Alicia McKay's Blog, page 24

Public Time is Public Money

“What do you do for work?” Gulp.

When you work for government, sometimes it’s tempting not to tell people. Especially if you work for local government. Nothing sours a BBQ faster than being on the receiving end of someone ranting about “those bloody idiots on Council.” 

There’s always someone with the impressive ability to do things better and cheaper than their local decision-makers, without needing any of the relevant information. 

There’s an unhelpful current of thinking that public servants are overpaid and irresponsible. That bureaucrats enjoy nothing more than a bit of frivolous overspending and get a kick out of inflating staff numbers. 

Let me make something very clear: I am the first one to defend the public sector on spending. None of this could be further from the truth. The data on public spending inflation is clear – cost increases are driven by increases in activity. Public agencies are increasingly expected to do more, often with the same or fewer resources.

Herein lies the problem.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all of those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” Thomas Sowell**

I know, I’m always going on about this. You can do anything… but not everything. Economics 101: opportunity cost. When we spend our resources on one thing, we no longer have them to spend on something else. 

We get that with money but not with time. I work with dedicated, purpose-driven senior public leaders who spend their energy on things way below their paygrade. These same leaders are equally surprised and regretful when I point what a horrendous waste of public money this amounts to.

Deep breath…. Rant incoming… 

When we waste time on low-impact initiatives, when we don’t delegate, when we don’t make decisions, when we keep something in draft for an extra two weeks because no-one wants to be held accountable, when we ‘jump to’ for squeaky wheels, when we cater to grumpy politicians, when we work around and thereby perpetrate a crappy process, when we attend meetings we should have deputised for, when we avoid risk, when we report on things instead of doing them, when we write emails in place of hard conversations, when we go around in circles, when we work in silos and duplicate effort…. we’re ripping the community off.

The way you spend time matters at least as much as the way you spend money. You’re certainly not getting any more of it.

End rant.

'til next week 

- A 

**I debated long and hard whether to quote Thomas Sowell. I totally disagree with many of his ideas about wealth, poverty and morality. But in the spirit of productive disagreement, if we can’t engage with the ideas of people on other sides of the fence to us, what are we left with? Plus, it’s an excellent quote.

Public time is public money.

What do you do for work?” Gulp. When you work for government, sometimes it’s tempting not to tell people. Especially if you work for local government. Nothing sours a BBQ faster than being on the receiving end of someone ranting about “those bloody idiots on Council.” 

There’s always someone with the impressive ability to do things better and cheaper than their local decision-makers, without needing any of the relevant information. There’s an unhelpful current of thinking that public servants are overpaid and irresponsible. That bureaucrats enjoy nothing more than a bit of frivolous overspending and get a kick out of inflating staff numbers. 

Let me make something very clear: I am the first one to defend the public sector on spending. None of this could be further from the truth. The data on public spending inflation is clear – cost increases are driven by increases in activity. Public agencies are increasingly expected to do more, often with the same or fewer resources.

Herein lies the problem.

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all of those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” Thomas Sowell

I know, I’m always going on about this. You can do anything… but not everything. Economics 101: opportunity cost. When we spend our resources on one thing, we no longer have them to spend on something else. 

We get that with money but not with time. I work with dedicated, purpose-driven senior public leaders who spend their energy on things way below their paygrade. These same leaders are equally surprised and regretful when I point what a horrendous waste of public money this amounts to.

Deep breath…. Rant incoming… 

When we waste time on low-impact initiatives, when we don’t delegate, when we don’t make decisions, when we keep something in draft for an extra two weeks because no-one wants to be held accountable, when we ‘jump to’ for squeaky wheels, when we cater to grumpy politicians, when we work around and thereby perpetrate a crappy process, when we attend meetings we should have deputised for, when we avoid risk, when we report on things instead of doing them, when we write emails in place of hard conversations, when we go around in circles, when we work in silos and duplicate effort…. we’re ripping the community off.

The way you spend time matters at least as much as the way you spend money. You’re certainly not getting any more of it.

Precedent, Phantom and Projections

One of the worst things I’ve experienced in my adult life was a horrific abscess I had in my tooth when I was 22. I was immobilised with pain and the infection got so bad, I ended up in hospital. 

One of the strangest things about the whole ordeal was that for months afterward, I thought I had a problem with the tooth directly above it. I went to the dentist several times, only to be assured that this was the combination of two weird phenomena.  

The first was projected pain. When one tooth is compromised, we sometimes feel the pain in a totally different place because of the way our nerves and signals are interconnected. 

