Of Demons and Scapegoats

"A good scapegoat is nearly as welcome as a solution to the problem."
- Author unknown

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, UK's most celebrated scapegoat! And today is also the 4th anniversary of the publication of An Inconvenient Renewal, an infamous manifesto written by an obscure public servant (!) calling for better people management in organizations.

In one of my last posts, I told the story of some of the events that unfolded behind the scenes in the months that followed the release of my paper. I also expressed my thoughts on the recent so-called "indiscretion" of a certain Canadian public servant on Twitter.

However, going through the comments left by the readers further to the CBC article, I started seeing another narrative emerging: one of demons and scapegoats.

The word scapegoat is a mistranslation of the word "Azazel". In mythology, Azazel is often portrayed as a demon. In some religions, the scapegoat, or Azazel, is even a symbol for Satan. "The word "scapegoat" has come to mean a person who is blamed and punished for the sins, crimes or sufferings of others, generally as a way of distracting attention from the real causes." (Source)

"Scapegoating is a known practice in management where a lower staff employee is blamed for the mistakes of senior executives. This is often due to lack of accountability in upper management. For example, a teacher who constantly gets blamed or accused of wrongdoing could be a scapegoat if said teacher is only guilty of doing her job so well that she makes her coworkers and supervisory administration look bad. This could result in letters being placed in permanent files, condescending remarks from co-workers and constant blame finding from administration." (Source)

The explanation for the behaviour is that "social order is restored as people are contented that they have solved the cause of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual." In other words, "scapegoating serves as a psychological relief for a group of people." (Source)

Then I came across this article which makes the case that mobbing is a form of sociological scapegoating which occurs in the workplace:

"Mobbing can be understood as the stressor to beat all stressors. It is an impassioned, collective campaign by co-workers to exclude, punish, and humiliate a targeted worker. Initiated most often by a person in a position of power or influence, mobbing is a desperate urge to crush and eliminate the target. The urge travels through the workplace like a virus, infecting one person after another. The target comes to be viewed as absolutely abhorrent, with no redeeming qualities, outside the circle of acceptance and respectability, deserving only of contempt. As the campaign proceeds, a steadily larger range of hostile ploys and communications comes to be seen as legitimate. [...]

The worker most vulnerable to being mobbed is an average or high achiever who is personally invested in a formally secure job, but who nonetheless somehow threatens or puts to shame co-workers and/or managers. Such a worker provides no legally defensible grounds for termination, yet usually fails to pick up subtle hints and leave voluntarily. An attractive solution, from the majority point of view, is to bring or wear this worker down, one way or another, however long it takes.

As the process drags on, both sides, collective and individual, dig in their heels. It is often as if the targeted worker has grabbed a hot wire and cannot let go, despite the pain and injury it inflicts. The worker’s investment of self and sense of having been deeply wronged prevent the one resolution that would satisfy the other side.

Ironically, it is in workplaces where workers’ rights are formally protected that the complex and devious incursions on human dignity that constitute mobbing most commonly occur. Union shops are one example, as in the case of the factory worker described above. University faculties are another, on account of the special protections of tenure and academic freedom professors have. It happens in police forces, too, since management rights in this setting are tempered by the oath officers swear to uphold the law. Mobbings appear to be much more frequent in the public service as a whole, as compared to private companies."

Obviously, I couldn't help but draw a parallel with the story of the public servant and his tweet, based on the reactions of some of the readers.

So last night I was relating the Twitter case to Pádraig Ó Tuama, a well-known theologian and mediator based in Belfast. He had just attended a two-day course on the work of René Girard on scapegoating (neat coincidence, I know!). I submitted to him my hypothesis that the social media was being demonized and the public servant being punished for his inoffensive tweet was the scapegoat.

The mediator replied: "I could argue that the demon is not the social media, but rather the fear of the social media."

He paused and added: "...Or fear of the communication itself."

His comment reminded me of a line spoken by the character V as William Rockwood in a key scene of the movie V for Vendetta: "But the real genius of their plan was the fear. Fear became the ultimate tool."

What's your take? Is the current attitude in your organization towards social media more conducive to spreading fear or opening up communications?

An Inconvenient Renewal: Still Relevant?

"An Inconvenient Renewal: Are Managers Ready to Change the Way They Manage?" is three years old today!

The paper's website has received 4,492 visitors since November 5, 2007 (an imperfect measure, I acknowledge), not counting those who came across the document in some other fashion. That's about 2% of the federal public service.

But is the topic still relevant? I would like to hear your thoughts...

Summer's Top 150: Management Thought

It has been nearly two months since I have posted anything on my blog, and exactly three months since I have shared any article recommendation.

I'm going to make up for the lost time by doing a 6-part blitz of the 150 best articles / blog posts / podcasts / videos that I have come across over the summer. So brace yourself!!!

