It’s about autonomy
Hey friends, check it out. I signed up for a Medium account. I hear it’s all the rage these days with the kids. I actually thought people still used blogspot. Or weebly. (Is weebly still a thing?) But, as is often the case, I was wrong and out of touch.
Anyway, as far as intros go that’s probably the worst. But it’ll give you a sense about how little I blog. So this could very easily be the first and last time I write on Medium. (As a side note, it was really easy to sign up and the format is clean and simple, which is nice. Well done Medium folks. I assume they read all blogs on this site and will thus see my compliment.)
OK so what am I here for? Well the long and short of it is that I’m responding to another post on Medium by John Kenney. His post was actually a response to a different post by Nick Scott. (Another aside — is that a thing that people normally do on Medium? Respond to posts that are responses to other posts? I sure hope, so otherwise I’m going to look pre-tty ridiculous!) Anyway, if you haven’t read them, go back and do that now before you read the rest of mine. They’re good posts and John and Nick are certainly way better writers than me.
There’s lots of stuff to chew on from John’s post. And I plan to chew on it and look forward to discussing the finer points with him and others in person. But for now, I only want to make clear what Free Agents is about. And as the title of this blog suggests, it’s about autonomy.
Before I go further, let me tell you a bit about me. I generally don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I don’t really have a 5-year-plan like you’re supposed to. If I answered that question in an interview in the past, I was making stuff up. I snuck into the Government of Canada in 2009 with the hopes that it would open up a huge number of opportunities for me to move around and work on a bunch of different cool jobs so that I could eventually figure out what I want to do with my life. (Spoiler alert: I still don’t know what I want to do with my life.)
I quickly learned the hard truth — it’s not actually that easy to move around in our public service. I’ve been relatively lucky to work on some great projects in my 9+ years. But along the way I met countless people who were stuck in the wrong job, were generally unhappy, had serious unmet potential, and who would probably otherwise have left government entirely if not for the pension and benefits. I came to realize that our system was full of people who feel stuck, who had lost control of their professional lives, and who were weighing the pros and cons of leaving. It made me sad.
So when I first heard Lauren Hunter talk about Free Agents I was incredibly excited. I couldn’t believe that a department (NRCan) was going to test a new system that would allow people the freedom to choose projects anywhere they wanted while guaranteeing their salary and benefits. They were letting people have their cake and eat it too. It seemed too good to be true. I basically begged Lauren to hire me as a Free Agent. (I never got to be a Free Agent, but I think things turned out ok anyway.)
Fast forward to today. We’ve hired 40 public servants (who were already inside government) and they’re free to find and complete projects anywhere they want. They’ve completed around 75 projects across about 30 different organizations in less than two years. We’ve convinced three departments (NRCan, Transport, and TBS) to be part of this program and are regularly approached by others who want to be the fourth. These “home departments” take the risk of hiring people and literally letting them go wherever they want.
Why do we ask them to do that? It’s simple. We need their help to test a fairly straightforward hypothesis: when you give people increased control over their work, they will be happier and more productive. In other words, if you let people be awesome, they will be awesome. If you do some research, you’ll realize quickly that agency, control, autonomy over your life is at the very core of happiness. And the flip side is then of course true – lack of autonomy can eventually lead to depression and anxiety. We’ve all seen people land in professional situations like this, haven’t we?
Yes, of course there are many who have found success within the existing system. And that’s fantastic. But their success does not in even the slightest way discount the experiences of so many others who have struggled with a system in which they have felt trapped and forgotten.
I also fully recognize that Free Agents is not a system change. It is a system hack. I would never tell anyone that we’ve changed anything in the system. We have not. But we are demonstrating an adjacent possible. We are showing another way that centres around individual needs and ultimately is meant to benefit the whole system.
I understand we made some mistakes early on by over-emphasizing Free Agents as innovation superheros who would solve problems and fill an innovation talent gap. Our communications were (and still are) terrible. People get confused about what we’re doing all the time. Let me just say that it’s REALLY hard to do the thing while simultaneously talking about the thing ALL THE DAMN TIME. (No like seriously, I really struggle with this. All I want to do is build this thing, not talk about it. Some people in government love to talk. I just love to do.)
Anyway, I want to set the record straight right here, right now — the primary goal of Free Agents is not to address the innovation talent gap. Yes, we screen for attributes related to innovation and problem solving because we believe they are useful and should be promoted. We encourage Free Agents to develop related skills and knowledge because we believe certain approaches will lead to better outcomes. We are fans of the innovation and problem solving skills models developed by the OECD and Nesta and so we are encouraging their adoption. But I can’t emphasize this enough – we would do none of that if we could not ground it all in the basic principle of autonomy. All that really matters about what we are doing is that we are giving the Free Agents …wait for it…free agency.
I respect John immensely, but dude I gagged a little bit when I read these quotes: “There’s a talent gap!” “It’s actually a crisis!” “Hire an innovator!” “If we just had the talent, we’d be innovative and innovate”. I don’t say any of those things (as far as I can remember anyway). I don’t really even know what those things mean. All I know is that regardless of whether the talent is innovative or not, it’s trapped, it’s frustrated by the system, and it’s seriously considering getting the hell out of here really soon. And if anyone cares about our public service, they should care about that and should be trying to fix it.
So that’s what we’re trying to do.
And I hope we succeed because like seriously guys I need more time to figure out what I want to do with my life.
……..
See you in space.
Abe
(Are formal closings a thing on blogs? Man I hope so.)