The second was phantom pain. There wasn’t anything wrong in my mouth anymore, but my brain was still processing the lingering trauma of those sensations. You might have heard about this with amputees too, who often feel sensations in their now missing limbs.  

Thanks to the way our annoying brains work, phantoms and projections aren’t limited to our bodies. It’s easy to get signals about our thoughts, behaviours and feelings mixed up when they present as something they really aren’t. Internal imposters, if you like. 

“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality” – Virginia Woolf 

One of the reasons people like to bring me in – for executive coaching, or to work on strategy - is because I call out bullsh*t when I see it. More softly, I enjoy challenging invisible assumptions, to figure out what’s really going on. 

Working with leaders, I see a lot of projected and phantom pain. Those ideas that look perfectly reasonable on the surface, until you look a little deeper.  

A particular favourite is the (exc)use of precedent. How many times have you heard (or used!) “setting a precedent” to get out of doing something that should be done?   

I call bullsh*t on precedent. 

It’s inherently contradictory, especially as a reason not to do the right thing. If it’s the right thing to do, we would take the same decision again in identical circumstances. So, what’s really going on? 

Precedent is a phantom pain. It’s the projection of another, less comfortable fear. 

On the surface, this looks like fear of accountability. In my experience though, it’s often a lack of confidence in making the right decision, a fear of being blamed if things go wrong, a reluctance to acknowledge previous poor decisions, or worry about mobilising resources. 

Left unearthed, these fears will seriously undermine our ability to make good decisions. Phantoms and projections need challenging, or we can’t tackle the real source of the pain.  

What phantom pains are your leadership team dealing with? 

Til next week 

- A 

Precedent, phantom and projection.

One of the worst things I’ve experienced in my adult life was a horrific abscess I had in my tooth when I was 22. I was immobilised with pain and the infection got so bad, I ended up in hospital. 

One of the strangest things about the whole ordeal was that for months afterward, I thought I had a problem with the tooth directly above it. I went to the dentist several times, only to be assured that this was the combination of two weird phenomena.  

The first was projected pain. When one tooth is compromised, we sometimes feel the pain in a totally different place because of the way our nerves and signals are interconnected. 

The second was phantom pain. There wasn’t anything wrong in my mouth anymore, but my brain was still processing the lingering trauma of those sensations. You might have heard about this with amputees too, who often feel sensations in their now missing limbs.  

Thanks to the way our annoying brains work, phantoms and projections aren’t limited to our bodies. It’s easy to get signals about our thoughts, behaviours and feelings mixed up when they present as something they really aren’t. Internal imposters, if you like. 

“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality” – Virginia Woolf 

One of the reasons people like to bring me in – for executive coaching, or to work on strategy - is because I call out bullsh*t when I see it. More softly, I enjoy challenging invisible assumptions, to figure out what’s really going on. 

Working with leaders, I see a lot of projected and phantom pain. Those ideas that look perfectly reasonable on the surface, until you look a little deeper.  

A particular favourite is the (exc)use of precedent. How many times have you heard (or used!) “setting a precedent” to get out of doing something that should be done?   

I call bullsh*t on precedent. 

It’s inherently contradictory, especially as a reason not to do the right thing. If it’s the right thing to do, we would take the same decision again in identical circumstances. So, what’s really going on? 

Precedent is a phantom pain. It’s the projection of another, less comfortable fear. 

On the surface, this looks like fear of accountability. In my experience though, it’s often a lack of confidence in making the right decision, a fear of being blamed if things go wrong, a reluctance to acknowledge previous poor decisions, or worry about mobilising resources. 

Left unearthed, these fears will seriously undermine our ability to make good decisions. Phantoms and projections need challenging, or we can’t tackle the real source of the pain.  

What phantom pains are your leadership team dealing with? 

Permalink

Snow Melts From The Edges

I am often astonished at just how little some executive teams know about what’s happening, in and outside of their buildings. 

I don’t mean subject matter expertise, because that doesn’t seem to be lacking. I mean the big-picture kind of knowledge – what’s changing and shifting, what others are doing.  

A good chunk of my work is with the public sector, and it is definitely worse here than with the corporates I work with... which is baffling, really.  

We’re talking about a sector where there is little to no inter-organisational competition.  

Where data and information is publicly accessible and easy to come by.  

Where we have extremely similar counterparts at every level - other Councils, other agencies, other states and other countries – who are grappling with the same issues we are.  