1. Gary Hamel's “moonshots for management”, part 1, 2, and 3
2. Essential Reading for Management Revolutionaries
3. More Must-Reads for Management Revolutionaries
4. Management MUST Be Reinvented
5. Just Managing
6. The Elitist Undertones of Leadership
7. Leadership Is Responsibility, Not Power
8. Rethinking the MBA
9. Managers Not MBAs: Debating the Merits of Business Education
10. Searching for balance (Interview with Henry Mintzberg)
11. Long time blogger Carmine Coyote retires from blogging

Misc. Blog Posts, Part 2: More on Management

As you know, this is probably my favourite topic, so I have more blog posts recommendations than usual. Don't panic, it's still early in the week, so you'll have time to read them all by Friday ;-)

1. He who thinks acts
2. Insultants Wanted
3. Are you making room for Mavericks?
4. What It Takes to be a Genuine Leader
5. The Movie!
6. The 6 causes of disengagement
7. The Great Disconnect
8. Leader's Capacity to Sustain Change
9. Make believe world
10. Three Things You (Probably) Won't Learn in Business School
11. When to Change for Change's Sake
12. Beckhard’s Change Equation
13. Fear brings loathing, not harder work
14. You Just May Be a Poor Boss If...
15. Put Away Your Blackberry
16. 10 Rules From The Incompetent Educational Leader's Handbook
17. Meetings: Where You Sit, How You Act, and What People Think Of You
18. Why Centralizing Power May Be Exactly What They Need
19. A Male Engineer's Perspective on Women in Male-Dominated Fields
20. Leadership and the Sexes (video)
21. Documenting Performance Measure Drivers
22. The Seven Fatal Flaws of Performance Measurement
23. The Mis-Misinterpretations of PMBOK
24. A Simple Way to Put PMBOK to Work
25. It’s Time to Make Management a True Profession

Misc. Blog Posts, Part 1: Management Thought Evolution

This week I give you the final blitz of blog posts recommendations. This collection of articles may seem a bit disjointed, but I have managed to group most of them by topics. So here were go with the first: management thought evolution.

1. Is Your Company Designed for Humans?
2. Management for management’s sake
3. Stiff necks and fixed ideas
4. That Seismic Shift You Are About To Hear is Management Revolution
5. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!
6. Work, Work Everywhere, But Not a Drop of Understanding
7. Another Irrational Myth of Management?
8. The 10 Most Enduring Ideas
9. Seven Day Weekend (video)
10. Workplace democracy
11. Conventional Leadership vs. Lateral Leadership
12. Disruptive Idea: The Education Organization Is Not Structure But Capability
13. Management Quotes Presentation

The Manager’ Series, Part 6: Miscellaneous Advice

Last post of this series on management!

1. Measuring Management
2. 5 Facts Leadership Gurus Don’t Tell
3. Don't Let Yourself Be Surprised
4. Learning to Act Like a Leader
5. A Boss Who Changed My Life
6. Ten Commandments of Management
7. Seven critical questions to assess your leadership
8. Leader as social architect
9. Engagement - Rarer now. Needed more now.
10. What’s Your High Performance Team Experience?
11. How good are you at making decisions in uncertain conditions?
12. Questions for Leaders at the end of the First Quarter
13. Decision Traps: Barriers to Better Decision Making
14. Staying with no
15. Management’s False Darwinians
16. Why Don't Managers Think Deeply?
17. Put the "You Factor" to Work
18. The Three Rules Every Manager Forgets
19. Why You Need to Be a Happier Manager

Not quite blogs, but worth the read:

1. The psychology of human misjudgement
2. Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership
3. Vital Smarts Videos (funny!)

Management, Part 5: Management Philosophy

1. The importance of philosophy to great leadership
2. What beliefs support your leadership philosophy?
3. Does "Management" Mean "Command and Control"?
4. 20th Century managers inhibit 21st Century work
5. 25 Stretch Goals for Management
6. Miles’ Law and Six Other Maxims of Management
7. Twas Ever Thus
8. Measurement Versus Trust
9. How is Your Leadership Changing?
10. How practicing leaders can manage paradox, dilemma and polarity
11. The Army’s Leadership Framework and Philosophy

Management, Part 4: Traps, Pitfalls and Things to Avoid

Today we flirt with the "dark" side:

1. The Challenge of Becoming a Better Manager
2. What is Reflective Leadership?
3. Can leaders walk on water?
4. 7 Ways Leaders Handicap Themselves
5. Growth: Moving to the Next Level
6. Our Strengths Are Not to Be Indulged, But Managed
7. 10 Lessons For Self-Leadership
8. The Specialist
9. The Generalist
10. Help Wanted: Great Leader. No Technical Experience Needed?
11. Why good managers make bad decisions
12. Why good managers make bad decisions (another take)
13. On Apologies and Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders
14. The single most costly and common error a manager can make?
15. Twenty indicators of failing at leadership
16. Leadership’s New Rules
17. 10 signs of an unsafe leader
18. Can YOU answer WHY…!
19. These are tough times for managers - Time to tune up!
20. 10 Leadership mistakes that we’ve all made
21. Focus on Relationships
22. How do you feel about your boss?
23. The Three Traits of a "Me First" Manager
24. 11 Habits of the Worst Boss I Ever Had
25. Learn From Your Mistakes

Management, Part 3: Succession Planning

Looking ahead:

1. Bosses Make The Difference
2. How to Spot the Future Leaders of Your Business
3. Looking for Tomorrow’s Leaders
4. Spotting a New Leader
5. How to “Score” Leadership Potential When Using the Performance and Potential Matrix
6. Nine Leadership Development Strategies for a Performance and Potential Matrix
7. Hiring the Right Skill Set and Motivating the Millennials
8. Two models for coaching your direct reports
9. Culture is the shadow of the leader
10. Shooting Stars
11. Give a Gift: 4 Tips for More Effective Mentoring
12. Memo to a Young Leader: What Kind of Boss Are You?
13. New Manager Guide: Big Picture Focus

Since I am calling on you to think about the future, please watch this short TED presentation. You'll be drooling with envy at the idea of one day using this cool gadget...

