Investing in Digital Tools & Upskilling Teams Most Effectively to Meet Public Sector Challenges Head On

An investment of Confidence.

This presentation was given to the Public Sector Network hosted Digital Government Roadshow, hosted on April 29th, 2020. I’d like to make a video version of it at some point, but as an increment of value, I’m sharing my speaking notes (which I adhered to for the most part), and the images.

During my talk, I had a lot of excellent reference points for the audience who had heard the Honourable Joyce Murray, Minister of Digital Government, Government of Canada, and Jaimie Boyd, Chief Digital Officer for the Province of BC. They really set the stage for the vision and opportunity we have, and the things we already have underway, respectively.

One thing I notice about visionary and inspirational messages is that they have a dual effect: motivation and fear. Motivation towards outcomes, and fear that, as an individual, it is hard to know how, where and with whom to get started.

My assessment of this potential need to manage that fear so that the motivation can be sustained led me to give a talk on how to have confidence.

Hello. I’m Heather and I’ve been around government since 2003. I’m currently working with several excellent teams at the Exchange Lab in the BC Public Service. We improve service delivery with modern technology and tools.

As a geographer, I accidentally found my way into the technology field. I spend most of my time discerning how to get better outcomes for our organizations and communities as we navigate changing systems. Often, this involved trying new technologies.

Today, I’ve been asked to make the most of 15 minutes of your time sharing how investing in digital tools, and up-skilling teams can meet the challenges the public sector faces.

I want to start with exploring some of the creative tension I’ve noticed.

Our goal at the BCDevExchange is to equip the public service to be responsive to change, as we build services that meet people’s expectations.

It means that we’re always paying attention to where we are now, and where we might go.

We’re lucky in that we get to act quickly on this creative tension because we have the agency to build teams who resolve it.

Another driver is that we don’t want to experience a future where we’re deeply disappointed we didn’t find a way to pull up our socks faster.

With COVID-19, this tension is amplified.

I wonder, why we don’t have higher expectations more often.

And then, I think about astronauts. The ones who went to the moon. People who study visionary leadership, change and achievement often reference this moon shot.

I also think about how if someone gave me the opportunity to go to the moon, I’d feel like I was really technologically advanced all of a sudden.

Meanwhile, 50 years have passed since we took this picture, and I’m probably not going to the moon any time soon. But it is technically possible.

My friends, the good news is: rising to public sector challenges with digital tools and high performing teams is not rocket science. It is possible I believe it’s not going to take us 50 years.

I know, because I don’t know any rocket scientists… but I do know public servants who are meeting significant service delivery challenges today (not tomorrow, as this talk originally referenced).

I think that confidence is the book end to higher expectations. At the core, that is what I want to offer you today.

I initially wanted to offer thought provocation, empathy, wisdom and practical actions that you might write down.

I had lots of ideas.

But I started to feel anxious. I felt, perhaps how you might be feeling these days. Overwhelmed.

I know my colleagues are going to draw from a deep well of experience for us today.

I’d like to prime us for that exploration with something we do for folks that join us at the Lab: acknowledge that this is hard work, so that we can take the right steps to build real confidence.

And with that comes fear.

Fear is our natural reaction to things we don’t understand or to people we don’t relate to.

Notionally, we become vulnerable when there are expectations about using technology, especially when it puts some people at an advantage over others.

I believe part of the reason why we’re struggling to adopt higher expectations for advancing digital is actually because we’re kind.

We don’t want to scare people. We want to be fair.

I’d prefer we acknowledge the challenges, though, and then put the right conditions in place to build confidence and get there. I think that is more kind.

In the magical universe of Harry Potter, people who are not magic are muggles. They are problematic from the author’s point of view, but they are also to be protected.

Unlike Harry Potter, in reality there’s no innate gift of technology. We can all learn to use, deploy or create it.

I’d like to use Harry Potter as an analogy… and assume that none of us are muggles. We could all wield a wand.

Because if we are going to have the confidence to rise to our service delivery challenges, we need to expect that.

One warning: there is no Ministry of Magic.

There isn’t even really a ministry of technology. And even though there are Ministries responsible for technology… they can’t possibly capture or deliver the scope, scale or pace of opportunities that are emerging and available from around the world.

