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The National Managers’ Community Forum

Introduction

Thank you, Suzanne, for that kind introduction and good morning to all of you. I’m very glad to have the opportunity to speak with you today.

I’m really pleased to see all of you coming together to take part in this great event in spite of the demanding changes that many of you are facing in your home organizations.

Professional development should not stop during times of fiscal restraint. This conference is testimony to our commitment to ongoing learning and development.

You and your teams need to continue to actively build the skills and competencies that will position you for success in the future. These investments will also help our organizations meet the demands of a new age.

The organizers of this year’s Forum have put together a strong program and I know that you will come away with fresh insights and hopefully new energy to tackle the challenges we have ahead.

So let’s get to it.

In my remarks today, I’d like to share with you some of my personal reflections on how to get through transitions like the one we’re experiencing now.

But I also want to look beyond our current challenges and to lay out for you a vision of where I see the Public Service heading; what you can help us to build.

Our current context

As the theme of this year’s forum—The Leadership Journey: Managing in a New Era—underscores, we are facing a new era in public service.

The decisions announced in Budget 2012 set some ambitious reduction targets for our institution. And these are on top of restraint initiatives that the government launched in previous budgets.

We are doing our part to help Canada address its fiscal challenges and this will help better position our country to compete in what remains a pretty unpredictable global economy.

But success for the Public Service will be measured not only by reaching the reduction targets.

Our goal must also be to build a stronger and more adaptable institution that is able to meet the demands of the future.

By working collaboratively across our organizations and beyond, streamlining our processes, and taking advantage of new technologies, I am confident that we will be able to provide Canadians with high quality programs and services at a lower cost.

We have tried our best to carry out this exercise with the goal of minimizing the impact on the Canadians we serve.

And while Canadians do want good service, they also want their government to be fiscally responsible, so there are trade-offs to make. The majority of our citizens support a return to balanced federal budgets.

I am proud to say that the process that was used to arrive at the Budget decisions was a good one.

Since it was part of the Budget making exercise, it might not have been as open as people would have wished.  But I believe it was a fair and considered process. Decisions were not dictated by the centre.

It was each individual department, working with their portfolio partners and their Minister that identified the areas where we could reduce our level of effort or begin to work in new ways.

Tough decisions had to be made and it was not an easy exercise.

But it’s been a long time since our organizations have faced the magnitude of change we’re going through at the moment, and I know it’s not easy for you and your teams to navigate through all of this.

My experience with job loss

Some of you may have recently learned that your own position—or that of a friend or close colleague—is affected by reductions. So you may be grappling with the stress and uncertainty of that.

For others, this may be the first time in your careers that you have had the difficult task of telling your employees that there are no longer employment opportunities for them in your organization and you are now faced with conducting processes to determine which employees will remain.

Now, many of you may be looking up here at me and thinking “What does he know about losing a job?”

Well, more than you might think. In my career, I’ve been on both sides of this difficult conversation.

I know first hand that sometimes you can just be working in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s certainly what happened to me in 1982. I was working on energy policy in the Saskatchewan public service at the time of Prime Minister Trudeau’s controversial National Energy Policy (NEP).

Unlike our neighbouring province of Alberta, the Saskatchewan NDP government, under Premier Alan Blakeney, was quite sympathetic to many of the NEP principles and objectives.

And so when conservative Premier Grant Devine took over the Saskatchewan government from the NDP, a brisk wind swept through the Saskatchewan public service, including those “NEP sympathizers” in the energy policy sector.

My Minister directed his Deputy Minister to have me and my colleagues in the Energy Policy Branch escorted from our offices within 15 minutes.

The DM was empathetic and gave me the full day!

It wasn’t a case of being on “affected status” or finding myself on a surplus list. I was just out on the street from one day to the next.

Strategies for dealing with job loss

Let me tell you, my self-confidence took a pretty good hit.

Even though you tell yourself that these are circumstances beyond your control, and that it’s not because of your work or your performance, it’s very hard not to personalize it.

Self-doubt creeps in and you begin to wonder: “Am I competent? Do I have the abilities?”

So what did I learn from that? Personal survival!

First, it’s important not to get down on yourself. Don’t let yourself be convinced that this is the end of your career—I know people who did that and they never really did recover.

You have to spend some time in personal reflection and rely on your own sense of self-worth and self-confidence. Friends and family become very important during these difficult days.

Then you’ve got to put it behind you, at last, and concentrate on moving forward.

I often say: “Control what you can control and adapt and adjust to what you can’t.” My Saskatchewan experience taught me that.

So I moved on—and with two very young mouths to feed I had no choice.

I realized that some earlier job offers I had received from Ottawa were starting to look pretty good, and so I left Saskatchewan to join the federal Public Service.

And you know, I guess I’ve done all right for myself… Some might say I have done pretty well…

Another thing that really helped me to get through the loss of my job was the fact that I had many other colleagues who were going through the same thing at that time.

A large group of us were all trying to re-establish our lives and so we relied on each other and consulted with one another. That really helped us to get through it.