Management, Part 2: Managing Performance

More on managing performance:

1. Put Down that Carrot and that Stick and that Hot Dog
2. We Don’t Work for Companies; We Work for Managers
3. How to Manage People in 15 Minutes a Day
4. How to Have an Effective 1 on 1
5. Coaching Self-Assessment for Leaders
6. Improving Communication
7. Do Your Employees Truly Believe That They Can Make A Difference?
8. Supportive Confrontation
9. Challenged!
10. The Right Way to Disagree with Direct Reports
11. How Good Leaders Correct Mistakes
12. The leadership cop-out, the employee hot potato
13. Real Leaders Fire Underperformers
14. Motivation Disconnect: How Organizations Fail to Motivate Managers
15. Truth as a Tool
16. Put Positivism to Work
17. 5 Ways to Have Your Conflict at Senior Team Meetings
18. Find the Creativity Hiding in Your Office
19. Increase Motivation
20. Personal Leadership Practices Survey

Management, Part 1: Advice for New and Future Managers

Does Blogging About Leadership & HR Help? I hope so.

Last week David Eaves had a post entitled "Why the government of canada needs bloggers" in which he stated that "[blogs] sift through the information that is out there and tease out what is important and what is relevant and write it up in a readable and accessible fashion."

In the same vein, I have sifted through thousands of blog postings to bring you in this six-part series what I think are the 100 very best on the topic of management. So let's begin with some advice for new and future managers:

1. Why Do You Want to Manage?
2. 7 Myths about Management
3. The Boss Trap
4. I'm a manager, get me out of here
5. Three quarters of new managers lack skills to do their job
6. Leadership Disconnect = Career Failure
7. Lessons from the school of hard knocks
8. Why new managers encounter trouble
9. The New Boss: How to Survive the First 100 Days
10. New Manager: Where Do You Start?
11. 10 Reasons Why Middle Managers Are Important
12. New Manager Success Key: Ongoing Training
13. A Practical Guide for Developing Leaders
14. Helping New Managers Succeed
15. How To Help New Executives Succeed
16. New Managers: Get Your Boss’s Support
17. The Top Ten Challenges of the New Leader
    

Leadership in a Culture of Compliance

“The straightest line to success is to conform to prevailing views, as opposed to challenging them.”
- Mark Stevens

As you know, I am a big fan of CPSRenewal. If you haven’t already done so, please go to their blog and read their latest column entitled “The Development in Leadership”. I found it to be perhaps their finest post to date, partly because of the topic and partly because of the slightly contrarian perspective. I initially wanted to comment directly on their blog, but once I got going I had so much to say so instead I chose to make it a separate post here.

First, some of the highlights:

• “One of the effects of being in school for a prolonged period of time is that people become accustomed to its normative framework and to the structured progression.”
• “One participant even said that she was very concerned about the prospect of working for a manager who was quickly promoted because they excelled at thinking inside the box.”
• “The problem with development programs is that they do not necessarily produce leaders and innovators. In effect they reward and perpetuate herd mentality and produce predictable outcomes.”
• “Leaders and innovators typically lead and innovate despite the status quo, not in support of it. Yet, the best a development program can do is provide employees with the skills that have been determined to be important in the past and in the immediate present. In essence, development programs are cyclical in that they support and reinforce the status quo, creating predictability and producing (process and rule) followers.”

As I was reading the column, it reminded of Upton Sinclair’s famous quote: “You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.” I have faced a similar type of resistance with regards to some of the ideas I have expressed before. But in the context of leadership development, this raises two questions:

1. Given that the ethos of public service management is to comply and ensure compliance, what conclusions should we draw about the people who succeed the most in the system (i.e. get promoted to high level positions)?
2. What kind of leadership and innovation can we expect from people who know so well how things should be done?

***

Last week, a friend of mine forwarded me an interesting article written by G. Hayward and C.Everett entitled “Adaptors and innovators: data from the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory in a local authority setting” (Published in the Journal of Occupational Psychology, 56, 339-42). Using the Kirton Adaptor-Innovator Inventory which measures on a continuum the behaviour of innovators and adaptors (or "non-innovators" if you prefer), the researchers found that local government workers were more adaptive (i.e. less innovative) than the general population. Furthermore, the longer workers had been employed in the government, the least innovative they were. The research also found that new recruits were mildly innovative, but within five years they would fall to the same level as the rest of the staff. Junior employees were more innovative than intermediate or senior staff.

