The key to our future is to learn, unlearn and relearn. And I just decided to double down on mine.
If you had 18 months to grow professionally how would you spend your time?
You may / may not have heard about the XFN (Cross Functional Mobility) program within the Government of Canada yet. I’m here to offer a small snapshot of what it is to me and why I joined this unique 18 month program.
It’s essentially a policy development program (my colleague Amanda has provided more info on it here) and it’s open to all classifications within the Government of Canada. And that’s really great for two reasons. 1) Because classifications can become exclusionary and a barrier to entry and 2) because policy itself should be inclusive of multiple viewpoints. Policy is not intended to be developed in a vacuum apart from those who are impacted by it. So it would make sense for a policy development program to be built up to be as inclusive of others and yet also aim to attract the best and brightest people. But wait — how do you attract the best and brightest into policy? You attract the best and brightest thinkers and doers and they come from all professions and areas within government. You look for those people that best demonstrate the ability to adopt alternative mindsets that will help in tackling the next pressing public policy issue.
It’s also interesting that XFN is a ‘policy’ centric program. In my time in government I’ve been asking public servants across all levels from analyst up to the DG level on what precisely policy means. And the answers I tend to get vary dramatically. I’ll look to explore this more in future articles where I’ll also offer up some specific and concrete things that I (and the Canada School of Public Service) is doing in the pursuit of policy excellence.
But going back to the XFN program, I have found XFN to be unique in that everything is a prototype, and the program is constantly receiving feedback and iterating upon it. XFN is adapting internally from the participants and externally from host organizations, Canada School of Public Service (CSPS) executives, and those external to the public service. So not only are you growing over the 18 months in the program, but the program is growing as well.
XFN is a prototype that is responding to the adaptive and wicked policy challenges of tomorrow. We don’t know what we don’t know. But what we do know from some of the research work is that adopting different mindsets or learning to lose our biases can help us to learn, network and succeed in the workplace.
I joined XFN to grow into being a better policy practitioner. I feel that being inquisitive and asking questions helps you to come up with better policy. If you hired me to work for you, I would ask you the following kinds of questions: Why did you choose that policy instrument? What was the problem you were trying to solve? How did you determine who your stakeholders were? And how did your policy make them feel?
I have an insatiable curiosity to learn new things. How to grow water plants at home? Check. What is tri-ply clad? Check. How to work with the HRG travel system to get my work travel arrangements sorted? Check (ehh….well okok, I wasn’t curious as so much forced to figure it out).
My strategic value to XFN, to CSPS (or to you) is my ability to learn, and also to unlearn old habits. Here’s a bad one I h̶a̶ve̶ had — leaving 30 tabs open in my web browser at all times. (come on — how many of you do that??) It seems right for me then to be in a program where a premium is paid to learning and development and where I’m given the space to grow.
Our quest for continual learning and development is an easy sell in today’s knowledge economy where information reigns supreme. Those who have information have power. (Facebook, Amazon, Google I’m looking at you.) And we are also living in a time where not only does information travel faster than before (thanks Internet, 4G and hello 5G) but most importantly — that information is morphing, changing, and evolving at a rapidly accelerating pace. What used to hold true is being questioned (neoliberal established order), and what we believe is true is being tested (deep fakes).
We need to learn (and also unlearn) — fast or get left behind. And by we, I mean as the world.
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
These words highlight why I’m here in XFN: To learn, unlearn and relearn. I’m here to grow exponentially and then I’m here to pass that along and pay it forward to others because I want to help make a positive contribution to Canadians.
I want to build towards a public service beyond 2020, that is engaging its workforce to think proactively, training its workforce so well that they want to leave, and yet treating them so well that they want to stay.
How will I work toward these grand ambitions? I’m not entirely sure yet, I’m still learning how 😊 but I definitely don’t think I have to do it alone. So I think I will start by asking you this one question:
How can we join forces and learn from each other — together?
Salman is a participant in the Government of Canada’s XFN — Cross Functional Mobility program. His first assignment is at Crown-Indigenous Relations Northern Affairs Canada in their Fiscal Policy Branch.
His mission is to bring excellence to service. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
