Regional Knowledge Resource Kit

My good friend Nerida Hart, who is now working at Land and Water Australia, has pointed me on a number of occasions to the Regional Knowledge Resources Kit.  I have had some cursory looks at it in the past but over the past couple of days I have looked at it in more detail and it is an incredibly valuable KM resource.  The work that they have done with the various regional bodies is amazing, brokering conversations amongst local practitioners to share knowledge and build connections. 

The Kit itself is full of great information and links to valuable resources.  It does not just have utility for regional land managers but for anyone who needs to work with a community to find out their particular needs, develop trusted relationships and develop strategies for implementing concrete actions that will create value for them.  One of the key insights for me from the conversation with Nerida today and delving into the site is that anecdote circles work best when the group knows each other a bit – so therefore it’s best to have anecdote circles during the middle of the process rather than at the start.

So make sure you add this to your KM favourites, the RKRK site.

Killing Innovation - A Manager’s Guide

I wrote a short article the other day about innovation and someone took umbrage at one of my lines that the public sector (as the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy) has 1001 ways to kill a good idea and that we need to move towards a model that has 1001 ways to advance a good idea.  Innovation can often be really difficult for managers who are under time and budget constraints to get the job done rather than look to do things differently. 

I came across this blog post which describes 5 questions that can be raised by a manager to kill innovation.  The beauty of responding with a question is that it makes the innovator have to justify their innovation to you through logical reasoning based on your own assumptions - a phantasmagorically circular way of killing innovation slowly but surely. 

I think we are now up to counting 1035 ways to kill innovation (although we cheated because we started at 1001)!! 

Rudd’s future focus the key

The above headline is taken from the Fin Review today on page 8 with an article by David Crowe.  He quotes the ALP national secretary and campaign manager, Tim Gartrell, as nominating Kevin Rudd’s positive message about the future as the single biggest factor that secured the change in federal government.  In comparison, the Howard government was trapped going over the past and lost touch with people in key electorates. 

Perhaps someone read my last post on our “future” Prime Minister. 

Australian Federal Election 2007 Results - Our “Future” PM

Another three years, another Federal Election. But this time, something different – a change of government. The first time since 1996 and only the third change since 1975 (the others with Hawke/Keating coming into power in 1983, and Howard/Costello in 1996). The best thing about democratic change in Australia is that we can have these changes of government and there is no bloodshed and no-one gets killed!

It’s been a week since the result and there is still much speculation about why the change happened. Many consider that Howard stayed a year too long and that he was yesterday’s man, others that Labor finally had an Opposition Leader that could outpoint Howard (something that Beazley and Latham could not do). What is really interesting is that the change happened at a time of economic strength. So we can count the economy out then as a reason for change. Labor under Rudd focused on a few key issues including climate change and Kyoto (ratified today as the first decision of Government), industrial relations and Workchoices, the war in Iraq, broadband, education, and public hospitals and health and a bit on broken interest rate promises, with the final clincher of appearing to manage the economy better with reduced spending commitments after the Liberal Party launch.  There was a mix of positive and negative messages – from climate change with the symbolism of ratifying Kyoto, the painting of the Government as untrustworthy in relation to IR, and positive imagery of an education and broadband revolution.  The messages were highly crafted and well targeted.  But that still may not explain why the electorate moved.

A closer view of the electoral results showed a patchy distribution of changing seats.  Certainly NSW and Qld were the keys.  Having the possibility of a Queensland PM and Treasurer would certainly have helped the parochial nature of the locals up there, as well as the parlous state of the Queensland branch of the Liberal party.  A minimum of 8 and most likely 10 seats fell to the Labor party in Queensland alone.  Add NSW with 6 but more likely 7 (with interest rates a key issue) and that is just enough to get the 16 seats required.  A few from Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia made it definite.  That some Queensland seats had a 14% swing is just amazing.  And where I live in the electorate of Deakin was one of the seats that changed hands.