Despite all of that, I consistently work with teams who tell me "that's not an option" or "we can't do that" about initiatives working well in almost identical environments. We have a strange habit of over-inflating minor differences between ourselves and those we are most similar to, which can keep us from learning and making progress.

“When spring comes, snow melts first at the periphery, because that is where it is most exposed” - Andy Grove: Only The Paranoid Survive 
 

In ‘Seeing Around Corners’ Rita McGrath argues that all organisations that get caught short by change have one thing in common: Their executives and decision-makers became disconnected from the ‘edges’ where small, telling changes are present long before huge impact is obvious.  

Building on the words of Andy Grove, former Intel CEO, McGrath makes a simple, powerful point: edges are where snow melts first.  I agree – and seeing those edges, of all varieties, means looking up from our own daily struggle and out into the wide world. 

Being strategic about the big picture is pretty much impossible, if you don’t have a leadership team who can look outside of their own silos, see the edges and connect the dots. 

Do you spend enough time looking outside? Are you connected to the edge? 

Til next week 

- A 

Snow melts from the edges.

I am often astonished at just how little some executive teams know about what’s happening, in and outside of their buildings. 

I don’t mean subject matter expertise, because that doesn’t seem to be lacking. I mean the big-picture kind of knowledge – what’s changing and shifting, what others are doing.  

A good chunk of my work is with the public sector, and it is definitely worse here than with the corporates I work with... which is baffling, really.  

We’re talking about a sector where there is little to no inter-organisational competition.  

Where data and information is publicly accessible and easy to come by.  

Where we have extremely similar counterparts at every level - other Councils, other agencies, other states and other countries – who are grappling with the same issues we are.  

Despite all of that, I consistently work with teams who tell me "that's not an option" or "we can't do that" about initiatives working well in almost identical environments. We have a strange habit of over-inflating minor differences between ourselves and those we are most similar to, which can keep us from learning and making progress.

“When spring comes, snow melts first at the periphery, because that is where it is most exposed” - Andy Grove: Only The Paranoid Survive 
 In ‘Seeing Around Corners’ Rita McGrath argues that all organisations that get caught short by change have one thing in common: Their executives and decision-makers became disconnected from the ‘edges’ where small, telling changes are present long before huge impact is obvious.  

Building on the words of Andy Grove, former Intel CEO, McGrath makes a simple, powerful point: edges are where snow melts first.  I agree – and seeing those edges, of all varieties, means looking up from our own daily struggle and out into the wide world. 

Being strategic about the big picture is pretty much impossible, if you don’t have a leadership team who can look outside of their own silos, see the edges and connect the dots. 

Do you spend enough time looking outside? Are you connected to the edge? 

Permalink

Productive disagreement.

Arguing gets a bad rap. 

What’s that about? It’s one of my favourite things to do! 

If you’ve ever written an essay, or worked in policy or law, you’ll know that an argument is a perfectly neutral and acceptable term for engaging with an idea. So why do we fear them? 

I held a webinar yesterday on aligned leadership teams (recording here) and shared my definition of alignment – which is NOT about a room full of nodding heads. When everyone’s nodding their heads uneasily, I know I’ve got a lot of work to do. 

If we want good strategy and real progress, we need to disagree. The idea that we can get a room full of smart, dedicated people who do totally different things to agree on everything is silly – and undesirable. If our ideas go untested and everyone seems to agree, this is a bad sign.

It either means:
a) we’re missing something
b) we have zero diversity in the room, or
c) people are having ‘half conversations’ and not contributing openly. 

I like to think of alignment as "productive disagreement’" 

Alignment is not agreement – it’s productive disagreement to enable consensus. 

With productive disagreement, we expose the different perspectives we’re grappling with and put them on the table. Because we can’t work with what we can’t see.  

We don’t need to resolve all our differences, but we do need to know where the grey areas are and agree how we manage them. 

I spoke at a wonderful event in Sydney recently, where Dr Amy Silver presented on psychological safety. When a workplace is psychologically ‘safe’, people feel comfortable sharing their views, even if they might look wrong or silly, or might come into conflict. This is so important on a leadership team.  

Find a safe way to argue. Start with something external or non-work related if you have to, but get that muscle moving! 

Does your team know how to productively disagree?

Productive Disagreement

Arguing gets a bad rap. 

What’s that about? It’s one of my favourite things to do! 

If you’ve ever written an essay, or worked in policy or law, you’ll know that an argument is a perfectly neutral and acceptable term for engaging with an idea. So why do we fear them? 

