“Attitude, communication, and human relations are the key to surviving in the ever-changing world of advertising. This course helps you prepare for workplace success by providing practical expectations and useful tools to make a successful transition from school to workplace. The course discusses self-management, workplace politics and etiquette, building relationships, and tools for the future.”

A key part of the course is the speakers program where professionals just like you come in for an hour to share their wisdom and insights into the real world. There are potentially 18 one hour speaking spots available on Friday mornings,  January 6 to March 11 between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM.   Lectures take place in the N building at the Woodroofe campus of Algonquin College in Ottawa. I am pretty sure that we should be able to accommodate a web conferencing if you are located out of town.

If you have experience or thoughts to share that might be useful to someone entering the marketing communications workforce, please let me know what you would like to speak about and we can work something out.

Thanks, hope 2012 is good to you.

Thom

1. Create a working group of  information creators and brokers into a room 12-18 people that are largely business users. The goal is come up with a starter “Business” taxonomy.  A business taxonomy differs from others in that it is focused on being practical and usable rather than complete and rigorous.

2. Identify users and audiences – white board

3. Identify verbs – everyone write down 7-8 things we do, or want to do in the information space
collect all verbs. This is the path to the nouns – topics

4. Then you move to nouns. Draw blank after each verb. Fill in the blanks to get to nouns which are the topics, include duplicates.

5. Remove the non starters; document types, locations, organizational names., audience types. Now you have a list of potential topics.

6. Look for themes, facilitate group to collect terms and reduce to tight list. Some of which will be clean and some will be dirty. This gets you a starter list.

7. Return to list of non-starters and look for themes that could become secondary metadata.

There are other activities not detailed that support the workshop but are mentioned in the video like card sorting.

One of the big benefits of the workshop approach is that it creates a group within the organization that is educated and engaged with the resulting taxonomy. They form a team capable of selling it to other employees and evolving across time.  The downside of the approach is the time it takes; 12-18 people in a room for three days is significant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onYheWjiWoE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdkQr950lSE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_M5_yJj4O4&feature=related

At the recent PS Engage Conference  I had the honour of channelling ideas from participants into 5 things you can do tomorrow. With the flip chart paper spread out in my office, here is my report:

1. Read the Social Media guidelinesannounced by the Minister and take advantage of whatever authority they give you. Hold your department accountable for applying the guidelines in an effective way.

2. Reach out to a colleague, it may be someone you know but have not spoken to lately, or it might be someone you know by reputation. Ask them what they are up to, tell them what you are doing. Just a quick 15 minute status check. You never know…

3. When you find a solution to a problem, SHARE IT!  Take the time to quickly document the problem and solution and put it in a place where others that might have that problem can find it. A good default location for Federal Public Servants is GCPedia,  but any place where those that need it will find it is good.

4. High Five!
When you see something good, even just a little good thing – celebrate it! Let the individuals involved know you noticed, and let others know who the good guys are.

5. Connect – access Federal Youth Network, govloop, linkedin, gcconnex, yammer, or whatever network is appropriate for you to extend your connections and learn new stuff.

6. Rewrite your job description. Hell, re-write your team’s job descriptions. Make learning and adaptability an important part of it.

7. Narrate your work. By keeping a log of your work as you do it, you are creating a recorded history that can be invaluable for those that come after you.  If you do it publicly though status reports to your network you are also contributing to 2, 3 and 5 above.

8. Add conferences like PS Engage to your learning plan. Make sure they are in your team’s learning plan. Make learning to learn a priority.

So there are eight ideas not five, what can I say? You are a productive bunch.

See you again soon.

Thom

 A huge thank you to the delegates, sponsors and volunteers that make #PSE2011 such a success. We are getting asked when 2012 is going to happen, and hearing stories of enthusiastic teams returning to work full of the spirit of renewal, so I guess it was a success.The big question now is do we do it again? And if we do, what do we do differently?

Ina Parvanova Public Affairs Director, at Mayo Clinic has extensive experience working in a fast paced environment. Ina started her career as a reporter, working for Reuters and Canadian Press. In 1998, Ina joined the Public Service and spent a number of years at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada before joining the Privy Council Office where she was responsible for the international communications files.

