GC Entrepreneurs and You
Summary
- GC Entrepreneurs (GCEs) don’t work in isolation — we’re collaborative and horizontal! (Les entrepreneurs du GC ne travaillent pas en silo, mais en collaboration horizontale!)
- One example of this was a workshop that we conducted at the Innovation Fair last week (May 16, 2018) to engage with other public servants to share ideas. (Par exemple, nous avons tenu un atelier au Salon de l’innovation 2018 la semaine dernière (le 16 mai 2018) pour discuter entre fonctionnaires et échanger des idées.)
- We’ll be doing more outreach in the months ahead and we also encourage you to reach out to us. (Nous allons organiser d’autres activités dans les mois à venir, et nous vous encourageons à nous contacter.)
Hi!
For this blog, I would like to delve into the GC Entrepreneurs’ role as ambassadors for innovation and change. Currently, there are 17 of us GCEs out of the close to 260,000 public servants that work across Canada and internationally.
We’re privileged and while we’re focused on advancing specific projects, we’re also very conscious about being open, collaborative, and working horizontally. In other words, the 17 of us won’t be able to make much of an impact without the help of many other public servants. So, success for us isn’t just about making headway on our projects (though that’s still very important!), it’s also about helping to infuse the entrepreneurial spirit in all public servants. (Nous sommes privilégiés et, bien que nous nous concentrions sur l’avancement de certains projets en particulier, nous sommes également très conscients qu’il nous faut être ouverts, collaborer et travailler horizontalement. En d’autres termes, à dix-sept, nous ne pourrons pas avoir beaucoup d’impact sans l’aide de nombreux autres fonctionnaires. En effet, le succès pour nous ne consiste pas seulement à faire avancer nos projets — même si c’est très important! — , mais aussi à aider à insuffler l’esprit entrepreneurial chez tous les fonctionnaires.)
This is especially relevant for me in my regular job at PCO’s Public Service Renewal Secretariat as we work with others to help make the Public Service more agile, equipped, and inclusive. We do this by working with horizontal communities and networks all the time — a prime example of this is the annual Blueprint 2020 Innovation Fair, which showcases innovations happening in departments and agencies to thousands of public servants across the country. One of the workshop’s at this year’s Fair was hosted by the GCEs.
This workshop (put together by Mathieu, Anthony, Leanne, Cedric, Mike, Hamid, Adrian, Laura and myself) allowed us to start sharing our experiences and learning with others (something we want to continue to do!) and included an interactive activity (in groups) to seek ideas on: How might we empower talent in the Government of Canada?
The ideas each of the instant-teams generated was amazing. These included:
- Having inter-directorate teams whose purpose would be to brainstorm and research and bring forth new ideas
- Encouraging leadership qualities at all levels
- Using micro-missions, micro-assignments, and tiger teams to broaden experiences
- Focusing on soft skills
These were just some of the excellent ideas generated by public servants coming together from various departments and sharing their diverse views and experiences over an hour-long workshop. Think what could happen if this was a more regular occurrence! (Ce ne sont là que quelques-unes des excellentes idées générées par les fonctionnaires provenant de différents ministères qui ont partagé leurs points de vue et leurs expériences au cours d’un atelier d’une heure. Imaginez ce qui pourrait arriver si c’était une activité régulière!)
The workshop was also about viewing your idea not as a solution but as an hypothesis (an educated guess about your problem and what works), allowing you to change your mindset to test/experiment. If your idea is a hypothesis — how could you set out to validate or invalidate it? Viewing your ideas as a hypotheses — setting up small experiments to test your assumption — allows you to learn a lot about your problem and your idea quickly and at a reduced cost (compared to the long, rigourous vetting exercise that traditionally exists in bureaucracies, that often results in new ideas/solutions being launched full-scale/system-wide at a high cost and with no/limited data about whether it will work).
Thank you to all those that participated in the workshop last week — your ideas will help us frame some of our work going forward. (Merci à tous ceux et à toutes celles qui ont participé à l’atelier la semaine dernière. Vos idées nous aideront à structurer une partie de notre travail à l’avenir.)
Of course, it isn’t just about generating ideas. In fact, that’s the easy part. The next step is to take those ideas and try them out on a small scale, adjusting and improving as you engage and test with people who could be impacted by the idea. Building a team that can work together to carry an idea forward, through ups and downs, is critical. It’s also important to share our successes and set-backs, so that others can learn. (Bien sûr, il ne s’agit pas seulement de générer des idées — ça, c’est la partie facile. La prochaine étape consiste à essayer ces idées à petite échelle, à les ajuster et à les améliorer au fur et à mesure que nous nous engageons et que nous faisons des tests auprès de personnes pour qui ces idées pourraient changer les choses. Il est essentiel de former une équipe capable de travailler ensemble pour faire avancer une idée alors que le projet connaît des hauts et des bas. Il est également important de partager les réussites et les échecs pour que les autres puissent apprendre de notre expérience.)
We’re aiming to do that ourselves so make sure you follow-us and join us in future events! Also, let us know about your experiences and feel free to contact us if you want to lend a hand.
For those who are curious, the presentation from the workshop is available on GCPedia. Pour ceux qui sont curieux, le document de présentation utilisé pour l’atelier est disponible sur GCPédia (disponible seulement en anglais).