To embrace the magic of technology, we need to think differently than wrapping big, complex challenges in hierarchical organization structures.

Meanwhile, those structures feel safe to us. So again, we need confidence to change.

If we accept that there is a creative tension between our current state, and the capabilities and future we want to build;

And we accept that the hardest part is getting started, because frankly, this stuff can feel scary;

Then how might we build confidence and get rolling with the right tools and skills?

A team is not a list of names. It is 5–7 people who trust each other. It does not exist until it has spent time learning how to solve problems together.

Many of us have experienced alternatives to this:

• Program with someone that used to code. They have a magic wand and we want to put it to use… so their boss empowers them to start building something that no one else understands.
• Or, there’s some year end money, and that thing that’s been getting in our way is ripe for the picking. They want to hire a smarty pants to come build something in a month. That no one understands.
• Or, a committee decides that we need a thing that uses some technology. The leaders offer a couple of people from their programs to make it happen from the side of the desk, which of course we understand to be magical and unending.

I rarely see any of these lead to lasting, generative value for the public. This is worse when there isn’t even any learning from it.

I wonder if we take these half measures because we’re not confident we can really take on the challenge in the first place. We kind of limp in.

We give half hearted efforts to test our fears… our fears that the challenge can’t really be solved. And over time the failures we’ve set ourselves up for have eroded our confidence even more.

This is why I think people think we are doing magic at the Exchange lab. We’ve some how decided to build real dedicated teams: mythical structures that are impossible in our time, with our budgets… and we’ve wholly committed to solving real problems, small and big.

Believe your eyes. It is possible. And when a team like this has your back, you can’t help but feel confident.

We get to choose how we see a new path, or experience.

• We can fear what will go wrong, or be propelled by what might go right.
• We can fret our past mistakes, or see the opportunity for learning.
• We might see roadblocks, or connections that can help remove them.

There is nothing magical about the mindset of people who rise to the challenge. They are making choices about their approach to dealing with uncertainty.

If you embrace the uncertainty, then you can gain the advantage within it, by doing things like:

• making the state of your knowledge open and visible, and
• using tools that enable collaboration and real time feedback.

Ultimately, you want to allow people to learn, act and contribute to building clarity as much as possible, without the time lag of waiting for direction.

Day by day, the landscape will become clear, and you will gain confidence.

This is Harry’s snowy owl, Hedwig. This character is a friend and collaborator with Harry.

Obviously, Harry collaborated with Hermione and Ron…. Less obviously, this secondary character was key and extremely valued.

For those folks who are starting to wade in and are looking for ways to collaborate, it can be daunting. There’s a lot going on in this space.

And it can feel exclusionary if you’re new and haven’t yet found your connection to the community.

Take a cue from Hedwig: she pays acute attention to the situations Harry finds himself in and shows up to contribute.

For those of us on the other side that are already involved, when we build community by engaging those who show up to contribute, we generate confidence broadly within the system.

The notion that we can achieve more together grows stronger with each connection and contribution we experience.

I’m seeing this in the context of COVID-19 — people everywhere are teaming up to contribute and are finding the spaces where there is the most need.

Finally, discern a vision and get started testing it with actions so that you can get feedback and learn.

Make the next decision, but not all of them.

If you make decisions about what will happen months from now, you’re doing so when you have the least amount of information.

Instead, we want to wait to make decisions at the last responsible moment, when we have more information.

Doesn’t that take a weight off? You don’t have to figure it all out now. That adds to the confidence bank.

So to recap, at the Exchange Lab, we see confidence in taking on big public sector challenges develop when we:

1. Deploy real teams.
2. Be honest about uncertainty.
3. Don’t hesitate to collaborate.
4. Make decisions we can learn from.

One last analogy:

As Harry Potter awakens goes to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the first time, he experiences the train station platform.

Magically concealed behind the barrier between Muggle Platforms Nine and Ten, he must board Hogwarts Express on September 1st, in order to attend school.

This requires running into a wall full speed, which gives way to the magical platform.

Learning how to harness our digital mindsets and methods is just as accessible to us… except the platform is concealed by the wall of the internet. You need to know where to look.

But for those folks who have never seen the platform in action before, it’s not immediately obvious, and kind of scary.

Lucky for Harry on his first try, he was surrounded by some friends that journeyed together.

You are not alone in this journey either.