The researchers conclude that “organizations become adaptive (or innovative) mainly because people leave or stay according to whether the organization suits their personality.” This “leads to more entrenched positions, adaptive organizations becoming more adaptive and vice versa. More adaptive styles reduce the range of responses available to the organization and lead to it becoming less flexible in its search for solutions, with the dangers this implies in a world of conflicting and rapidly changing pressures.”

Not surprisingly, the authors add that the public service “may well appeal to people who are adaptive by nature, and those with an innovative bent may find the work uncongenial or may not fit socially in a team of adaptors. However, to some extent the current employment situation may alter their behaviour, in that jobs are not easily obtained. Staff may remain and choose to be miserable rather than moving to find work more suitable to their innovative natures. […] It is much more likely in our view that, in order to fit, individuals can make only superficial changes to their behaviour. For the most part the individual must either find a niche within the organization, make alterations to the job in order to get a better fit, or, as a final outcome, leave the organization.”

Dr M J Kirton reaches similar conclusions in his article entitled “Adaptors & Innovators - Why New Initiatives Get Blocked”. Noting that “middle-ranking Civil Servants were markedly adaptor-inclined”, Kirton writes:

“Organisations in general and especially organisations which are large in size and budget have a tendency to encourage bureaucracy and adaptation in order to minimise risk. [...] The aims of a bureaucratic structure are precision, reliability and efficiency, and that the bureaucratic structure exerts constant pressure on officials to be methodical, prudent and disciplined, and to attain an unusual degree of conformity. These are the qualities that the adaptor-innovator theory attributes to the ‘adaptor’ personality. For the marked adaptor, the longer an institutional practice has existed, the more he feels it can be taken for granted. So when confronted by a problem, he does not see it as a stimulus to question or change the structure in which the problem is embedded, but seeks a solution within that structure, in ways already tried and understood – ways which are safe, sure predictable. He can be relied upon to carry out a thorough, disciplined search for ways to eliminate problems by ‘doing things better’ with a minimum or risk and a maximum of continuity and stability. This behaviour contrasts strongly with that of the marked innovator. The latter’s solution, because it is less understood, and its assumption untested, appears more risky, less sound, involves more ‘ripple-effect’ changes in areas less obviously needing to be affected; in short, it brings about changes with outcomes than cannot be envisaged so precisely. This diminution of predictive certainty is unsettling and not to be undertaken lightly, if at all, by most people – but particularly by adaptors, who feel not only more loyal to consensus policy but less willing to jeopardise the integrity of the system (or even the institution). [...] Tolerance of the innovator is thinnest when adaptors feel under pressure from the need for imminent radical change. Yet the innovators’ very disadvantages to institutions make them as necessary as the adaptors’ virtues in turn make them.”

***

So back to leadership development programs and my response to CPSRenewal’s contentions...

“Employees do not need to be in a development program to lead.”
I couldn’t agree more. Having spent four years in a development program, I can say I have seen many of my peers embody the status quo.

“Opportunities to lead are most likely more numerous outside development programs where there are fewer restrictions.”
I can only speak based on my own experience, but one of the beauties of leadership development programs is that you can get away with murder! People will forgive your mistakes more easily because you of the label “still developing” stamped on your forehead. However, that freedom to lead and innovate doesn’t always come with the credibility you need to push the ideas forward and see their implementations. For that to happen, you may need the support of a credible sponsor or manager with a lot of pull.

“Leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where opportunity congregates, in this case outside development programs.”
I don’t disagree with the statement, but I would like to qualify it. I would argue that leaders and innovators tend to be drawn to where there is a void to fill or a need to address, and because of the high level of attention employees in development programs often get (in contrast to the employees who are not in those programs), the most pressing needs and significant voids are likely outside development programs.

***

I have been in a government leadership development program and had the distinct privilege of nearly failing my first promotion board. Despite superior achievements in my assignment and outstanding evaluations from my managers and clients, I didn’t do well on the interview (my heart was just not into it for a host of reasons, including the fact that the interview had been rescheduled four times and was now six months late). So when I met with the promotion jury (another six months later) to find out my results, they told me: “Etienne, you did not demonstrate you met the requirements to be promoted. But we are going to do you a favour and give it to you anyway.”

Obviously, I was frustrated by the fact that the verdict was based on my performance in a one-hour interview and totally dismissed my performance during the 2500 hours of work that preceded it. But first and foremost, I was disgusted by the fact that I was given a promotion that, according to the standards of the members of the promotion jury, I should not even deserve. Basically, I was becoming a prime example of the Peter Principle and they were telling me that they were promoting me to what they thought was my level of incompetence!

For my next promotion, I decided to play by the rules. Since now I knew that all what really counted was the interview, I was going to comply with the process. More specifically, I knew I would be asked questions about my home department, such as mission, vision, organizational structure, priorities, etc. The problem was that by then I had not worked in my home department in over two years, and had been in three other departments and agencies in the meantime. I suppressed all the feeling of futility and silliness I was experiencing and memorized by heart the content of my home department’s website. Fortunately, I’ve always had very good memorization skills, so at the interview I regurgitated word for word everything from the website. At one point I noticed from the body language of one of the senior executive on the jury (who was from my home department) that he didn’t even know about the departmental priorities and objectives I was discussing, so I dug even further. When I asked them if they wanted me to keep going, they told me they had enough for the purpose of the assessment (none of them were going to admit their own ignorance!). I nailed that interview and got my promotion.

