Articles of the Month

Managing, mentorship and the new millennium...Life as a youthful public servant

8:25...leave my home, walk across the street to work. This is the beauty of living in a non-metropolitan area of Ontario. Likely to be the last moment of peace for the next 8 to 10 hours.
8:30...How has the endless waterfall of e-mail shaped the day to come? Where do these messages come from overnight? A few voicemails to go with it? Check the fax and snail-mail in-box, too...
10:15...should be time for a break but I'm expecting a client in 15 minutes and the secret saving grace of my professional life these days is "just-in-time management".
11:00...Reply to the 10 e-mails that popped up while with client. Good thing I suffered through typing class that summer before Grade 9!
11:30...On-line research, multi-task between 3 forms of office software...cut/paste/copy, edit, send. Good thing I'm a packrat, right?
12:45...okay, lunch is now or never
1:30...Another 15 e-mails. I'm sick of the FYI acronym but I do use it quite a bit. Three more phone calls while I was gone...is the information-sharing essential, just a heads-up or instant trash? I wouldn't have to leave the ringer off if I had call display!
2:00...A colleague asks me a question about a competition she's applying for...a few quick links pasted into an e-mail with a few words of advice and I know she's off smiling.
3:45...Where did the day go?! What's imperative for tomorrow's meeting?
4:15...My favourite part of the day...find one of my dearest colleagues who knows what's REALLY going on in the building...share opinions, develop strategies, get the gentle reminders of why we do this all day. Get re-energized, re-focused, get the inside track on the big picture that shapes our work. Share a few laughs, remember we're human.
4:30 Catching my second wind now...just a few more things to wrap-up for one of my interdepartmental council meetings next week...they call me a "volunteer" but this is real work, too!
5:45...My cat hates me and forgets what I look like. Good thing I left the lights on at home...Thoughts of being back here in 14 hours finally drive me out the door but I will be back!

Does any of this sound familiar? Am I working outside my job description and my prescribed hours of work? ABSOLUTELY. I learned early on in my internship with the Federal Public Service that 7.5 hours a day is a goal to work towards if you can be efficient, resistant, even ruthless about workload and life balance...but for many of us it's not a reality, not if we want to "get ahead".

My three-and-a-half years of service to Canadians have been blessed with mentors who showed me the unwritten ropes, the hidden messages behind people-management, the projects that are worth the extra hours, the beauty of collaboration and lateral, consolidated thinking. I am not a "manager" by traditional classifications but I have managed projects, managed people, managed timelines, managed budgets and, most importantly, managed my career. Being welcomed around tables that were full of "real" managers and directors was the biggest surprise of all but I soon recognized these were forward-thinking colleagues who saw innovation and honest expression as the foundation of culture change and progressive practice. I got into the "interdepartmental" game early on in my days in Kingston, thanks to two such forward-thinkers! Now, I can't believe anything else ever existed because this IS the way to operate, the way for all of us to grow and understand, the way for things to be better.

Many learning activities, forums and conferences later, I know that youth councils are sprouting up all over Canada, both interdepartmentally and within specific departments and agencies of the Federal Government. We're not just the future of the Public Service, we are the present. We are the newcomers to the scene, fresh from those private or not-for-profit pastures that aren't as green as some would like to believe. We are the challengers of the status-quo, the ones who ask "WHY?" instead of rhyming off why not. We're keen to be heard but we also know how to listen. We are Youth Connect, we are Fonctionnaires sans frontières, we are Aspiring Bureaucrats, just to name a few. We are also the one or two individuals in a local office who don't know who else is out there. We are the generation that "makes things happen" and we'll keep on doing it, with your open-mindedness and your support. It's been a wild day...see you tomorrow!