They Are People

A long time ago, in my first job out of university I was trying to convince a coworker to call back somebody from the head office on a somewhat time sensitive issue. I’d been in the job a very short time and was not being very successful in influencing this person to pick up the phone and make the call. Finally I was told something that I’ll never forget: 

He is just a person.

This wasn’t a slag on his position in the company, it was a lesson that each person in a company is a person, with responsibilities and accountabilities, but at the end of the day, they are people.

It was also a reminder to not be scared of the person. Now, for the record I wasn’t scared, I was simply trying to follow up on a request, trying to move at the speed of business, as they say.

In any organization there are people with more responsibilities and hopefully the power to fulfil those responsibilities. People can be intimidated by the power that resides within these positions as it is more power than a lot will ever have. These are positions like CEO, Deputy Minister, or Commander. They have a lot of responsibilities and often not a lot of time. However, more importantly, they are people. They have a job to do and they are trying to do their job well. They are hopefully trying to take care of their team while they achieve their objectives. This is admirable but at the end of the day, they are people who want to go home to spend time with people they care about. They want to feel like their contribution matters. They want to be heard. They want to make a difference. They want to have fun.

To reach their objectives, they may have more tools at their disposal. They may have more authority to spend money or reallocate people. They can say yes to things nobody else can but, they can also say no. This make a lot of these positions intimidating, but it is the people in the positions that make the difference.

So, next time you need something don’t be afraid to approach the big boss. They are a person just like you, with challenges and fears like you. They have hopes and dreams like you and even though they may have to play a bit of a character at work to tow the organization line, deep down inside, they are a lot like you.

Bad Structure

A few weeks back the Chief Clerk of the Privy Council stated one of her priorities is to make the Canadian Public Service a healthier place to work.

If you are unaware, the Chief Clerk is the top public servant in Canada, all this will make more sense with this crucial bit of info.

Canada has a well compensated Public Service. However, a lot of people end up on stress leave, a much higher ratio than in most private companies. The Chief Clerk wants to fix this. Unfortunately, I have not heard anyone address the real problem.

I have made some basic assumptions in this argument. First, when people start a position, they want to do a good job. Second, people want to contribute to the organization's success.  I think most people approach their work life from this position and the Public Service is full of people like this. These may be the people that end up stressed out and on leave.

The problem isn't the people, it's the structure. The people doing the work and the people approving the work are not properly lined up. Because of scandal, mismanagement, bad press, and an inability to lead properly, in many offices the person doing the work is several levels lower in the organization than the person approving the work. National Defence Headquarters has this problem as well.

In the normal course of a well functioning organization, your boss approves your work, full stop. In very exceptional circumstances, your bosses boss approves the work. It should never go higher than that, ever.

The big bureaucratic machine that provides services to Canadian does not operate like this.

It is not unusual for work to go up three or four levels for approval. This is wrong.

When a task is needed, the person who will be approving the task should look around at the direct reports and assign the work. If they do not have the time, they should look at what they are doing. If they are too busy vetting the work of the people below them, there is the problem. They shouldn't be vetting work, they should be approving work.

Think about it, if a task comes down through four levels, the original intent will probably be distorted. As the draft work goes up, it will get vetted and tweaked. After all, if you don't add anything to it, why are you looking at it. Then it will get to the top and finally approved. However, the person who completed the bulk of the work will not see their work be successful and will not receive good feedback on how it could be better next time. With all this, frustration ensues.

Now, if you are pretty good at your job and you get promoted, you more to a position where you don't create and you don't approve. You are really just a cog on a wheel. That will cause you to feel ineffective.

The Public Service suffers from the same problem that every other organization tends to suffer from. The people at the top got there through the existing system and they rose through it so, why can't everyone else be successful in this system.

The stats show people can't. 

The Public Service needs a major overhaul. Responsibility needs to be moved down the organization chart or work assignments need to move up. If a public servant is doing the work, his boss must be the final approving authority of the work.

All this will make public servants feel like they contribute to the organization. They will get effective feedback and grow in their positions. The organization will become streamlined as tasks can be assigned and completed very quickly. Who knows, they may be able to get more done with less people.

If you want to make an employee happy, give them the authority and freedom to make decisions and get their job done, with the support for unusual situations. Yes there will be mistakes, but that's ok. As long as they are not always the same mistakes, we can live with that as it may well be cheaper than paying people to vet other people's work and not approve anything.

Scandal!

Canada does not have a huge population and we are generally seen by the rest of the world as very polite. We say please and thank-you. We hold the door for you. We try are best to not rock the boat.

However, all of a sudden we seem to be up to our eyeballs in scandals.