In 2008, Mayo Clinic recruited Ina to establish its Research Communications function to support $540 million in research operations at Mayo Clinic. Ina is currently part of two leadership teams. One is a reflection of Mayo’s new strategy to make a global impact in healthcare called Global Bridges – a Healthcare Alliance for Tobacco Dependence Treatment. The other is statewide effort called Decade of Discovery: A Minnesota Partnership to Defeat Diabetes.

At this year’s event, Ina will be speaking on innovation at the Mayo Clinic and how Mayo is adapting to current challenges while staying true to its nearly 150-year old mission and values.

We asked Ina about innovation, adaptation and managing when you aren’t a subject matter expert. Here are Ina’s very thoughtful replies.

1. You’ve had a varied career that has covered a wide area of subject matter. What do you do to be confident about the decisions you make, even though you may not be the subject-matter expert?

In Communications, you’re as good as your knowledge and understanding of the audience. If you know your audience, you know what questions to ask the subject matter experts (because you know what questions your audience would ask) and you know how to deliver the message to your audience so it has the desired effect.

I think that’s where my varied career and diverse background come in – as a journalist, I’ve been fortunate to talk to people from all walks of life, to understand how they think. Having lived on two continents/three countries broadened that experience and allowed me to relate to allophones, to immigrants, to single parents – a multitude of audiences. I’ve always been a student of human nature and that’s what gives me confidence as a communicator – along with the belief that with an open mind and empathy one can identify with any audience and then build a bridge between them and the subject matter experts.

2. How much of the innovative process is creative and how much is about defining the business case and making the concept tangible?

You are right that you cannot have one without the other. But in what proportion? I think that depends on the stage you’re in. In the beginning, an idea is just that – an idea, a spark, and the process of implementation seems to take a backseat. But as you go forward, the ratio changes, and no matter how brilliant the idea, it needs a solid rationale and institutional buy-in in order to get implemented. And the more innovative the idea, the more creative you need to be in defining the business case and making the concept tangible.

3. What are the qualities you look for in people to work on innovative files?

Natural curiosity, open mind and tenacity.

4. Resilience is often identified as a key element in one’s ability to accept change. How does one develop resiliency?

Interesting question!

You know, to the extent that experience can teach us, the more changes you’ve lived through, the more resilient you should be. Think of someone who has lived their entire life in their hometown, worked at the same workplace for over 30 years (yes, there are still people like that) – if they are forced to go through a significant change, it can be a traumatizing experience.

On the other hand, if change has been a regular part of your life, you know what to expect and you know you will survive and will be fine.

But experience is only part of the answer, because many would argue that there is a limit to how many changes one can go through without burning out. So can we develop resiliency to prevent that? Is it like a muscle, that as long as you exercise it, it will serve you?

I think so. Especially because it is already in us. We are born with it, it’s a basic survival skill. Kids are resilient. The question is how to maintain it and not lose it after life has dealt us a few blows.

As we go through various experiences – especially hardship – some of us lose that resiliency and start dreading change. Perhaps the key to accepting change in stride is having a healthy self-esteem. As children, we all start with a healthy self-esteem. Along the way, some of us become more fragile, more insecure, and end up finding solace in the past – the old way of doing things, the previous workplace or the last relationship. But if you have a healthy self-esteem, you know who you are, and the past – while it may have enriched you – does not define you. Even when you mourn something that is no longer there, you know that you will survive and the new circumstances are simply a new opportunity. In that sense, to me, self-esteem is the source of our resiliency, the magic ingredient to accepting change.

See Ina live and in person at PS Engage, November 22, 2011 in Ottawa.

The PSEngage conference is happening November 22, 2011 and the line-up of speakers is inspiring.  To give more insight to the knowledge and interests of the speakers we sent them each a set of questions tailored to their individual experience.  We will be posting the questions and their responses over the next few weeks, so please keep checking back regularly.

Today’s interview is with @Thumbtackhead, John Weigelt,  National Technology Officer at Microsoft Canada.

John’s participation at PS Engage 2011 will be to share examples of government 2.0 activities across jurisdictions.   If you’ve read John’s bio and his blog, http://www.thumbtackhead.ca/, you’ll realize quite quickly that John has an interesting approach to innovation.  Innovation for John is not a wishy-washy process, but rather something that requires rigour and structure to bring out, explore and ultimately exploit creative ideas to achieve the objectives.  Perhaps this comes from John’s military training.  Read the questions and answers below to come to your own conclusions.  