That day I learned an extremely valuable lesson about what leadership means in a culture of compliance.

What's the Fuss Over Leadership?

As I wrote in "An Inconvenient Renewal", I am growing tired of hearing the words leaders and leadership everywhere, especially when it is used in reference to managers.

The whole issue of "Management vs. Leadership" will be the topic of my next paper, which I intend to release sometime next spring.

In the meantime, I invite you to watch this short interview with my favourite management guru (and a Canadian too!), Henry Mintzberg. (Note: The juicy stuff begins at the 2:50 mark.)

If you are not familiar with the work of Mintzberg, I would recommend the following readings:

• Managers Not MBAs
• Leadership and Communityship
• The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact or a summary of his ten managerial roles model

In Hindsight: Links

"Like a pot of water brought to a boil, it all looks pretty messy and bubbly right before the system changes state and reaches new order. Of course, putting a lid on the pot and weighting it down doesn't prevent any disorder; it only prevents the new, higher level of organization from emerging."
- Douglas Rushkoff. Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business. 2005.

For the longest time, it seemed that talking about the public service was something reserved exclusively for senior leaders, journalists, university professors and external consultants. But thanks to some courageous leadership (and a little help from Web 2.0!), a wind of renewal is blowing through the public service. Employees are taking matters into their own hands and sharing their thoughts on how to improve the institution.

In a very unscientific survey I administered on my blog, I asked visitors: “How do you feel about discussing the public service of Canada and/or PS Renewal on websites, blogs, discussion forums, Facebook, etc.?” The responses were as follows:

• 51% - I'm totally comfortable doing it. What needs to be said needs to be said!
• 23% - I'm a bit hesitant but I (would) do it anyway. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission!
• 20% - I'm not comfortable doing it. I would need some assurance that it won't come back to haunt me or be held against me.
• 5 % Are you kidding!?! We live in a culture of blamability. Big Brother is watching you!

(Total number response: 39)

The results seem encouraging, but then it begs a question: if 75% of (this small sample of) respondents claim to be comfortable discussing PS Renewal on the Web, why are there so few discussions and feedback on the current sites dedicated to PS Renewal matters? The issue is not unique to the Public Service of Canada; some public service bloggers in other countries have raised similar concerns before (here and here). Studies have identified some organizational barriers, and individuals have taken upon themselves to educate public servants about the appropriate use of Web 2.0, even going as far as providing guidelines for doing it appropriately (similar to what the UK Civil Service has done). But there is still a long way to go.

I released my paper roughly a month after the CBSA employees’ Facebook scandal hit the news, and many managers were initially very concerned that my paper was on Facebook. This showed a lack of understanding of the technology. To start with, you can’t really post a paper on Facebook; you can merely promote it, which I did on the Facebook group on PS Renewal (incidentally, this group was “created following a discussion with James Lahey - how to harness an internet discussion on public service renewal”). Lastly, the concerns over Facebook are somewhat misplaced because, as Mike Kujawski points out on his blog, Facebook is just one out of a few hundreds social networking sites available! Singling out Facebook is futile, because in the world of Web 2.0, chances are everyone will simply converge to another site and do what they wanted to do all along.

Shortly after releasing "An Inconvenient Renewal" on my blog, two public servants launched a blog of their own: CPSRenewal.ca. Their site has become for many the single best resource of news on PS Renewal matters. Feeding on this energy (and taking the Clerk's invitation to get involved to the letter), I have created a site called Bottom-Up Renewal. I hope to make it a hub for sharing tips and practices on how to renew the public service when you are on the front-line. Please take a moment to visit the site and contribute to it. Thanks!

In Hindsight: A Conscious Choice with Moral Overtones

"Your management is perfectly designed to produce the results that you’re currently experiencing."
- Mike Chitty

In lieu of a conclusion to the conclusion, here's a story that could well have been used as a prologue to "An Inconvenient Renewal". It is my story, and I hope it will help you: 1) put the paper in context; 2) understand why I feel so strongly about these ideas, and; 3) realize that the ideas are more down-to-earth than what many would like to believe.

I was a manager in the private sector for a few years before joining the public service. It was during some very exciting but challenging times (i.e. the Internet bubble). On my very first project, I had 20 staff, a 3 million dollars budget, cutting-edge technology, and insane deadlines to meet. In my first six months on the job, I probably made all the mistakes a manager could possibly make in an entire career, but I learned tremendously and soon developed a good reputation as a manager. I joined the public service expecting to follow a similar path (i.e. steep learning curve, quick career progression, more challenge than I could ever dream of, etc.), but unfortunately I ended up in what looked more like a cul-de-sac!

My first two years in the public service were characterized by great relationships with my supervisors and terrific colleagues, but there was one small problem: I wasn't used at half of my potential. Actually, if scientists claim we use 10% of our brain, I can probably say that I was using 10% of my talent. I felt I was being held back by the organizational culture. It seemed that in order to "fit in", I had to suppress so much of who I was and what I could become. The pressure to conform with the implicit norms of the organization (i.e. the culture) was beginning to have a toxic effect on my health. I was miserable because I couldn't be true to myself. I knew I had to escape the situation so I was actively looking for work outside the public service.

