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I really admired the efforts of our New Zealand cousins in the egovernment arena as I've mentioned before.
One of their initiatives is their ParticipationNZ wiki, which is allowing NZ public servants to collaboratively develop, assess and reflect on the overall approach to online participation by government agencies.
If your agency is considering participating in the online arena, this is a great place to find global best practice examples of actual participation policy and initiatives.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
egovernment online participation - New Zealand-style | Tweet |
Becoming a more effective change agent in government | Tweet |
I'd like to thank Kate Carruthers, a formidable change agent and renaissance woman, for prompting this post through a presentation she's published on SlideShare, Enterprise 2.0 and stakeholder resistance.
One of my key roles and, I believe, a key role for many in the online arena, is to be a change agent for digital channels.
I've led, been involved with and witnessed both effective and ineffective change initiatives over the years - hopefully learning something over the journey.
When I am seeking to be a change agent I consider four things;
- Whether the change is meaningful - that it deliver real value to internal or external groups
- How to overcome resistance to change - bringing people with me
- The process for successful implementation of change - making it work
- Embedding change into behaviours, processes and systems - creating lasting value
Is the change meaningful?
Change by itself is neither good nor bad. Good changes in one organisation can be bad changes in another - either because the change was unnecessary (or even detrimental), wasn't sold well, execution was poor or it was not embedded into ongoing practice.
Change is about the future - which we like to think we can predict, but actually do very poorly. We hope and plan for change with an assumption that it will make the future brighter. My experience has been that a realistic balance between optimism and pessimism is necessary for those seeking to introduce change to ensure that they don't get carried away with the change itself and downrate the consequences.
Assessing value
So given that change can have a different impact in different organisations, and can have unforeseen consequences, how should change agents go about assessing whether a change is meaningful, irrelevant or detrimental?
I don't have a magic formula for doing this. There are many measures of value - from time and cost savings to audience satisfaction and organisational flexibility.
Any meaningful change needs to generate one or more of these benefits. The benefits must, in the views of those affected by the changes, outweigh any negative consequences.
We're only human
Unfortunately as those introducing a change are usually those who benefit from it (financially or otherwise) there is a tendency for change projects to make rosy predictions of benefits but downplay consequences and risks. It can also be much harder to be the public voice saying "don't do this, it will be bad for us", than one of the chorus in support of a change.
The best any of us can do is make an objective assessment of the change's benefits and risks and then, during the change's implementation, adapt as necessary to ensure that it provides value and minimises negative consequences.
I fall back on a mantra that meaningful change creates its own meaning by being responsive and adaptable.
Many of the negative and positive benefits of a change only become clear during or after a change occurs. A change must evolve to ensure that it delivers value as these are revealed.
Overcoming resistance
It is a common myth that people resist change.
However life changes around us every day, we must constantly change our location, our knowledge, our behaviour, our attitudes, our tools and our networks to address it.
Humans are adaptable - it makes us one of the few species able to survive and thrive in virtually any environment on this planet.
When introducing change into organisations, my experience is that most resistance is not due to the changes themselves. It is related to the way in which the change was introduced, the communication that takes place and the level of involvement with the changes themselves.
They're not wrong!
One key mistake I've seen change agents make is to introduce change because the old way of doing things was wrong or inferior.
This is almost a sure way of creating resistance as it make the people who created and manage the existing approach wrong or incompetent.
If you tell someone that they are incompetent, you will not make them want to help you.
I've fallen - and still fall - into this on occasion. It's not a deliberate step, it's an error of not thinking through my own words clearly enough.
A much better approach is to acknowledge that the current approach is right - it achieves the outcome and is entirely appropriate based on how it has developed from the past. However if the situation has changed, or if there are new technologies or systems available, it is possible to build on the current approach and make it easier for those involved and/or improve the customer service provided.
In the vast majority of cases people want to improve themselves, they want to improve their organisations and they want to improve their customer service. A change is another step on this journey and is simply a more formal approach to doing what they were already doing - a process of continual improvement.
Looking within
So when I face resistance I look first at what I have failed to do to help people be involved with, understand and influence the change. Nine times out of ten if I'd done something better, the resistance would be much less - or non-existent.