Q1: Your biographic information says you went to military college – Do you think military training influenced your approach to innovation? If so, how?

A1:  I think that my military training influenced my approach to innovation in several ways.  The best way to consider this is to try to imagine the crosswalks between a military operation and a business process.  For both it is critically important that leaders select and maintain the objective.  By describing their objectives leaders can empower entire communities to innovate to help attain the broader goal.  Military training also helps people think about broad and often innovative approaches to solving a complex challenge.  When encountering a tough adversary, a military leader will consider a wide variety of factors, probabilities and build out several scenarios to test an idea.  Rarely will the effective leader choose a single approach to victory.  Full campaigns will include a main action, perhaps several auxiliary actions, feints, special forces etc.  All must be performed with creativity and innovation, lest the adversary gain the upper hand by being able to predict what may happen.  With innovation, it’s important to look broadly across the problem space to seek out new approaches.  Finally, one last thing that it helped me appreciate is the concept of Exercising Empowerment. Sometimes people in very structured organizations like the military, government or large businesses project a sense that there is little room for independent thinking.  I would suggest that it is actually the opposite and that great ideas are always welcomed.  Not that I would encourage everyone in uniform to pick their own pace when on parade, but there are opportunities to innovate within all structures.

Q2: Technology is driving a lot of innovation and change – What can business leaders do to understand the innovation options presented by technology without becoming a technologist.  What are the types of questions business leaders should be asking?

A2: I think that the business leaders need to consider the outcomes from innovation.  The Boston Consulting Group identifies 5 outcomes from innovation:

• New to world products or markets
• Expanding your current customer base
• Reaching entirely new types of customers
• Incremental changes to existing products
• Improving efficiency in existing processes.

By focusing on the outcome, the business leader can abstract out the technology and explore the business outcome that will be driven.  Rarely does innovation simply pop arbitrarily into mind, rather, it is usually as a result of hard work on a particular problem carefully extended through a connection with other ideas or experimentation.  Business leaders should therefore focus on their area of expertise and look to harness adjacent innovation by extending their expertise through the careful application of technology.

Q3:  In your blog post, “Hearsay and other crimes against innovation” you emphasize the importance of fact checking and conducting the necessary research to substantiate the proposal.  Can you give some ideas or examples of how these elements can be built into a business case?

A3: Evidence based decision making is fundamental to managing the risks and opportunities presented by any change to the status quo.  To make good decisions, it is essential that there be a thorough understanding of the evidence being used.  There are any number of ways that statistics can be presented in a biased manner (as is well described in “how to lie with statistics” .In one case I saw an internet study where a very small percentage of a small global sample size answered (with a checkbox) that they had lost between $10 and $100 due to a particular type of fraud.  The study went on with some gratuitous extrapolation by multiplying the $100 Maximum against the entire Canadian population to arrive upon a multi-billion dollar impact for this fraud.  This created an alarming number, 4X any number previously proposed.  Given the margins for error, the factor of 10 difference in the potential losses all multiplied 1000s of times created a completely fictional statistic that eventually made headlines.  Imagine what would happen if the government program leader took that number at face value to look to resolve what was reported as a huge problem.  Even worse that the potential loss of funds, the misdirection of resources or efforts due to mis-prioritization has the potential to torpedo not only service delivery programs but sink entire businesses.

Q4: The Fed. Government is pushing improvements in the management of information through policies and directives – resulting in the focus of efforts being on compliance, rather than on opportunity.  What can you say about the relationship between information management and opportunity?

A4: Information is the lifeblood of government/ businesses and has been called the cornerstone of democracy.  It is therefore paramount that information be properly managed throughout its lifecycle.  Policies, directives, standards, guidelines and recommendations all play a role in providing advice and guidance for consistency across the organization.  While compliance is a necessary part of business and government routine, I’ve always had a love hate relationship with the term and how some people approach it.  In the worst cases, compliance is a sort of lowest hurdle to get over to be able to operate.  Like the runner in the Olympic race, some organizations will look to barely clear their compliance requirements, or just hit them so that they don’t get into trouble with their oversight body.  It has been shown that even though an organization meets its compliance checklist, it can completely fail in the meeting the objective of the compliance requirement in the first place. I believe that organizations should look broader than simple compliance to fully capitalize on the opportunities that can be garnered by going beyond the checklist.