Of all the commentary, I found Henry Ergas’ comments on Friday to be very insightful.  He stated that it was precisely because the economy was going well that people had moved to looking for something else in their politicians.  The focus on the economy by the Liberals then failed to hit the mark. This has echoes of Paul Ray’s Cultural Creatives but it might be too soon to talk about that here in Australia.  But certainly the economy as an electoral issue did not attract the kind of media attention as previous elections. 

Another interesting thing I felt about Rudd is that he talked a lot about the future. He didn’t talk about change, he didn’t say too much that Howard was a man of the past.  Rudd’s narrative focused on his views of the future and what he wanted to do differently and he let the electorate make the connection that Howard was history.  As a futurist, I found that talk of the future very heartening, although I was somewhat disappointed to hear that in his Ministerial appointments, there was no Minister for the Future appointed!  In comparison, Howard’s pitch was more emotive and based on fear – of a union-dominated Labor party in government, fear of the economy going pear-shaped due to the inexperience of the Labor team.  In this respect, this was a victory for humility over hubris as many have reported.  Or maybe it had something to do with this tongue-in-cheek interview of John Howard by Richard Neville during the election period. 

And so what of the future.  Some people think that the ALP is really just Another Liberal Party and that Rudd is the best successor to Howard.  Others that the Coalition, out of power now in all states and federally, needs to radically recast itself.  The knives are coming out and there will be a lot of soul-searching and recasting of policies over the next year under Nelson.  The move of many senior Liberals to the backbench is part of this recasting.

And also there is still the Senate. It’s a shame to see that Andrew Bartlett in Queensland has failed to keep his spot – I’ve really enjoyed reading his blog.  The Democrats are now gone and the Greens are teetering on the edge of getting the balance of power but struggling with the vagaries of the proportional representation of the Senate. 

And penultimately, it’s great to hear that broadband and the digital economy is getting some interest politically with those words in the new Ministerial portfolio.  The knowledge word has not been raised – perhaps Knowledge Nation is still too raw a nerve and so KM might have to take a bit more of a back-seat ride for a while.

Finally, the man who said future so much has now been sworn in as Prime Minister.  There will be the inevitable honeymoon period (particularly as witnessed with the jovial banter with Kochie on Sunrise today) but the time will come in 6-9 months time when policies need to be implemented and when the future timeframes will need to be shortened.  But today, the future became the reality. 

Australia’s Future Innovation Policies

A really interesting article in the Fin Review of 29 October by Roy Green, Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, of a subject dear to my heart:  innovation policy.  He notes that “it would have required an unusual degree of incompetence for a resource-rich economy such as Australia not to benefit from favourable world conditions, especially China’s industrialisation” and that it really doesn’t matter who wins the debate on taking credit for our current prosperity.  For more importantly, has this windfall gain been squandered like the UK did with its North Sea oil and gas resources, or has it been invested wisely like Norway in a “future fund” to create the “research and innovation infrastructure recognised as essential to build a knowledge-based economy.”

He notes OECD data that shows Australia lags in “investment in knowledge” in comparison with our international competitors.  It reminds me of the days prior to the 2001 election with the whole concept of the knowledge nation (yes, and that lampooned noodle diagram) which provided some form of vision of Australia as more than a quarry and foodbowl. 

Many areas of the services portion of our economy (finance, games, some areas of new media) are leading the world.  Yet others are relatively slow to progress and we run the risk of being overtaken by more competitive countries who are advancing their own economies.  There was much talk in 2000/2001 with the Innovation Summit and the Chief Scientist’s Chance to Change report, but what’s actually happened on the ground. 

I’d like to hear more about this future vision of Australia, of innovation beyond products and R&D and really coming to grips with the knowledge aspects of innovation in companies, industry sectors, government and the community.

Agile Government: Challenging the Bureaucratic Dinosaur

The Victorian Government’s State Services Authority is running a project at the moment on the notion of Agile Government.  It emerged from their previous work on their Future of the Public Sector 2025 project.  In collaboration with Demos, a UK thinktank, they have released this provocation paper. 

