Smarter Government: Oxymoron or possibility?
Feb 23
Over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in the IBM “Smarter Work for a Smarter Government” Future Leaders Forum.
The last session I blogged about included a combination of Government execs and their Gen Y representatives, talking about how it is that we can improve collaboration, productivity and efficiency in the government. In this time we talked a lot about social media and how it could help governments communicate with the public, although it was noted that government agencies would need to enhance communication with its staff as a key starting point.
In order to get this moving there would need to be a significant cultural change occur, which as we know in HR; is difficult almost everywhere and particularly so in the Government.
Upon reflection of this talk, I came prepared this time to not only talk about the tools but in fact the change that would be required to use these tools. After all, the tools might make things easier- but if the leaders in government are unwilling to communicate now I doubt they are going to change their mind if we tell them to use a social media tool like twitter.
After all, “Government 2.0 is not specifically about social networking or technology based approaches to anything. It represents a fundamental shift in the implementation of government- toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement where there is (wherever possible) open consultation, open data, shared knowledge, mutual acknowledgment of expertise, mutual respect for shared values and an understanding of how to agree to disagree. Technology and social tools are an important part of this change but are essentially an enabler in this process.” HT @trib aka Stephen Collings (get the whole thing here).
So imagine you are a young/junior person in Government, with many levels of hierarchy and bureaucracy above you. You have all these wonderful ideas, yet you are just finding it so hard to create an impact.
How can young leaders effect culture change within Government?
There is no easy answer, it’s a tough road. But one of the key takeaways for me out of the IBM conference was when we started talking about how we could break down the barriers using “reverse mentoring”.
According to Charlie Wonderlic in an article on HR.com, Jack Welch (former GE CEO) ordered his top executives to find a new or young employee to form a mentoring relationship with. However it wasn’t as you’d expect.
“Welch knew that the youngest people in his organization had grown up using the Internet — in fact, they didn’t know life without it. GE’s youngest employees were far more tech-savvy than their more experienced managers. He wanted those older employees to benefit from that expertise. The experiment was a success, and the term “reverse mentoring” officially slid into the corporate lexicon. It’s simply the process of passing ideas, expertise and experience up the corporate ladder, instead of the other way around”, says Wonderlic.
What a simple, cheap and effective way to make an organisation smarter.
