Networked decision makers

I make no apologies that probably the majority of my future posts will be linked to explaining and exploring in more detail the Digital Framework for Local Public Services.

So this post is focusing on some of the middle area of the picture…in particular the box around leadership and decision-making. This part of the journey is critical not just in a wider context of leadership and decision-making but in ensuring that we have open and transparent local decision-making as well as a clear accountability in terms of local representation.

To recap I previously explained this area in this way:

Leadership/Decision Making
We require strong visible leadership to enable transformation and strong decisions that ensure that we all contribute to creating a climate for growth and wellbeing. The leadership can also come from anywhere not just local public service providers
Capacity Building / Networks and Networks of Networks
Stimulating local action and identifying and connecting with networks and networks of networks to generate and create new opportunities and markets.
These connections can and will come from anywhere, this is not solely down to the council or local authority – this is about people and places.

Now all this is easy to write and even easier to say, but the practical implications of this are slightly more complicated and require a shift in thinking about what we should expect of our future leaders and decision makers and how we help those people become networked and connected.

Now the great thing about the internet is that you can always find and connect to people who are in a far better position to dig deeper into the thinking and that is exactly what Catherine Howe has done in relation to the Networked Councillors project. It came out of two things:

• If we are going to have more networked and digital citizens we are going to need politicians with the right skills – we will need networked councillors but we have not yet really explored what that means

• Just showing people how to use twitter doesn’t solve the problem

I’m really pleased that Catherine has shared this work as I personally think it validates the wider framework and also adds a layer of detail which I was obviously lacking (on purpose of course)

The report on the website is well worth a read and is easy to digest.

I want to pick out another quote form the report which to me helps to proactively link this to the wider framework and the language of the framework which is:

The qualities that the Networked Councillor should embody are found in the way in which Next Generation Users are approaching and using technology. We suggest that the following qualities, which can already be evidenced online, will be inherent:

• Open by default: This is open not just in terms of information but also in terms of thinking and decision-making

• Digitally native: Networked Councillors will be native in or comfortable with the online space, not in terms of age but in terms of the individual adopting the behaviours and social norms of the digital culture

• Co–productive: Co-production is a way of describing the relationship between Citizen and State which brings with it an expectation that everyone in the conversation has power to act and the potential to be active in the outcome as well as the decision-making process

• Networked: A Networked Councillor will be able to be effective via networked as well as hierarchical power as a leader

This is obviously one part of a wider complex environment and although this report is focused on councillors specifically it also applies itself to future leaders and decisions makers whether a local councillor or not….however for me this is a fantastic start to the discussion and conversation.

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Tweets from the Cabinet

A very short post to share some good news.

On Wednesday the council started tweeting the Councils Cabinet meeting for the first time – which I’m sure you’ll agree is a great step forward and one which was well received.

@DevonCC Delighted to hear John Hart welcoming Tweeting of Devon County Council meetings. It's the future!

—
This is South Devon (@ThisisSDevon) June 13, 2012

You can watch and listen to the meeting here as well and you might be interested to know that at 7 minutes and 48 seconds you can hear Cllr John Hart welcome the “tweeter” and recognises that it an important new development and opportunity.

#UKGC12 – Content Strategy WTF!

A long overdue post…and I suspect it won’t add a great deal to this excellent summary by Sarah Lay, who co-hosted the session with me but I’ll share my perspective nonetheless.

The whole idea of the session came about because of Sarah and myself chatting and constructively challenging each other over what is and isn’t content strategy in local government.

We sort of agreed that it was an emerging area but most (we believed) was already happening in other councils. Some explicit in their approach (Liverpool) and other less so…so may not have even written any of this stuff down before…

So the Friday session was all about (from my point of view) asking and proposing what people thought Content Strategy was all about and why it was very different to traditional web strategies…

My thoughts on the session itself were that it felt like being the odd one out for a large part of the session…explaining that the previous 10 years of eGovernment had basically caused us to think in the wrong way about our websites and that in large parts Better Connected hasn’t really forced us to think differently either…I’m not going to get into a debate here about the merits or not of eGovernment or Better Connected…they served and still serve a purpose…

I captured some additional thoughts about content strategy on a previous post here, but include the specific comments about content strategy below:

Content strategy is a game changer – changing the thinking built up over the las 10 years since the start of the egovernment agenda – this triggered the anti-user approach in developing websites in my humble opinion…it essentially turned sites that were aimed at users into mediocre corporately assimilated content waste lands…lacking in any meaning as to how to build and manager a community and help move aspects of communications and service interaction into more efficient channels…but that is the past…we can learn from it, but we must first recognise the mistakes we made…not everyone made them but most did…this is all just my opinion of course but localgov as a community needs to think about how it develops its online and digital offering better – perhaps in a similar reboot approach taken by the GDS…it does not matter what you call it…but it does need to think about some key principles, for example one might be.. getting content to people and not people to websites…this then provides the drivers for your content in social spaces as opposed to having a specific focus on social media….this does not mean you shouldn’t develop specific channel standards, in fact this reinforces the need for standards within channels…but based on managing your content flow in it and how you might monitor or measure it.