In the paper, they describe government agility in relation to being responsive to the needs of the community being served, being more adaptive in changing products and processes in response to broader changes in the operational environment, and shaping the external environment through policy making, taxation and service delivery. Three types of capacity are required which form an agility cycle:

• Scan emerging trends and issues through gathering information and analysis
• Respond to opportunities and risks by being sufficiently flexible at tactical and strategic levels
• Shape future environments through driving change.

They also list a range of agility capabilities:

• Outward-oriented culture to scan the external environment, join up different departments and agencies, shift resources with ease and stopping services and projects if they are not delivering a sufficient return.
• Systems and policy alignment between strategy, values, budgeting, etc, particularly focusing on realignment when goals and tactics shift as one part of the system changes.
• Workforce adaptability to match skills to changing tasks which could include service redesign, new capabilities and rapid deployment.
• Fast and effective decision-making through making judgements based on imperfect information, particularly on operational matters.
• Successful use of information such as analytical skills and the use of ICT including more responsive relationships with citizens.

For me, the agility cycle does not quite sit right, particularly with including the shaping aspect in the cycle.  Agility is about scanning and responding and having that cycle move faster.  The concept of shaping works at a different level . In one way, it is a form of responding but really it is actually something more systemic.  It brings in the notions of complexity, societal behaviour change and community dialogue - an important part of government but perhaps shaping forms part of a framework that supports agility rather than forming part of the agility cycle.

Another aspect is that agility is a relative concept.  If standard processes takes 3 years, than an agile government could be expected to do it in 12-18 months.  Also, if it would normally take 20 years to generate larger generational change, then perhaps an agile government could do it in 5 years through its various levers of taxation, incentives and policies.  The latter is more shaping, the former is more responsive. The longer term aspects of shaping have strong links to systems and complexity thinking.

All up, a most interesting paper and concept and one that the SSA are currently seeking comment upon.

(Not) Posting on Public Service work

Last post, Patrick Lambe commented if I could ”work towards getting Australian public servants permission to talk about the work they do (so far as it does not affect national security)? We need to learn so fast as a profession, that this disabling of shared experience is crippling us.” 

Now I am all for breaking rules - except on the occasions when they would cost me my job!  In the Victorian Public Sector, we have an updated code of conduct that commenced in July this year.  Within our code of conduct is the following section (section 3.5 pg 11):

“Public sector employees only make public comment when specifically authorised to do so in relation to their duties, a public sector body, or government policies and programs. Such comment is restricted to factual information and avoids the expression of personal opinion. Public comment includes providing information or comment to any media (electronic and print), the internet and speaking engagements.

When making a comment in a private capacity, public sector employees ensure their comments are not related to any government activity that they are involved in or connected with as a public sector employee and make it clear they are expressing their own view. They ensure personal comments do not compromise their capacity to perform their public sector role in an unbiased manner, and that their comments are not seen or perceived to be an official comment.”

Now that clearly limits my capacity to post on the work that I do.  I could say that I am commenting in my personal capacity but even then, I am not able to publish on any work that I am involved in or connected with on the Internet, particularly my blog site.  So as much as I would like to post about the really interesting work that I am doing (like executive conferences, designing service strategies, linking strategy with data analysis, innovation and ideas management, critical assessments of performance, foresight workshops, etc), I find that my ability to do so is severley limited, if not totally constrained.  And I think that I have probably overstepped the line even saying that!

Despite that, I will test the boundaries where I can, and comment to the limits prescribed.  To respond to Patrick’s challenge, I’ll try and get permission where needed and look into challenging this wider system so that we can comment on how things happen internally.  Our new Premier has stated that he wants Government to be more open and accountable and I’ll try to help that along - to the best of my limited capacity!