It was therefore with a “nothing to lose” attitude that I responded to one of the strangest job poster I had ever seen. It was extremely short and it said: “I’m looking for my alter ego" (I'm not making this up, this was the actual quote from the job poster!). I met with the manager and accepted the job based solely on a gut feeling I had about her. As it turned out, she did things very differently than any other manager I had ever encountered.

On my first day on the job, she told me: “At the present time I have no specific work for you, no projects, no files. In fact, for the first three months of your assignment, I don’t expect you to do any work. But I will drag you to all of my meetings, and you will follow all my direct reports to all of their meetings, and in three months from now, you will know pretty much everything there is to know about this unit and what we do. Along the way will come a project. I don’t know what that will be yet, but I will expect you to take it and deliver on it. In the meantime, sit back and learn as much as you can.” For the next three months almost all I did was attend meetings and read my manager's emails. Sure enough, a project eventually landed on my desk. Although I was by far the most junior person on the team and had no credentials in my résumé to do this project, my manager put her trust in me and I was confident I could do it. And I did.

One morning I asked her for feedback about my performance and how I could improve. She explained: “Etienne, you are in a development program, and therefore you are expected to develop. You have a job to do and a project to deliver, and that's fine. But you need more. When your regular work is done, I expect you to use the remainder of your 7,5 hours day to explore what’s out there, learn about the public service and what it has to offer, discover something that interest you and immerse yourself in it. It can be anything. But I expect you to do that, and I am willing to help you if you need it.”

I therefore became actively involved in communities of practice (managers’ network at the departmental, regional and national level) and young public servants networks. I even developed some sort of "expertise" on the topic and I seized all the opportunities I could to show some leadership. I was “in the zone” and it showed through my performance. I was more focused than ever in my “regular” job, because I knew that around three or four o’clock, I would get to work on the pet projects that fueled me. I totally poured my soul into this assignment.

I eventually discovered that for a large portion of her career, my manager had made a point of surrounding herself with people in development programs and people who came in her unit on assignments. In an institution that struggles to retain talent, this manager did just the opposite with her unit: she would give herself one year to bring the new employee up to the next level and get him or her ready to leave for the next assignment, the next promotion, the next job. What she did for me, she probably did for dozens of people before.

But what she did with me can't be overstated. I was just about to become a statistic: I was so disengaged, so fed up with my career progression in the public service, that I was ready to leave. Fast-forward a year later, and I was the most committed public servant you could come across. Working for this manager was a transforming experience, a turning point in my career (and by extension, in my personal life too). She got me back on the hook just before it was too late. More importantly, she tapped in my potential, pushed me to make the best use of my talent. She gave me a taste of what it was like to be unleashed rather than held back. Ultimately, she proved to me that I was right to think I could make a difference.

The whole episode taught me what being a good manager was all about. And the best thing of all: this living example came from a public service manager!

In Hindsight: There Are No Leaders, Only Good Managers

"Your worth is in their eyes."
- Author unknown

For many managers and senior executives, the two most challenging ideas contained in my paper came from the sections "Moving from manageability to management" and "There are no leaders, only good managers". These two sections above all challenged widely accepted beliefs about management in general, but especially in the public service. Consequently, more than a few made a point of telling me that they disagreed with many of my ideas.

On one hand, this form of denial from managers and senior executive is to be expected, because some of the ideas question their existence as managers as well as their success in the "system". For that reason, it is probably easier for them to state they disagree with many of my ideas than look into a mirror and rethink their most fundamental beliefs about management.

On the other hand, I am not (currently) a manager and I definitely do not have the perspective of senior executives in the public service. Therefore, I don't hold the truth and I have to acknowledge that if I had their perspective, my own ideas could very well be somewhat different than what they are now.

Regardless, my perspective is probably shared by a good portion of the 80% of public servants who are not managers and the 95% who are not senior executives. In that sense, even if my thinking is wrong, I know a few hundred thousands other public servants are likely to be wrong with me!

The question then is not whether we are right or wrong, but rather:

• Is it a valid perspective?
• Where are managers and executives failing to explain their perspective to employees? How could employees communicate their perspective differently so they can be heard by management?
• How can we educate people to see things differently?

For these reasons, I will leave it up to people - but especially managers and senior executives - to figure out for themselves what administration, management and leadership mean to them. I will however recommend three books which should be mandatory for all senior executives:

• "The Future of Management" by Gary Hamel;
• "Managers Not MBAs" by Henry Mintzberg;
• "Becoming a Manager" by Linda Hill.

(You can also find out more about my favourite management books here.)

As a side note, I recently came across this blog posting by Dave Crisp who shared his thoughts on "followership" and offered a solution to something that had been bugging me for quite a while:

"Personally I prefer to use the term “supporters” rather than “followers.” The days of blind following are grinding slowly, but surely to an end. People think for themselves and are finding ways to act on those thoughts more than in the past. “Supporters” implies a leaders needs to nurture support, that it can be withdrawn at any sign of inconsistency or personal agenda and that the entire process is very much a two-way street. Leaders need supporters and supporters need leaders."