Moving on….

The more we spoke the more I guess we sounded a bit like a local council version of the government digital service…and this was reinforced when hearing Mike Bracken and his presentation on the Government Digital Service which directly followed our session in the main auditorium…much of what he said was resonating with me and whether or not others thought the same but for me at least i actually felt like i shared the ambitions of central government when it comes to web…this is the first time since i started in local gov web back in 2003…so a major break through in my opinion.

The big challenge is accepting that we can’t all create the same content strategy, but we accepted that we could all contribute to some form of framework or an understanding as to what the core components are….An idea for a saturday “doing session”…

Taken by iamadonut at UKGC12

The saturday session for me was not exactly what I had hoped for…this was mainly down to the fact that I had naively assumed that the people who were engaged and committed to helping on friday were in fact not there on the saturday…But that didn’t mean the session didn’t prove valuable nonetheless.

Ok, so we didn’t create a framework, we didn’t get to a comprehensive list of components…but what we did get to was as Sarah refers to her summary was that we should create a “Content Strategy Community”.

So yes, we are planning on pulling together a space for a community to come together…we are currently looking at a set of tools and how these might fit together to best suit the needs of a community as well as more formal and sustainable place for it to be hosted.

If you are in local government and work in and around digital content (web managers very much included here) then please leave a comment below or on sarah’s blog or just DM your contact details via twitter to either of us and we’d love for you to get involved…

Facilitating a Social Media Strategy

Updated: included wordle graphic

I’ve had quite a number of conversations  about social media strategy at the council recently,  as well as with a number of people via twitter and other networks.

So I thought I’d share my thinking on this and also share the strategy (co-developed by Martin Howitt) which I use to help others as well as a framework to developing a Social Media Action/Implementation Plan.

This is intended to be a reusable framework and strategy – as the detail and local variations will come in your own action plan.

To put this into context the council has already made significant progress around Social Media – In January 2010 the Council introduced a Social Media Policy and Guidelines which states:

Devon County Council is committed to making the best use of all available technology and innovation to improve the way we do business. This includes using all reasonable and cost-effective means to improve the way we communicate, reach out and interact with the different communities we serve.

It includes guidance around personal and professional responsibilities, using social media in different scenarios and key things to consider.

We don’t yet have a formal Social Media Strategy (yet), but the following is what I am personally using and promoting internally as a method and approach to adopting social media within our business operations.

The Strategy:
We will maximise the positive impact of our use of social media in support of the councils business aims and social objectives.

Principles:

1. The use of social media, like anything else the organisation does, must be informed by business strategy and social objectives.
2. Social technology does nothing on its own. To create value from social media, it is people and processes that must change.
3. Becoming a truly social organisation will yield benefits in terms of sustainability, responsiveness, reputation, lower operating costs, and higher social impact.
4. Social media can in theory pervade every part of the organisation’s value chain. But it should only do so if there are defined and (where possible) measurable positive business impacts.
5. There is no such thing as a social media project: there are only business projects that utilise social media tools to some extent to achieve their objectives.
6. A social media capability must therefore be built or adopted specifically to serve the objectives and current projects of the organisation.

Tactics:

1. Identify which organisational processes / service areas which might use social software or social media tools
2. For each process / service area – state the key objectives and outcomes
3. List the available tools and their best-value use cases
4. For each process/service area identified in (1), identify the most useful tools from (3) and map the potential benefits to objectives/outcomes in (2)
5. Consolidate the list in (4) by channel and/or by organisational role.
6. For each role identified in (5), evaluate the cost, benefits, and risks
7. Create a prioritised portfolio of projects, expected benefits, and Key Performance Indicators based on the outputs of (6)

I appreciate that this may sound easier than it actually is, but to be honest if it were that easy everyone would be doing it and no one would have trouble justifying its use. If you can build this approach into the service business planning cycle you (as facilitator) and the service area will yield higher results in terms of potential Social Media projects supporting and delivering business outcomes – that is the theory anyway 🙂

As a starting point I’d recommend that you look at your own service area as well as highlighting or at least acknowledging other “high value” organisational processes which could benefit from this exercise, so that you can get familiar with the process and the level of understanding you will need around some of the tools and best value use cases.