I held a webinar yesterday on aligned leadership teams (recording here) and shared my definition of alignment – which is NOT about a room full of nodding heads. When everyone’s nodding their heads uneasily, I know I’ve got a lot of work to do. 

If we want good strategy and real progress, we need to disagree. The idea that we can get a room full of smart, dedicated people who do totally different things to agree on everything is silly – and undesirable. If our ideas go untested and everyone seems to agree, this is a bad sign.

It either means:
a) we’re missing something
b) we have zero diversity in the room, or
c) people are having ‘half conversations’ and not contributing openly. 

I like to think of alignment as "productive disagreement’" 

Alignment is not agreement – it’s productive disagreement to enable consensus. 

With productive disagreement, we expose the different perspectives we’re grappling with and put them on the table. Because we can’t work with what we can’t see.  

We don’t need to resolve all our differences, but we do need to know where the grey areas are and agree how we manage them. 

I spoke at a wonderful event in Sydney recently, where Dr Amy Silver presented on psychological safety. When a workplace is psychologically ‘safe’, people feel comfortable sharing their views, even if they might look wrong or silly, or might come into conflict. This is so important on a leadership team.  

Find a safe way to argue. Start with something external or non-work related if you have to, but get that muscle moving! 

Does your team know how to productively disagree? 

Til next week 

- A 

It’s Been A Disaster

People are stupid when it comes to risk. 

For one thing, we don’t understand risk in our personal lives. 

We grossly overestimate our chances of winning the Lotto, and totally underestimate the possibility for a car accident when we text and drive..  

We under-insure to protect ourselves, and over-insure to protect our stuff. We panic about unlikely events we see on TV, and we are scarily under-prepared for imminent threats.  

When it comes to work, we’re no better.  

We underestimate the risk of failure when we plan our time and projects, and we overestimate the risk of doing things we don’t understand. The net result: we plan poorly and we play safe. 

Playing it safe is never risk-free. When we fail to act on things that matter we can lose time, money, opportunity and potential for impact. Like the turtle, who only makes progress when his neck is stuck out, we compromise progress by fearing change and chance.  

When I work with teams on strategy and risk, I play a game called ‘it’s been a disaster!’ Here, we plan for the worst things we can imagine, from the probable to the ridiculous. At some point, we usually realise the catch: these scenarios might all be on the cards, whether we take the chance or not.  

In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg gave a rare interview, telling a group of young entrepreneurs: 

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." 

-  Mark Zuckerberg 

I interviewed Mayor Khal Asfour from the City of Canterbury Bankstown last week, a Council who have pushed boundaries on technology-rich city solutions and community engagement. Interestingly, Mayor Asfour talked more about risk, leadership and culture than he did about technology - echoing Zuckerberg’s thoughts from 2011.  

By providing permission to try new things and risk failure, his Council is better placed to solve community problems and provide better services in new, better ways.  

Makes sense to me.  

Are you playing it safe? ‘ 

 Til next week 

 - A 

It's been a disaster!

People are stupid when it comes to risk. 

For one thing, we don’t understand risk in our personal lives. 

We grossly overestimate our chances of winning the Lotto, and totally underestimate the possibility for a car accident when we text and drive..  

We under-insure to protect ourselves, and over-insure to protect our stuff. We panic about unlikely events we see on TV, and we are scarily under-prepared for imminent threats.  

When it comes to work, we’re no better.  

We underestimate the risk of failure when we plan our time and projects, and we overestimate the risk of doing things we don’t understand. The net result: we plan poorly and we play safe. 

Playing it safe is never risk-free. When we fail to act on things that matter we can lose time, money, opportunity and potential for impact. Like the turtle, who only makes progress when his neck is stuck out, we compromise progress by fearing change and chance.  

When I work with teams on strategy and risk, I play a game called ‘it’s been a disaster!’ Here, we plan for the worst things we can imagine, from the probable to the ridiculous. At some point, we usually realise the catch: these scenarios might all be on the cards, whether we take the chance or not.  

In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg gave a rare interview, telling a group of young entrepreneurs: 

"The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks." 

-  Mark Zuckerberg 

I interviewed Mayor Khal Asfour from the City of Canterbury Bankstown last week, a Council who have pushed boundaries on technology-rich city solutions and community engagement. Interestingly, Mayor Asfour talked more about risk, leadership and culture than he did about technology - echoing Zuckerberg’s thoughts from 2011.  

By providing permission to try new things and risk failure, his Council is better placed to solve community problems and provide better services in new, better ways.  

Makes sense to me.  

Are you playing it safe? ‘