Enjoy your reading!

In Hindsight: Levers of Renewal

"The real heroism of leadership involves having the courage to face reality - and helping the people around you to face reality."
- Ronald Heifetz

The most positive message to come out of my talk on bottom-up change is undoubtedly the need for courage. Without courage, all the ideas I discuss in my presentation and in my paper are just wishful thinking. Courage is the difference between having principles and living by these principles. Courage comes to life when outward acts are aligned with inner principles. Courage can make or break a leader.

Interestingly, the most frequent comment I have received from readers after I released “An Inconvenient Renewal” was that writing this paper must have required courage, and that it was a courageous act to release it. At first, that comment left me perplexed, because I didn't see what I had done as courageous. I felt compelled to write it, and I knew there could be negative consequences if I released it. But I didn't think of it as courageous. I just felt it was the right thing to do. But it definitely was not courage – at least not for me. And that’s when I realized that whether or not I felt it was courageous was absolutely irrelevant! "Perception is reality", and if readers thought it was courageous, then it was! Most importantly, the fact that some many people said it was courageous speaks volume as to what is missing from our public service culture: courage!

We want courage. We need courage. We crave for courageous people to step forth, speak up, and do what everyone knows is the right thing to do, but few are actually willing to do. This is why we must recognize that courage can also be manifested by anyone, including non-managers. Actually I would argue that the courage demonstrated by ordinary employees builds pressure for courageous management. It also builds pressure for change. Intuitively, we all know the power of a single right example, because courage is contagious.

In our bureaucratic organizations, we traditionally expect change to come from the top down. The Deputy Minister gives the direction for the change, it filters through the chain of command, and down to the employees. While this is a great way to ensure coordination, alignment, and provide a certain degree of control over the change, it blinds us to another reality: that is one of bottom-up change, it starts with one individual.

In Hindsight: Barriers to Renewal

"Set your limits early and high, because hitchhikers have the uncanny ability to detect just how much they can get away with."
- Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter. 12: The Elements of Great Managing. 2006.

In January 2008 I was asked to deliver a talk to a group of 250 employees from a federal department. I developed a presentation entitled “Bottom-Up Change: It Starts With An Individual”, which was largely based on the concepts I discuss in Part 3 of “An Inconvenient Renewal” (i.e. the barriers and levers). By far, what resonated the most with people was the notion of unmanaged poor performance. In the presentation, I tell a story inspired by two real-life situations that took place in the federal public service. It is truly amazing how much this segment of the presentation gets the attention of everyone in the room. I could only conclude one thing: everyone has had the misfortune of witnessing a case of unmanaged poor performance… and people resent it deeply.

Managing poor performers may very well be the single most difficult thing a supervisor has to do. I would argue that adequately addressing poor performance issues requires to blend all the top interpersonal and communication skills at once.

In my organization, we wanted to improve the quality of people management, and we figured that if we could get our supervisors to be skilled in the single most difficult aspect of their job, the rest should follow naturally and we should notice a major improvement in the quality of supervision. So we did a number of things:

• We signed-up all our supervisors to a supervisory skills course which focused largely on dealing with poor performers and holding difficult conversations with employees (the course received very positive reviews, thanks to the high calibre of the facilitator).
• The Director set clear expectations about how he wanted supervisors to do their job, and made that known to all the staff so that everyone in the organization knew that: 1) supervisors had the permission to deal with poor performers; 2) supervisors would be held accountable for managing performance of staff; 3) managing performance is not simply something you do once a year in the annual performance appraisal – it’s a daily thing.
• With that in mind, we gave every supervisor a book on how to give accurate feedback to employees.
• Along with the book, we attached a letter in which the Director reiterated his expectations but also acknowledged that managing performance of staff is not always an easy thing to do (see sample letter).
• The Director included a personal hand-written inscription inside each copy of the book we gave to our 70 supervisors, therefore signalling to individual supervisors that indeed he knows them and would hold them personally accountable for managing the performance of their staff.
• Each time we hold a staff or conference call, the Director makes a point of reinforcing the message that performance management is one of his top priorities, that poor performance will be addressed, and that unmanaged performance will be not tolerated.

Some of these things may appear mundane, but combined together over a sustained period of time, they form a coherent strategy which suggests that performance management is not just a fad or the new "priority of the day", but rather something we want to build into the organization's culture so that it becomes part of the way we do things. And it looks like we are off to a good start...

Last year our Directorate had a 98% completion rate for the annual performance appraisals - probably the highest in the Department given the fairly large size of the unit. Furthermore, all the annual performance appraisals were done using the "long form" (i.e. no check box, all narrative), which means all employees were also given an opportunity to develop an individual learning plan. Many supervisors have also incorporated the Key Leadership Competencies in the performance appraisals as a means to set clear performance expectations with employees (see posting on the Bottom-Up Renewal site for details).

Please feel free to take a closer look at Bottom-Up Renewal and contribute some of your own organizational practices.

Also please take a moment to take the poll on the top right-hand corner of this page!

In Hindsight: Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted

"Managers who don't know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure."
- Russell L. Ackoff & Herbert J. Addison, "Management f-Laws: How Organizations Really Work" (2007)

The title of this section got a lot of people nodding in agreement, recognizing the pervasiveness of “management by measurement” in the public service.