The headline that is most prominent is Rob Ford, Mayor of Toronto admitted to smoking crack cocaine. He isn't the first North American mayor to smoke crack and I doubt he will be the last. 

On the same day, the Canadian Senate has suspended three, yes the number that lies between two and four, of its own members without pay because of improperly filed expense claims. If you are reading this and you are not familiar with Canadian Parliamentary rules, Senators are appointed and may serve continuously until the age of seventy-five. It used to be for life but they changed it a while back. The Senate generally stays out of the spotlight and you can quietly go about your daily life without scrutiny. Before this the Senate had never suspended anyone without pay. This is a big leap.

In Montreal, the mayor stepped down amongst corruption allegations and soon after his appointed replacement was arrested.

In Winnipeg, there are projects that were not tendered according to the rules, a shady looking land swap deal and even a City Hall Christmas party grabbing headlines. Everyone is pointing to the mayor on that one as well.

What happened?

In my mind there are two possibilities. Either Canadian forgot how to keep their secrets or we have have developed an edge we never had.

With the absolute ease to record and share information it is a lot easier to track what people say and do. It is very hard to deny a statement or limit it's exposure. Once something is on the internet and interesting it can go viral and it becomes part of the collective consciousness, at least for a while. Secrets are not as prevalent as they used to be.

However, I think Canadians are becoming bolder. I think we are willing to take more chances for the big payoff, leaving us exposed to big failure. Our politicians may not have the public's interest at the heart of everything they do. Everyone, including Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, want to be seen as an outsider who is fighting the establishment. If  the Prime Minister doesn't se himself as the establishment, who is?

We need to shake the establishment from time to time. We need to hold people accountable for the responsibilities bestowed upon them. We don't need this much scandal. Too much time and effort is being put into fixing the problems and not improving the lives of Canadians.

So, to all the people in charge of anything established by the people for the people, get your house in order, right now. We don't need this. There are real problems that need to be solved and let's be honest, Canadians are better than this.

Penn State

The NCAA handed down the punishment today. For me, it doesn't really matter what the NCAA says. For me Pennsylvania State University committed the worst foul you can commit. They looked the other way when a youth was being harmed. It doesn't matter when or how or why. It only matters that they did.


From what we seem to know is the senior leadership believed they had to cover it up to protect the image of the school.


I don't know what was said in the discussions that lead to the decision to not act on the information they had. University presidents, athletic directors, and head football coaches can be persuasive people who tend to impose their will on others to get things done. Unfortunately in this case, whoever was the most influential, had the wrong idea. They may have feared for losing their jobs because this happened on their watch. They were right because they chose not to act and lost their jobs because of it.


When the first incident happened it was an act of an individual. By not acting on the information the school made it a Penn State issue. Once they knew all they had to do was call the police. When the story broke all they had to do is to hold a press conference and say they called the police because of information that became available. That would have shown the school did not condone the activities of an individual and will act if something like this happens. That would have been the right answer.


Any organization that deals with youth has a fiduciary responsibility to protect the young people. The difficult part is until someone does something wrong there is no reason to believe they are not a stand-up person. However, once they cause harm, they must be held to task. That's where this student fell down.


A lot of bad decisions can be forgiven, I'm not sure this one can.

The Shot

I was the recipient of my H1N1 shot yesterday. I don't seem to have any side effects, yet. My arm is OK if I move it most ways but there are a couple of angles that I seem to want to stop moving it for the moment. In the big picture I have moved from one statistic to the other.

Enough about me.

The whole H1N1 thing is scary and not scary at the same time. On the one hand its ripping through the young healthy population. It has killed a few and made a whole bunch of people feel really bad for a few days. Nobody likes to be sick, and a lot of productivity will be lost during the latest wave. However, we will get through this.

Many people will get inoculated, others will get sick, some will get both (those are the really unlucky ones) but through this humanity will begin to resist this strain of the flu. At some point in the future, this latest threat will become a lesser threat. In many years we will sit around and talk about this like we talk about many other significant moments that define a generation. This occurrence will become part of the collective conscious, and that's OK. I'm not suggesting that a pandemic is a good thing but it is an opportunity to grow and learn. We see what we can do in trying times. I don't know how trying this is, but I do know it has a lot of people concerned.

People are afraid to catch this bug. People are concerned about the vaccine. People are concerned for their children. People are worried because most of us in the general population do not have the knowledge to evaluate the facts, we are at the mercy of the people who know about this stuff, and many people are distrusting of authority. This distrust makes fear-mongering easier. If there are opportunities for people to leverage situations there will always be people who will try to do so. Where we come in is to be logical, and seek out information. We must make the best decision for ourselves and our communities. In doing so we will move beyond this and learn from it and that is an upside to a not so good situation.