One of the key areas I look at is how much time I give people to reflect on and consider a potential change. Increasing the lead time can help enormously in allowing people to follow their own journey of understanding the value of a change - and also can help bring out any critical flaws in the change before it becomes a project.
Planting seeds
So these days I think of introducing change as planting seeds that will grow in the future. This approach is focused around establishing the preconditions for change to happen, like putting oil in a car before the gears grind to a halt.
I regularly plant seeds through telling people about new things by email (and relating them to existing context), through water cooler conversations, through participation in different groups, speaking at events and mediums such as this blog.
As gardeners know, you should plant many seeds, they should be planted in fertile ground and nurtured over a long time.
So I try to disseminate the seeds widely, identifying other change agents, influencers, decision-makers and gatekeepers within the organisation - the fertile ground where seeds can survive. I nurture them through ongoing engagement, by-the-way updates, by providing examples of success - and failure - by others and through constantly seeking opportunities to share.
I don't run strict metrics - ten seeds planted, one seed sprouts - as the value of an idea is dependent on the audience, not the innovator.
I also avoid getting trapped in 'owning' an idea. If someone wants to pick up and run with an idea I'll empower them to do so and step back into a supporting role - letting them take on most of the responsibility and the credit. Any failure is shared.
More to come
I discuss my last two points, successful implementation and embedding change in a future post.
I do appreciate all of your comments and viewpoints - they help me change myself to become a more effective change agent.
Driving egovernment services after they launch | Tweet |
Next Monday (25 August) I'll be speaking at the Ark Group's conference on Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment in Brisbane on the topic of Driving ongoing improvements in online services provision.
If you're attending, please come and introduce yourself at some stage through the conference.
If you won't be there, I'll be making my presentation available after the event at my Slideshare site.
Thank you to everyone who contacted me with suggestions on my presentation via my blog post, email or in conversation.
Based on the feedback I've shifted the focus from eMetrics to a broader look at the importance and process of drive ongoing improvements after an egovernment site is launched.
I will make mention of a few points raised by people, such as,
- why launching a site doesn't mean lasting success
- the importance of factoring in an ongoing development/improvements budget
- the importance of establishing (realistic and measurable) goals
- appropriate use of metrics to assess site performance to goals (and why not to use Hits)
- cross-channel measurement - how web influences other channels (to meet goals)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Keep up to date with egovernment news, with the Victorian government's eGovRC Toolbar | Tweet |
Victoria has possibly the best egovernment site in Australia at the eGovernment Resource Centre.
I use it regularly to monitor egovernment news and research online tools and trends.
I have also found their eGovRC Toolbar useful as a fast and simple way to access information and news from their site.
The toolbar works in either Internet Explorer 5.x or later and Firefox 1.x or later.
Learn more and get the eGovRC toolbar at the Victorian government's eGovernment Resource Centre.
Mapping the social media landscape - a guide for understanding | Tweet |
It can be very daunting for communications professionals to build an understanding of the social media landscape, grasping its scope and diversity and use this knowledge to select the right tools to meet their communications needs.
On occasion I've spoken to other marketers and PR professionals who have said that the sheer diversity and complexity of the social media landscape makes it easier to simply avoid the area, rather than spend the time necessary to make good decisions.
Increasingly organisations will need to take their first steps into this area - social media is in widespread use by internet users and they are talking about you.
The first step to understanding any landscape is to map it - fortunately there have been a few efforts in this regard already.
Possibly the first consolidated attempt was by Robert Scoble, who published the Social Media Starfish last year.
Pictured below, the Starfish provides one way to visualise the different categories of interactions and capabilities of the different social media tools.
A video explanation of the Starfish is also available as below.
A second approach, released more recently, is the Conversation Prism, pictured below.
This was released by Brian Solis, principal of Future Works and author of PR 2.0.
In a report in ZDNet, Brian describes the Conversation Prism as a tool that "helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web." The article, ‘Conversation Prism’ helps corporations visualize social media strategies, provides a good overview of how the tool works.
Of course these maps are only a start. The social media environment is evolving as technology improves and smart people come up with new ways to facilitate human interactions via digital channels.
However now that we do have these maps, we can begin to understand the social media landscape in more detail, and apply the right tools for our communications needs.
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