One thing I had underestimated however was that many managers and even some senior executives would suggest that in order to get better at people management – which has traditionally been something considered difficult to measure – we should provide managers with financial incentives, i.e. a "performance pay" based on how well they managed people.

That’s absolutely ludicrous! To begin with, there is growing evidence that pay for individual performance produces mixed results at best (see Jeffrey Pfeffer's work on the topic - this is a must read!). Pfeffer further explains that:

"Tinkering with pay appears to be easier than fixing organizational cultures and leadership capabilities. It is apparently "fashionable" because it does not seem to require the systemic intervention along multiple dimensions implied in the idea of building high performance work arrangements."

This is why I think the conventional thinking on which the argument of the managers above is based is fundamentally flawed.

People management should not be an after-thought or something managers do on top of the rest, but rather the foundation on which they can achieve all the rest. Good people management should be the default performance expectation against which managers are held accountable. Under absolutely no circumstance should we reward managers with a financial incentive for doing what should be considered the basic minimum. The perverse effects would simply be to great.

At any rate, we don’t need any kind of incentives to get managers to value people management. When the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service was implemented, public servants were not told that complying with the Code was something "they could do at the end of the day, if they had time", and that those who comply would be rewarded. No. You either comply with the Code or you don’t; and if you don’t, you shouldn't be public servant to start with. Well, it turns out that there is a section in the Code called “people values”... Perhaps every manager and senior executive should re-read this section, think about the implications for people management, and then try to decide if good people management is really just a nice-to-have or, as I believe, a must-have.

I would also add it is a myth that people management is difficult to measure. The Public Service of Canada uses a great tool called the Public Service Employee Survey (PSES), which provides over a hundred indicators that are linked in one way or another with people management at the organization level. If I was a senior executive having to hold accountable my direct reports for the quality of people management in their unit, I would use the PSES as a benchmark, set clear performance expectations for what I would want the PSES results to look like in a year from now, and make this part of the managers' personal objectives in his annual performance appraisal.

In my organization, we have already been administering the PSES internally in-between the public service-wide surveys of 2005 and 2008. It is a very valuable tool that provides a good overall assessment of the well-being of the organization and can be used to measure the quality of people management. I’m glad to see that the Clerk indicated that the PSES will become an annual thing.

In Hindsight: People Join Organizations but Leave Their Managers

"We cannot tell employees, "You are the most important part of the [organization]" and then put bad supervision in front of them. If we have bad supervisors, take them out of the job immediately."
- Errol Davis Jr. Taken from: 50 Lessons: Hiring and Firing (Lessons Learned). 2008.

There are three key ideas from "An Inconvenient Renewal" that particularly resonated with most readers: one that I discuss in the section on the barriers to renewal, another that I discuss in the section on levers of renewal, and a third which is the point of this entire section - the notion that people join organizations but leave their managers. I'm definitely not the first person to make this statement, but in the context of the public service it seems that it's the first time it is getting the acknowledgment it rightfully deserves.

Although most people agree in theory with the notion that people leave their managers and we need to rectify that, it seems that public servants (supervisors in particular) either don't fully grasp what's required to turn things around or are ill-equipped to do it.

One such example is the on-boarding experience of new hires where we typically over-promise and under-deliver. The high expectations created by the former only exacerbates the gap with the reality of the latter. In the past two weeks alone I have met four new hires who were offered the world on a silver plate by public service recruiters at a job fair, and ever since they have accepted jobs with the public service they feel they are totally left in the dark. They haven't begin their job yet that they are already starting to harbour ill-feelings towards the employer, a sure sign of things to come. Retention begins on Day One (actually, even before Day One...).

The first day, first week, first month, and even the first year in the job can leave a lasting impression on the new hire. One thing I will try to push for in my department in the upcoming months is to implement a formal on-boarding process which would include:

• Providing peer support to new hires before their arrival;
• Delivering all the mandatory and required training in the first weeks on the job;
• Job-shadowing managers and colleagues to all their meetings for the first 3 months in the job.
• Etc.

It is ambitious, but at the same time I am convinced that this is something where we can have the greatest bang for the buck. Whatever cost there is (i.e. lack of direct productivity while the new hires follows managers to meetings) should be assessed against:

• The cost of not doing it;
• The gains in learning and development;
• The level of effectiveness in the job at the end of those first three months;
• The long-term retention of top talent (see "In Hindsight..." in "Conclusion" for more on this).

We often hear about the importance of recruitment and talent retention, but seldom (if ever) ask the employees what they want, what they need and what will keep them with us. My organization has hired quite a few new recruits in the past year. Approximately one month into the job, we administered a short "in-take" survey to our new hires. We asked them:

• What’s the best experience you have had since you joined us?
• How could we improve our on-boarding experience?
• What's the # 1 thing we can do to make sure you're still with us in five years from now?
• How do you play a role in this challenge?
• How can you make a difference?

Some of the answers we received indicated that we were doing pretty good on some things, and definitely not as good on others. At least it provided us a starting point to improve our on-boarding process. Since then, we are getting a little better every time!