has helped me deal with loss and disappointment for a decade and a half, yet at the same time he has had a good life, swimming in the ocean and the Rideau and the St Lawrence – they have webbed feet for a reason you know:)

In conclusion, I am grateful for the time I could share with Saul, I cannot express the appreciation for what i have learned and felt from him. Those of you that have pets, I am sure you can relate.

Even as he leaves this world I think he  asks a question that we all struggle to answer.
What does it mean to be?

What do you think?

Saul RIP May 8, 2018

p.s. I have human friends of course, but as much as I love hem, they have not taught me as much as  this creature from another species.

About that thing you promised…

As some of you know I share my current life with a couple of beautiful animals. The Golden Retrievers Otis and Saul.  They consume a fair amount of food and about a decade ago I purchased a large plastic bin to store bags of the stuff.

This bin stands a couple of feet tall and provides for a large bag of dog food food to be contained within and accessed via a hinged lid. The hinge on the lid is typical of many plastic containers and consists of a series of interlocking plastic teeth. The design seems reasonable but in practice it is less than satisfactory. The lid regularly disconnects from the bin resulting in a minor but consistent irritation.

Every time I feed the two beauties, I open the lid wondering if it will fall off, resulting in a swear as I have to stop what I am doing and refit the lid. As I said, this is a relatively minor irritation in the grand scheme of things,  and definitely a first world problem.

This happened to me a few minutes ago. It has probably happened a thousand times before, but for some reason tonight I realized that the faulty, but still more or less functional bin was a metaphor for many systems we use within government.  If you are a public servant, or a citizen interacting with government, you can probably think of an example. Imagine something that more or less does the job, but in an irritating way.

It might be document management, enterprise travel, procurement or HR related system. You know what I mean, a tool that more or less works, most of the time but occasionally for no apparent reason fails utterly.

In isolation the problems hardly seem worth fixing, after all good enough it. But taken together these continuous and ongoing irritations amount to employee harassment. The complete and utter lack of empathy and respect for our time is demeaning, intimidating and occasionally a cause for personal humiliation and embarrassment.

Ok so I am taking the definition of harassment a little out of context, but the erosion of our mental health is real. #Justsaying