The video is based on this we made for the G-Cloud programme in 2012..

Over the past year or so there have been earthquakes in Government IT. Good ones. Some enlightened folk in the Cabinet Office with the right mindset and a sensible approach have begun a substantial and workable-looking reform.

This week, for example, the last of the 24 ministerial departments has switched off its website and moved to the new centralised gov.uk website created by the Government Digital Service. A striking technical achievement certainly; but it is the deft cat-herding of so many diverse organisations that has most impressed us.

Having worked in Government IT for a dozen years or so and watched (through our fingers) some of the quite dreadful things that have happened, it is hugely cheering that there are such changes in the air.

We intend to focus our business on supporting these changes. Specifically – and you’ll see this plastered over our home page in big letters – to provide “Sleeves-rolled-up help to implement the Cabinet Office’s IT reform agenda within Government organisations”. (If we are completely honest, we will mostly be doing the same things we have always done; it’s just that now we don’t have to be quite as stealthy.)

We are delighted to say that we have been successful in our tender for the latest G-Cloud contracting framework (G-Cloud being a noteworthy Government IT success in itself). We have been on the framework since its inception and have done work for two departments. We wrote the change strategy for the G-Cloud Programme and helped set up an agile change programme within Defra to improve information sharing and collaboration. See the G-Cloud supplier sales leader-board: we are one slot above Microsoft. Sure to change, but nice while it lasts.

And, incidentally…

…although we are not a tech firm, we have built this website ourselves. In the vein of the G-Cloud ethos, we gave up our traditional web services provider and took on more of the responsibility of creating and managing the site ourselves. In the process, we learned that the service we had before was not that good and we could do better by being a little bit adventurous. Again, in the spirit of G-Cloud we used pay-by-the-hour cloud services and free open-source software. We were amazed at how quickly we made progress and how enormously helpful dozens of people, from all over the world, were in resolving the technical snags we came across. Fine-tasting dog food.

You may know that I have a hobby horse about conferences (see We must get more from conferences). For the click weary here is a snippet…

Nowadays I hear much of the need for organisations to become collaborative, innovative, agile and suchlike; and I hear that achieving these things will depend much on transformation of culture and behaviour; but I can’t see how this will happen if, at significant gatherings, we do the same old things and behave in the same old ways. That so many undoubtedly smart folks spend entire days at events sitting and listening but contributing so little feels, well… a bit daft. I think we should, as much as is feasible, get away from the model of conferences that is about transferring knowledge from those who know to those who don’t and, instead, use the valuable time at these events to generate new knowledge and grow genuine community. We must make conferences, events, meetings, workshops, gatherings of all kinds much more participative; and accept, if we really want to change how our organisations and institutions work, that this new approach is no optional extra.

See also my rant Sitting people on chairs in rows at meetings is a criminal waste.

I am keen on more open, participative styles of meeting that some call Unconferences: conferences driven by their participants. Typically, at the beginning, attendees will discuss what they want to talk about and, often with the help of a facilitator, develop an agenda for themselves and then follow it. The benefits are that everyone gets involved such that many more ideas, solutions to problems, richer connections and sometimes even new projects can emerge.

I think we will see much more of this type of conference in the future – for all sorts of reasons (that I may have a go at writing about another day) but here’s one for now… As the use of social media becomes mainstream in organisations (over say the next 20 years) more people will be blogging, tweeting, creating audio recordings and making videos and to get their point across. We will not need to go to conferences to hear people speak or even to ask them questions. In the context of the technology that exists now, the idea of travelling miles to spend hours listening to people and not (in the end) get to ask them a question, feels well on the way to pointless. At the moment, I’d say most people that most people want to hear from just don’t use these tools. But this will change.

To the story…

Last year I met Ian Bailey of Model Futures who asked me to speak at his Integrated EA conference. Integrated EA happens over two days and is a traditional conference aimed at defence/MOD folk with an interest in Enterprise Architecture. Ian has run the event very successfully for six years; it has developed a very good reputation and has a substantial group of loyal attendees.

While discussing potential subjects for my talk, I gently prodded Ian with my conference schtick (above) and suggested trying an unconference format. I wouldn’t have blamed Ian for taking an ain’t broke line but he was really keen to try something new. Fantastic.

A switch to an all-out unconference format (like the excellent UK Gov Camp running this weekend) would stretch things too far. We decided to start small and hatched the idea of an experimental session to run alongside a few hours of the main conference. After the initial meeting with Ian – to create a picture of how things might play out – I wrote this story. It tells of 25 people coming together to set an agenda, enthusiastically discussing things they were jointly interested in and then sharing stories of what happened. More or less, this came to pass.

To give you an idea…

I should say huge thanks to Penny Creed (who does a fantastic job of organising the event for Ian) for helping me out; not least to un-tidy a very neatly set out conference room; Penny Tweeted…

Just ‘unsetting up’ the room for the #IEA13 ‘unconference’. As an ‘uberplanner’ event manager it does feel like an alien concept.