Commonwealth Ombudsman’s 10 Lessons for Public Administration

The Commonwealth Ombusdman gave a presentation at an IPAA seminar earlier this month where he reported on the government review of 247 immigration cases and outlined some lessons for public administration as a result.  The lessons are clear and concise.  Following them will go a long way to reduce errors that are the consequence of systemic administrative problems. His 10 lessons were:

1. Maintain accurate, comprehensive and accessible records.
2. Place adequate controls on the exercise of coercive powers.
3. Actively manage unresolved and difficult cases.

4. Heed the limitations of information technology systems.

5. Guard against erroneous assumptions.

6. Control administrative drift.

7. Remove obstacles to prudent information exchange with other agencies and bodies.

8. Promote effective communication in your own agency.

9. Manage complexity in decision making.

10. Check for warning signs of bigger problems.

He mentioned that the last lesson is probably the most important.  The Rau, Alvarez and Solon immigration cases showed that flaws in an individual decision can highlight a much larger problem.  Agencies should not wait for a crisis to eventuate but internally monitor and have good quality control and complaint handling procedures. Warning signs can then be picked up more easily and change initiated early.   

Lessons learned from these exercises are particularly important to share where problems lie, how they can be rectified and to build a culture of learning and improvement.

Evidence-Based Policy - Relying on Experts

On of the things that I hear almost every day is the question “where is the evidence for that?”  There are frequent calls in public administration for building the evidence base to both inform policy making and also to justify policy direction.

A recent report by Demos, a UK management think tank,  examines the reliance on experts and their datasets in much of public administration. From case studies including the BSE and mad cow problems a few years back in the UK, they find that experts are no longer deferred to and that their knowledge is often not trusted.  Yet we still need experts to understand the specifics of detailed interactions that impact upon real people.

They point out that the problem with evidence-based policy is that evidence is about the past but policy is about the future.  And the future may be quite different to the past.  Of more concern is that developing evidence is often used to support or justify existing policy.  There are countless examples of people “bending” statistics to suit their argument.  It’s better for the evidence to inform policy debates in a contextual and considered manner.  

The report further points out the perils with relying on experts.  Experts are often unaware of their own blind spots.  They often see the world through their own prism, discounting others’ views.    More critically, their view is one that sees cause and effect when it perhaps is not as clear - or vice versa that cause and effect is not seen.  The report points out that evidence based policy overlooks the uncertainties that define our problems.  The absence of evidence of danger does not meant that there is evidence of
absence of danger.  The BSE case and that of thalidomide are classic examples where false certainty is expressed.

I’ve had many concerns with a reliance on evidence based policy - particularly where that evidence is currently lacking.  Evidence-informed policy sounds much better - it focuses on the use of evidence to inform decisions while still providing scope for judgement and wisdom.  Evidence based policy sounds more prescriptive with less scope for context and qualification.   

As with many Demos reports, their answer is to have has less closed groups of government appointed experts providing rational basis for policy and instead include the community more in a transparent and collaborative approach.  Relying on experts without external scrutiny runs counter to the knowledge-based economy arguments and in effect, excludes them from the debate which reduces the opportunity to build social legitimacy.  

Budget Tips for Public Service Managers

Warning - Facetious Post Follows … 

Out at dinner the other night and I received some excellent tips for budding public sector managers, particularly at this time of the changeover to a new financial year.  A useful heuristic is to “Use the Power of Compound Interest”.  Think of your budget a bit like a wealth investment strategy.  It’s also bit like “The Secret” and having your positive thought processes become your future reality. 

The strategy is to always ask for more.  Think that you need $800,000 for your budget for the next financial year?  Instead, ask for $1.4 million so that when it is cut back, you’ll probably get $1.1 million which is still way more that you thought you really needed.  Play the game - everyone else is doing it!  Sure there is activity-based costing and other games that Finance areas play to try and refine and define your ask - but you’re the one in the hot seat and it’s clear that the best managers are the ones who can sell and bargain more than others.

In the end, it is all just money for JAM - or Just Add More.

[And I will post more shortly - attended the Dave Snowden and Viv Read Cognitive Edge workshop last week and lots of material to post from here!]