It is worth trying to separate the cross cutting processes from the actual service areas for example “community engagement” might be a service area in your organisation as well as it being a cross cutting activity. In my opinion you are likely to identify a better value proposition looking at the cross cutting process of community engagement then the service itself.

In my Council a sample list might look something like this:

Process / Activity Areas

• Community Engagement
• Customer Service
• Staff Engagement
• Community Consultations
• Staff Consultations
• Personal and Self Directed Learning
• Knowledge Sharing
• Policy Development
• Service Planning
• Emergency Communications
• Press and PR Relations

I’ve separated the activities of engagement and consultation on purpose as different social value can be created depending on your approach.  By tackling a cross cutting process or activity you can influence and impact a greater number and range of people who can add value when you start looking at this on a service perspective.

Service Areas

• Trading Standards
• Libraries
• Road Safety
• Highways (roads and traffic)
• Waste Services
• Registration Services

The reality here is I could have included a list of nearly all services, but you really need to stay focused and work on a service by service basis sometimes.

I envisage that the best approach would be a twin track approach –  During the prioritisation process outlined in stage 7 – try selecting one activity area alongside a service area to increase the organisational learning opportunities.

Hope this is helpful –  and I wish you luck….I’d be very keen to hear your stories on how this works or doesn’t for you.

Stop changing the way people work!

It has occurred to me more and more recently that trying to get people to change the way they work is a pointless exercise and pretty hard work really especially if what you are suggesting challenges what they stand for and the very role they have become experts in over a number of years.

In my experience people don’t want to be told that what they do is “wasteful” or “inefficient” because it affects people on an emotional level and that can often make them even more resistant to change. I believe that fundamentally people want to deliver efficient services or do things in an efficient and effective way. I mean why would you do something if you thought you could do it better. We do this all the time in our personal lives. This is the reason I now do digital banking. More efficient use of my time.

Now before anyone shouts at me I am very aware that some people are keen to change and promote change but are often knocked back and then get frustrated in their roles.

However these people actually suffer from the problem I do. Trying to get people to change the way they work.

You might often hear “change is great as long as I don’t have to”. Well the best way to get around this is to adopt an ever so slightly different approach and it is really quite simple. In fact I suspect all of us already know what to do, but like myself get caught up in the culture and structures that support these views.

So what we really want to be doing is:

Change and challenge the way people THINK about their work.

We can not change the problems we have with the same thinking that created them. If we can can encourage people to step out of there daily roles and look at the outputs and outcomes they are directly or indirectly contributing to, you can start to have a better discussion around how best to deliver the service. After all people are often very passionate about the customer and delivering quality for them. This is essentially about looking outside in – a Systems Thinking view really- but it actually gives you the angle that encourages people to question how best to deliver for the customer, instead of focusing on their specific role.

There are of course challenges in facilitating that process and ensuring you look at the big picture around people, process, information and technology but the key for me is actually getting to the point where meaningful conversations about fundamentally transforming the service can be had.

It is often in these conversations that people come up with ways to change their bit of the process, that in itself is one part of the change management task completed as people are more likely to accept change if they can understand and own the change. This can remove some of the uncertainty and lack of understanding around the need to change in the first place plus and don’t underestimate this – it was afterall their idea and not yours.

So if we are really serious about Transformation and Radical Reform across the public sector then we must start giving people opportunities to think differently about their roles and services.

Without getting into a huge list here – how you can do that will depend on local circumstances and the type of service area you are hoping to engage or participate with, but could include:

– Action Learning sessions/programmes – bringing practitioners from different organisations together to review, challenge and “think” differently about service design. This could also be online through the Communities of Practice platform or other social and professional networks
– Art of the possible sessions – practical demonstrations of how services have been delivered elsewhere using technology as an opportunity for change.
– Connecting people for learning and knowledge sharing
– Discussions and conversations with service users themselves.
– A cross organisational group of people to provide peer review and constructive feedback and challenge
– Traditional consultants who are “experts” in service transformation.

There are many other ways you can achieve the above and it doesn’t really matter how you do it, but we must start focusing on the THINKING.

I’d be interested to hear any other ideas you have which have worked and helped contribute to transformational change.

So my challenge is to see how we can do this in Devon. The Enterprise Architecture function I sit within has a unique opportunity to facilitate this process as it is exactly what we are here to do. We just need to get our approach right to be effective. We may need to change our thinking about how we do our job as well.