— Penny Creed (@SynthesisEvents) March 6, 2013

Feedback after the session was almost entirely positive: Ian is considering taking the idea further next year.

Can’t help thinking all conferences should be having a go at this kind of thing.

I spoke about “The problem with Business Change…”

The presentation is included here for reference, but if you weren’t there you probably won’t get that much from it. If you are looking for the links I mentioned…

Cynefin

Cult of the Product

gov.uk

Government Digital Service blog

Working Out Loud

Business Change: Dirty Words in Government IT

The  Twitter hashtag for the conference was #IEA13

The Cult of the Product

I have just re-read it having enthused about it a few months ago. Herewith a taster…

The Cult of the Product underlies some of the most pernicious problems in this industry. We spend far more on capital expenses than we should, because we’re buying products we don’t need and never use. We’ve built acquisition systems that take 48 months to produce a requirements document because it’s optimized to find products, not solve problems. An “IT strategy” today, or what passes for it, is not much more than a tedious (and futile) process of aligning vendor roadmaps in the vain hope that a new requirement will be satisfied on time and on budget. We spend nearly all our time making product choices, and very little time thinking about how we’d like our IT shops to actually operate.

It’s very good. Here’s the link again. No shirking now.

Ah! Well…

I love the way it looks. I love that the content is written in plain English that I can read quickly and understand readily. I love that the pages look smart and that huge care has been taken about the layout and small things like the choice of typefaces. I think it is great that the content displays as well on mobile devices as it does on screen. I think it’s brilliant that the look and feel will be consistent whichever department provides the content. I love the style. It beams confidence. It makes me think about Government differently.

I love the way that the Government Digital Service (GDS) have gone about the job. Their design principles are marvellous. It’s great that they have started with a small amount of content, that they will be adding more soon, and that they are geared up to improve what they have done based on the feedback they get. It’s inspiringly bold to put an indicator of how they are doing at the top of the pages (even though it only shows 2 out of 24 at the moment). It’s wonderful that they have used open source software and any additional code they have written themselves has been shared for anyone to use. I love that they have already written twelve public blog posts about what they are doing and that these were authored by eight different members of the team; it’s heartening that these people so obviously take a real pride in what they are doing.

And I love the reaction. It’s wonderful that people like Tim O’Reilly (whom I respect hugely and who has no reason on earth to say things he doesn’t mean) have been so positive about this and the other things that GDS are doing.

GDS have (genuinely) thought big. started small and moved fast. It’s a completely classy job. They are showing the way.

We should follow.

’nuff said.

How to change the future

…it is a recording of a talk about resolving important, complex social problems given at the RSA last Tuesday (2 Oct 12) by Adam Kahane.  The introduction to the talk says…

People who are attempting to tackle these huge global problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They can’t solve their problems in their current context, which is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They can’t transform this context on their own — it’s too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And the people whose cooperation they need don’t understand or agree with or trust them or each other.

Kahane explains his approach – called Transformative Scenario Planning – which is a way of tackling Complex (or Wicked problems).  I am probably going to butcher things horribly here but the essence is… get a bunch of folks together who represent the entire problem in question (for a long time – days); and then, with sensitive facilitation, help them to work collaboratively and thoughtfully to develop stories of possible futures (the scenarios) and go on to describe ways these might be brought about. With the right people, at the right time, working in the right way, building the right relationships, some magic happens and stuff begins to change. This makes a lot of sense to me and I am impressed by Kahane’s track record; he was, for example, involved with the transition to the end of apartheid.

I thought about how these ideas might be applied in the context of the big problems of Government IT (with which my work is mostly concerned). My sense is that, at heart, these are essentially social issues and not at all dissimilar to those Kahane talks about. I wonder if anything like his approach has been tried?  I am suspecting not: there has been a wind of change in Government  IT lately but, on the face of it, the approach has been rather more analytic than collaborative.  Perhaps it is time to give ideas like these a shot?

What do you think?

After some head-scratching I decided to call my talk “Complexity and the incremental change revolution”; the conference blurb says…

This talk is about complexity in organisations and the need for a revolution in how we think about and manage change. It will explain why it is critically important for government to develop a capacity for incremental change and the deep shifts in mindset that will be needed to enable it. Drawing on real examples, it will describe the profound cultural barriers to adopting incremental approaches and practical things that can be done to get over them. It will look at ‘Agile’ and the challenges for IT people in particular.

There are more details on LinkedIn. It’s £50 (or £15 if you are a Cranfield/Shrivenham alumnus). Nice day in the country. Bang up lunch. Come along to cheer/heckle.

Why (on earth) should I bother blogging?
Writing things down, in words that other people can understand, straightens out crooked thinking and helps you learn; it develops your expression muscles so you can get your point across faster and better in the future; and it enables others to find out about what you are interested in, which starts conversations and brings opportunity you would never otherwise have had. Really.

