Musings of a GC Entrepreneur and 8 reflections on the States of Change development program
How do you start a blog post to share some inner thoughts and reflections about my new nebulous job and an international program designed to tackle public sector innovation? I have no idea who my readers will be, what aspects they are interested in hearing about or if anyone is interested to begin with. I figured leading with honesty might be a great way to start. Be warned this will be a solid read — that means long. With so much flowing through my mind after my first few months as a GC entrepreneur and more recently our progress through the States of Change (SoC) development program I wouldn’t know what not to share so opted for full disclosure. I am completely humbled by what lies before us all. The first half of this post is more personal and about myself and my journey as an entrepreneur. The second half focuses on my main reflections emerging from the SoC program. Feel free to jump to the part that interests you most, I promise I won’t be insulted.
So let’s jump in shall we?
I recently started a journey with my fellow GC entrepreneurs which will officially span a year, and will unofficially last the entirety of our careers in my opinion. Never heard of a GC entrepreneur? You’re likely not alone. My counterpart at Transport Canada Anthony Jaz wrote a good blog post to introduce you to the bunch. Our focus is twofold, core system overhauls and how disruptive technology can help accelerate government transformation. Our biggest hurdle to overcome as public servants however will be one of culture. Up to 40% of our behaviour is controlled by habit which is largely dictated by an organizational culture that might not even be perceptible by the vast majority. To drive home the point there is an endless array of books on transforming organizational culture yet not one can lay out a step by step plan to address and change it successfully. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.
So we’ve essentially been dropped into the middle of a massive death star with no blueprints and clear instructions to find and fix any vulnerabilities (this will likely be my only Star Wars reference, no promises though). To help us on this journey the Impact and Innovation Unit (IIU) has partnered with the Nesta States of Change (SoC) development program, a first of its kind in the world, which aims to provide participants with the necessary knowledge and experience to hopefully transform the public sector. It is a 9 month commitment that will see us develop skills necessary in order to enact innovative change throughout government. Everything about our group seems to generate grand lofty expectations not so dissimilar of the hype cycle, see figure 1 below, I’ve no doubt that many will keep an eye out for the trough of disillusionment and it’s hard for me to find fault with that perspective. From the outside looking in I’d likely share the same pessimism. From the inside looking out I’m looking for any friends and allies in the omnipresent fog that I might be able to lean on and draw strength from so that I may contribute meaningful change that does generate lasting impact.
So many of us (public servants) are hard at work doing just that, tackling sometimes insurmountable odds in order to improve government for Canadians and ourselves. I know so many incredible individuals (you all know who you are😊) in our ginormous organization and I am floored at how amazing, intelligent, inspiring and hardworking they are. Day in and day out they give all they have to give in a system designed to incentivize the status quo and every now and then I see them make a dent, shifting us all towards a future worth heading towards. My goal by year end is to continue this journey I’ve been on these past two years, which saw me working across silos with so many of these amazing people both inside and out of Canadian Heritage, delivering on incremental change that better serves not only us but Canadians. We are never done learning and improving in life, we strive for perfection, always chasing as it eludes us constantly, forever outside our grasp. So starting our journey with a program focused on public sector innovation seems quite fitting.
I must confess to you school and traditional methods of learning have always been difficult for me. I often suffered from constant day dreaming and lack of motivation. Much of my knowledge and skills were developed the hard way quite frankly, through lots of grinding, many failures, sometimes a success here and there — but mostly tons of failures. Life has been an excellent teacher for me. The few teachers and mentors that pierced my veil of inattention were passionate and inspiring to listen to. Their power over me laid in their ability of connecting what I was learning to what we’d be doing or seeing in life. The SoC program tackles learning in a similar fashion however it pairs learning with doing in the here and now. Like many training programs it isn’t so much about what you learn but how you apply it. We often struggle with making that leap from the theoretical to the practical, well at least I do. Below I’d like to share some of the most poignant aspects of the SoC program as well as some of my thoughts and reflections so I hope you’ll indulge me a bit more 😉
1. Our current government is misaligned with its intended purpose
On our very first day Marco Steinberg stressed that our 18th century institutions are struggling with 21st century problems and technology. I have seen this divide evolve over my 15-year career, as the world continued to exponentially evolve and transform the insular world of government fell ever more behind. As Scott Brison, the president of the Treasury Board of Canada, so elegantly stated “We can’t be a Blockbuster government serving a Netflix citizenry!” The world we live in defines our reality which means we should adapt our logic to map to the logic of the world rather than the inverse. Our siloed approach to serving citizens has reached its apex, we all see how cross domain cutting issues cannot be tackled in compartmentalized ways. We need to drastically increase our ability to work across domains to tackle the complex problems that face us today and we need to do so in a way that demonstrates that digital is part of our DNA.
2. Learn and improve by doing
The SoC program promotes a “bias towards action” so that your learning is tangible and cast against real-world challenges and projects. At the end of the day if you’ve done nothing to move the needle forward you will not be able to claim victory. This in no way means to just jump into battle without thinking about developing a strategy but it does stress the importance of balancing analysis with tangible progress through action. Too often we get consumed in the breadth and weight of the challenges before us that we find ourselves suffering from analysis paralysis. You will never solve complex problems on the first try so don’t wait too long before diving in. Besides the world continuously shifts and changes, best to work through things quickly and iteratively. At least this way you can get closer to solving issues.
3. We are moving from risk to ambiguity
Let me ask you the same question we were asked. Is the world predictable or ambiguous? Much of what we do in government operates with the assumption that the world is predictable. Operating in this fashion means we deal primarily with risks which is backed by probabilities and data. In an ambiguous world however, often what we end up dealing with is uncertainty, which is the absence of probabilities and data. In such circumstances you want to shift the default behaviour of coming up with solutions and transform them into testable hypotheses. This way you are building the necessary knowledge and data to eventually be equipped to deal with probabilities and risks, which brings me to the next golden nugget.