Be sure to see John and other smart people at PS Engage, November 22, 2011.

The PSEngage conference is happening November 22, 2011 and the line-up of speakers is great!  To give more insight to the knowledge and interests of the speakers we sent them each a set of questions tailored to their individual experience.  We will be posting the questions and their responses over the next few weeks, so please keep checking back regularly.

As many of you know I am helping to put together a networking and learning event as part of the @PSLeader initiative started by Jeff Ashcroft, Jeff is the same guy that got me into doing the #GovChat series of twitter chats, it all started with a comment on a blog post here.

Anyway, when I was part of the Public Service I was involved in the first Collaborative Management day and was excited about it, basically I think the whole #w2p #goc3 thing is awesome. Sadly, now that I am Private Sector I can’t participate in the same way, so that got me to thinking and…

…a while ago, a group of us in the shadow public service were chatting and felt that it might be a good idea to create an event that builds on the #goc3 momentum for collaborative management.  Of course if we were going to do something it had to have value over and above what an internal conference could provide. The logic we came up with goes something like this:

If the focus of the Collaborative Management events is learning from others inside the Public Service, (and there’s  lots to learn), then  PS Engage distinguishes itself by emphasizing relevant ideas from outside the Government of Canada.  Strategically this makes sense because exposing yourself to ideas outside of your norm is an essential ingredient for innovation. So the focus for us became about bringing new and relevant ideas to the table.

When we started to reach out for speakers, the response was overwhelming with the likes of Mr. GovLoop, Steve Ressler and Ina Parvanova, Director of Public Affairs for the Mayo Clinic, among the luminaries  agreeing to share their stories with us.  Just recently, TBS President, Tony Clement’s office confirmed that he will be giving the opening address—for a conference focused on bringing lessons of change to Ottawa, I can’t think of a more relevant opening speaker.

Speaking of fiscal restraint, lets not panic about cut backs and such. To my way of thinking, financial pressure is a tremendous opportunity when it forces us to look for new ways of doing things. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, or at least that is what my mother used to say—so  come to PS Engage and help invent something great.

As a privately funded event we have to charge, the cost of bringing speaker’s in from out-of-town is significant, however we have managed to keep the price reasonable at $499.00.  Any profit from the event will go towards funding further exploration of the Virtual Government Network Concept.

Group discounts are available, (5 for the price of 4), and if you are student who really wants to go, tell me why you need to attend and how much you can afford, and I will see what we can do.

As an educator, it is great to be part of putting this together, and between the speakers and the networking opportunities I am pretty confident that the conference will be a high impact/low-cost learning event.  PS Engage, a tapestry of ideas and people, the perfect complement to Collaborative Management Day and a great way to get ready for change—what do you think?

Registration is open now, so get out your corporate credit card and go to www.psengage.org, if you need to put it in your learning plan you will find some learning objectives on the site to help you out with the words.

Hope to see you there, if you have any thoughts about this event or ideas for a future one, please share.

Thom

Of course you can follow along on twitter @psengage and #pse2011

Last week (June 2011), I had the great pleasure of being part of the Canadian Public Health Association conference in Montreal. I attended the three days, participated in two panels, met a lot of great people and generally learned a bunch.  During the plenary panel that I took part in I mentioned a couple of papers that might be of interest. I am putting them here to make them easy to find and to encourage feedback. Apparently there was video of the session as well, if and when I get my hands on it I will share.

Framework for a Virtual Government Network (.pdf)

This is my reflection paper for the course; Information, People and Society from the Centre for Advanced Management Education at Dalhousie University.  Part of the Masters in Information Management I am pursuing. In it I propose a framework for multi-jurisdictional collaboration.

Embrace the complexity (.pdf)

This is my first contribution to the discussion around applying complexity theory to the problem of managing knowledge in the Canadian Health Sector. Here is the KM complexity presentation to go with the paper of the same name.

UPDATE:

I have posted the presentations on SlideShare

Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Thom