I don’t have anything interesting to write about
I believe that absolutely everyone is interested in something; and capable of being interesting about it. Not necessarily because you are an expert, but because your experience is unique.

No one will be interested in what I write
Maybe no one you know will be interested but, if you publish your blog publicly, it will help you come across people who are (and perhaps bring opportunity).

I don’t have time to write
You don’t have to write very much: just a paragraph will do. A single paragraph conveys infinitely more meaning than no paragraph at all.

I can’t write
Yes you can. You might be a bit rusty/uncomfortable/self-conscious when you start but you absolutely can. And if you write, you will get better.

I don’t believe what I write will have any effect
Read about Martha Payne (for example) a 9-year-old who seriously beat up some beefy Scottish council bruisers by writing her Never Seconds blog.

For more on this, you could read Seth Goldin on Talkers’ Block or Euan Semple on Changing the world one word at a time (written yesterday so it’s nice and fresh).

You have more opportunity than ever before to shape the world around you. Euan Semple

Whether you are a corporate bod, a mum, a student, an artist or whatever else; I think you will get something from blogging about stuff you are interested in.

Blog all, is what I say.

If we share an office or workplace with colleagues; we overhear, we ask quick questions, we sense mood, we have a feel for what others are up to. This can help teams to be hugely more effective; but, nowadays, many of us are part of lots of teams, groups, communities; we spend very little time with our colleagues; and we don’t get these benefits of physical proximity. With large groups, even if everyone is on the same site, it can be very hard to get this feeling. Working out loud is a way of working (enabled by collaborative software) that generates a sense of connectedness in large and/or distributed groups.

We are well-used to keeping in touch using the phone and email; but usually this communication is specific, goal-oriented, transactional… Working out loud is different. It’s more about creating what some have called ambient awareness – and it puts us in a position to take advantage of ideas and (serendipitous) opportunities to do stuff better. A sense, perhaps, of sitting at the desk next to everyone.

I like Bryce Williams’ - When will we work out loud? Soon! - post, which explains Working out loud as two habits: narrating our work and making our work observable. Here are some examples of how this might happen…

• If we were to draft a document over several days we might use an internal collaboration tool to share what we are doing as widely as possible and we might store the emerging draft of that document in a shared folder so that those in our organisation who are interested could take a look at it as it develops (and possibly even help us).
• We might have some partly-formed thinking about a specific problem. Instead of organising a meeting for a couple of weeks hence, we might put these ideas in an internal blog post and encourage a discussion about them.
• Having found a new way of doing something, we might write a quick paragraph about it on a private forum used by a community of practice that we are part of. We might get involved in a brief exchange of comments with others interested.
• We might come across a useful idea or fragment of news that we believe could be useful to others and we might Tweet about it.

There is an important issue about what, and with whom, it is appropriate to share. Harold Jarche, in his post Narration of Work, talks of different modes/scopes of sharing: privately within work teams, more widely within specific communities of practice and publicly amongst informal learning networks…

[See this fascinating case study from Hans de Zwart about experiments with narrating work in a 20-person team in Shell.]

Working out loud does not mean automatically sharing every innermost thought with the world; although for most of us, it probably means sharing more widely than we are used to.

It’s important to say, also, that Working out loud is not synonymous with the use of social tools. It’s quite possible for us to tweet and blog ourselves cross-eyed and not be Working out loud at all. Working out loud is a set of behaviours that is enabled by social tools.

Widely discussing and sharing unfinished work may feel uncomfortable. We have all been schooled in making sure things are shiny before letting the world see them; but half-baked is, necessarily, becoming the new polished.

Reformers in Government are seeking to promote a more organic faster-paced approach to implementing new services. It is crucial that those doing this, benefit from the things others learn – as they learn them. Lessons-learned papers and neatly-crafted case studies take tooooo long. Experiencing something fresh, first-hand, as it happens, is far more valuable because it’s possible to sense the rawness and spirit of what is happening. Reading or hearing a summary later is less inspiring, and it’s quite possible that the summariser may have unwittingly summarised out the bits that are useful to us. When doing new stuff, conveying energy and enthusiasm is as important as conveying information.

If we share only with those we already know within our organisations or personal networks, it is unlikely we will come across people with exactly the same issues as us. It’s quite possible that, across Government, there are loads of people beavering away inventing essentially the same wheels. It would be close-on criminal for there not to be a way for those people to find each other, share what they learn and just be more effective. Working out loud lets people find people and helps people to help people. (And it could also save a fortune on consultancy fees).

But there is bad and good news.

The bad news is that Working out loud requires a (small but) significant change of behaviour. See Tim Kastelle’s recent post – Innovation Requires a Change in Behaviour – about the challenges of getting folks to wash their hands in hospitals despite the unarguable evidence that this simple action saves lives.

The good is that there is a growing body of people in the public sector well used to working this way – just take a few minutes to search Twitter – and encouragingly it only takes a few to get the ball rolling.

Join in. Work out loud.