4. Turn your ideas into testable hypotheses
In an ambiguous world we need to move from solution building to coming up with a hypothesis you can test. Frame your ideas using the if/then language such as if we regulated the contents of vending machines then less sugar based snacks and drinks would be bought. This pairs your proposed solution with a method of how you might measure its success. Naturally as problems get more complex the more difficult this becomes hence why working with a diverse team is critical to help balance and flesh out your proposed solutions with the reality of the world. This line of thinking is not new and quite a few are making great strides in helping others move in this direction such as the folks at TBS who are running the Experimentation Works initiative.
5. Iteration and experimentation as a new way of life
Now that you have testable hypotheses strive to take incremental steps in your problem solving journey. The goal is to become incredibly proficient at planning, implementing and changing so that it happens almost concurrently. This iterative experimental process becomes a way for the system to deal with ambiguous questions known as wicked problems in our domain. You are essentially applying a lean startup mentality to government where the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) mentality is applied to your incremental shifts and changes. Frame your experiment in such a way that the scope and complexity remains small enough to achieve in a reasonable amount of time. We need to move away from the big bang approaches to problem solving where we craft 100-page requirements documents and disappear for a year or two. The days of working in siloes and throwing work over the fence are long gone. Feedback loops need to be incorporated into the journey as early as possible to make sure you are even heading in the right direction. At least this way you find out quick when you’ve veered terribly off track and when you get something right you build upon it using the same methods you used to get there in the first place. It is careful, thoughtful and methodical. The above allows you to deliver incremental change more rapidly in ways that are more agile should a change in direction be needed or when new insights emerge which is happening all the time now anyhow.
6. Deal with risk holistically
We are adept at dealing with risk, it is tightly entwined into our DNA with risk frameworks and mitigation strategies. What we might not do however is balance the risk of doing something with the risk of not doing something and sometimes the latter carries much greater consequences. In order to balance this aversion deal with risk as if it had a ledger where both the risk of doing is juxtaposed against the risk of not doing. This way the full risk picture is presented and decisions can be made confidently. In order to better understand this think of the balance that IT security must contend with constantly. On the one hand it is much safer and less risky to block all websites that allow you to upload potentially sensitive information such as google drive, Trello, or Dropbox. On the other hand it is removing access to digital capabilities that can greatly benefit the organization and its employees. In the short term the benefits are easy to see and support but over time the impact can be profound. So remember to use a risk ledger when the topic of risk comes up next time.
7. Apply design to team formation
How often do we discuss team composition when putting a team together? In fact how many times do we explicitly spend time evaluating team dynamics and diversity in their creation? We live in a reality where we are all either at capacity or completely overwhelmed with increasing workloads beyond our available cycles. Too often we treat team formation as a voluntary exercise and behind our backs we cross our fingers and hope that we get the right skillsets we need to get the job done. I’ve seen this myself over the course of my career with actual teams, working groups, and tiger teams. During the SoC program we broke off into our respective teams and were forced to evaluate our core competencies and skills against the Nesta Competency Framework, figure 2 below, to see how well balanced we were as a team. After all was said and done we could see we were weak in a few key areas such as financial innovation, prototyping & iteration as well as data literacy & evidence. This is when a light bulb went off for me, why wouldn’t design be as important during team creation as it is in all other aspects of problem solving? Diversity of skillsets, thinking, backgrounds and so much more have become indispensable when dealing with wicked problems, it truly is an intellect multiplier. Of course though when you bring a group of incredibly different individuals together friction can occur. This is when I first heard the term third culture kids. This refers to a child who grows up with one distinct culture at home and another completely different one outside of that home. Naturally this must be incredibly difficult and challenging. Apparently many of these individuals develop an uncanny ability to bridge gaps between people and cultures because of the reality they were forced to grow up with. This can be incredibly important when it comes to team formation that strives for diversity. Since we need to work across domains and siloes it will be crucial for us to approach team formation with a design lens to make sure we have all the right skillsets at the table and even more important is the skills to bring that team beyond the first 3 stages of team development (form, storm, norm) and into the desired perform stage.
8. Methodologies as options not gospel
The final aspect of the program that really spoke to me is the idea that any methodology comes with a set of pros and cons. It is important to not assume that one approach is the best and only method to solve problems. For example you shouldn’t rely on design thinking only to tackle every single issue you come across just like you shouldn’t just rely on metrics and data to measure success. The program recommended a shift from a focus on methods towards habits and mindsets. The below diagram does a fantastic way of visually demonstrating how one might balance the various methods of problem solving. For example one could pair facts (data and evidence) with futures thinking (foresight). Like all things in life moderation is key, a balanced portfolio is necessary for an organization to thrive in a world that has so many dimensions.
Wow that is so much text, told you it would be long. Hope you’ve enjoyed my first novella. If you’ve made it this far kudos to you and thanks for sticking it through. Our motley crew will be actively sharing our experiences and lessons learned openly so if this sort of thing peeks your interest be sure to follow our progress on twitter as well as our blogging efforts.
So like my opening I’m not too sure how to end? I suppose I’ll leave you with this lingering thought, I wonder if a GC entrepreneur is meant to bridge a gap somewhat like those third culture kids except the gap we are trying to bridge is that of the world outside with that of the very insular world of government inside? So after all is said and done what will it take to transform government? The only thing I’m sure of at this point is that we’ll all have to work together to succeed.
Peace out,
Cedric “who’s that guy” Jean-Marie
@dyomides
