Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 01

January/February 2018 // Canadian Government Executive / 31 THE INTERVIEW I lead by doing. Policy is important, but in a digital world, if it takes you a year to make a policy, you’re too late. And I recog- nize that it will probably take us a year to do our digital policy properly, but in a digi- tal world, you’ve got to be doing. So the first thing we did was to create the ‘open by default’ pilot. It took us two or three months to do. We worked with part- ners to launch a whole bunch of different events around town. You don’t have to do everything yourself. The more you get out there, and the more you work in the open, a funny thing happens: the more you do. So that’s the leadership: do it in the open. I do the LinkedIn updates every week or every second week. Some people may mis- interpret the reasons for that, but I believe the more people know what you’re work- ing on, the easier your job becomes. If any- thing, the problem becomes that ideas and projects are coming at you too quickly. But by letting others know what you’re work- ing on, you don’t have to deliver every- thing yourself. Q: So you see that social media platform (LinkedIn) as critical to you achieving your mission? 100 per cent. Q: You are very active on social media, relative to other govern- ment executives. Being an old pub- lic servant myself, I can say with some authority that the social media space can feel intimidating and risky; you put yourself out there, which is what we have been trained to avoid for most of our careers. But you see that as being vital? I’ve been told by a few folks –not in the last six months, but when I was back in my Museum job – that our job is to be silent public servants. In a digital interconnect- ed world, I don’t think that reality applies anymore. I think it’s actually a bigger test to your leadership, and to you personally, that you do put yourself out there, and that you do move the agenda forward with people. It’s more challenging. You get trolled. It’s not fun. But you ignore it. You stay polite. If I were to be an impolite public servant, digital would blow that up – and blow it up quickly. That doesn’t mean that I’m not actually a polite public servant, because I would still be polite in an analog world. My point is that there are certain ways of behaving online. We debate. The staff de- bates openly online on certain topics. Some people would be scared by that, but then what we get is a whole bunch of different perspective from a whole bunch of differ- ent people. And that actually shapes my decision-making and my recommendations. So the leadership style is open and trans- parent. I do not do “typical” management. I’ve met one-on-one with everybody in the branch for at least 15 to 30 minutes. I start- ed with the junior levels, and I worked my way up. Everything we do is transparent. There’s a sticky wall out there on the “the wall of dumb stuff”, as we call it, which is full of questions like, “Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we...? and so on.” There are always going to be certain things that this system – because it’s linear in its approach – will not be able to comprehend. But when it comes to technology, we’re asking, “Why can’t we use this tech right now?” We have to be nimble. So everything is transparent. Everything is engaged, and it’s about doing things. I will take doing over policy any day. Especially in an era where things are digital, because people are doing things in Silicon Valley right now to annihilate certain job sectors – developing AI, for example. So doing is highly imperative in the digital world. It doesn’t mean you don’t make policy, but the reason we did ‘open by default’ at the Museum is because the Treasury Board was able to give us blessing in policy cov- erage to try and experiment so that we could actually design policies moving for- ward that were based on real, tangible ex- perience, not on a bunch of “what-if’s”. We could have “what-iffed” this to death. And if you do that, then usually you get into the risk aversion conversation. Whereas when you do things in a controlled way, and you limit risk, people may realize, “Well, you know what? They tried ‘open by default’ at the Museum, and the sky didn’t fall on anybody’s head.” If anything, our historians got to engage more with historians around the country and around the world. Our brand grew. Our reach went from two or three million to 30, 40, 50 million because we were able to get content and a network out there. That was accomplished by a 200-person Museum without any additional budget. What could the federal government do if we all went that way? So, by resolving to work more in the open, you work more collaboratively, and you do things. When you look at it that way, it’s super simple.