Working in the Open: January 6–10, 2020
One of Code for Canada’s principles is to operate in public. These regular blog posts put that value into practice, giving readers a window into what we’re doing — and how we do it.
Welcome to our #weeknotes! Here’s our Rose, Bud and Thorn for the week of January 6–10, 2020
🌹 Rose: This week, we welcomed the first 12 Code for Canada fellows of 2020 as they started onboarding! Sessions were led by staff, guests, and former fellows, who were met with lots of open-minded participation from the new team. We also welcomed two new fellowship team staff members, Flavi Anastasi and Doug Vidal-Hernández, who were instrumental in getting our onboarding activities off to a smooth start. Week one is all about team building and getting familiar with how we work. It’s the first step in a month-long orientation program crafted by our fellowship team, after which the fellowship cohort breaks down into teams of three and goes to join their respective government partners. For now, the fellows are calling the Code for Canada office home as they get familiar with each other and prepare for the journey to come. We always love the energy boost that comes from having fellows or CHT members working alongside us in person, and this week has been no exception!
🌱 Bud: Lia lead a new fellowship onboarding session this week examining some of our past fellowship projects, and teasing out the many different stories contained in each one. Each and every fellowship is a story about wins and positive change, but it’s also a story about blockers, learnings, frustrations, relationships, divergence and convergence. By unpacking some past projects, Lia helped new fellows see that these different narratives can co-exist and be true at different points in time. We’re excited about framing the fellowship in this way, and we’re hopeful that it will help the teams keep perspective when things feel difficult. An analogy we often borrow hat effecting change in government is like moving a mountain an inch; you can describe that as moving a mountain an inch, or you can tell a story about how you moved a mountain an inch. See what we did there?
📌 Thorn: Like we mentioned in our last weeknotes, our team has adopted a new 360 degree performance review process. As part of this process, We’re each writing growth objectives for the next six months and sharing them with the team. The growth objectives aren’t strictly about the organization’s needs. They’re a combination of personal aspirations (like getting more comfortable with public speaking, or streamlining work processes to remain in a flow state) and things that will help the organization grow. This sounds great on the surface, but articulating these goals has been “thornier” than we expected. Finding the right balance between personal and professional growth is tricky, and creating a really granular definition of success (like what does an “epic” success look like vs. a target, or minimum success?) has been challenging. That said, growth objectives are all about stretching, and it’s probably a good sign that things have been a bit difficult.
That’s it for this week! As always, thank you for reading, and if you’d like to know more about Code for Canada, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our newsletter.