I know that the same kinds of informal support networks are already humming throughout the Public Service. And today’s collaborative technologies have made these networks even more powerful.

• For example, GCForums—the Public Service’s online discussion forum—has been a very busy place in recent weeks with hundreds of public servants from across the country posting their interest in alternation opportunities.

And of course, thanks to the tireless work of the National Managers’ Community and its partners in the regions—our Public Service is fortunate to have this amazing community of managers that is linked together from coast to coast to coast.

Take advantage of every opportunity you have to connect and learn from one another here at the Forum and beyond. Your colleagues are a wonderful source of expertise, inspiration, and support.

We do gather strength and support in our collectivity.

Strategies for managers with affected employees

Now I’d like to touch a little bit on what it’s like to sit on the other side of the desk during a downsizing exercise.

Later on in my career, when I was a Director General at what was then Energy, Mines and Resources (now Natural Resources Canada), I had the tough job that many of you are facing—the task of sitting down with employees and telling them: “There’s no longer a job for you here.”

The reality is that the people you are having these difficult conversations with are your colleagues and, for some, your friends.

And each one of them is in a different situation. You often don’t realize people’s personal circumstances until you tell them the bad news.

Then you hear that they have a disabled child at home that you weren’t aware of, or that the employee is going through a marriage breakup. This is when it gets very tough. Your human compassion kicks in and that’s difficult to deal with.

And don’t forget that even in the best of circumstances, the news will invariably lead to them doubting themselves and their abilities.

So, I have some advice for all of you who are grappling with this, based on my experience.

First and foremost, remember that you cannot communicate with your people enough.

Never assume from your initial conversation with an affected employee that you have made a good assessment of how this situation will impact him or her.

You can have people who, when you give them their letter, look very calm, cool and collected and then go away and fall apart.

And then there are those individuals who break down in your office and get very emotional, and then walk away from those meetings and really get their act together.

So you have to keep checking in to see how people are doing—what they’re doing to cope with the situation they’re now in and what support they need—because at any point their self-confidence can begin to erode as their future continues to be uncertain.

You know, the loss of a job is one of the most stressful life events we can go through.

If there is any time in our career when we need to show compassion, it is now. Understanding and support are what we need to have now as leaders of our organizations.

Managing through the uncertainty

There’s another management challenge that many of you are facing: how to maintain overall morale and productivity in your teams as we make our way through this period of adjustment.

I think we all recognize that for many of us, we are going to be working our way through a period of uncertainty; that it won’t be “business as usual” for a while.

People on your teams who are actively searching for new employment opportunities may be distracted or dispirited. Some will have to go through assessment for retention processes.

And even those whose jobs are secure will still be affected by the changes going on around them.

They will be worrying about their friends and colleagues who may be losing jobs and wondering how their work is going to change. Many of them assume they’ll just have to work harder and longer to make up for fewer staff.

This is why we have to ensure that the lines of communication are open at as many levels as possible—because both affected and non-affected employees need to talk—with their supervisors, their leaders, and with their HR advisors. And they need information.

Do as much as you can to let people know where we’re at—be clear about the decisions that have been made and about areas where we simply don’t know yet.

Affected employees need to have all the facts on workforce adjustment.

Employees will value your straightforwardness and honesty, even if you don’t have all the answers.

And when there are choices to be made, you need to be decisive. Make the tough decisions and move forward.

And make them as quickly as possible. Employees want to be at a point where they can make their own personal decisions.

Our Public Service Values

As I think about the challenges we’re facing, I keep coming back to the fact that what supports us in these difficult times are our public service values.

Values that state that we are professional public servants, that we will treat everyone fairly, that we have compassion, and will do all we can to support those whose positions are being affected.

As I hope you know, the new Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector came into effect last month. This Code renews our deep commitment to a professional, non-partisan, highly ethical public sector.

Respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship and excellence define the federal public sector and set a high standard for the behaviour of all public servants.

I’m confident that these strong and enduring Public Service values will help us navigate the challenging transition we are undertaking.

The Public Service of the future

Our values are also the firm foundation on which we will build the Public Service of tomorrow.

I’d like now to take some time to sketch out a vision of this future Public Service for you.

As I highlighted in my Nineteenth Annual Report to the Prime Minister, that was tabled in Parliament last week, the Public Service of tomorrow will have a number of key characteristics.

Achieving excellence in all that we do will require the Public Service to be collaborative, innovative, streamlined, high performing, adaptable and diverse.

What will this look like?

Collaborative

Let me begin with “collaborative”.

The Federal Public Service is the largest institution in Canada and the more than 280,000 men and women who make up our organizations represent an amazing wealth of expertise and experience.

Collaboration is about pooling our collective energy and expertise to achieve better results for the Canadians we serve.

We need to get better at connecting with our colleagues across the various branches of our organizations and in other departments.

And the good news is we now have access to some excellent technology to facilitate this.

• At the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), for example, more than 700 employees are actively using the Agency’s internal e-Collaboration site.
• Since the site’s launch, over 70 knowledge-sharing communities have been set up, 65 blogs on a variety of subjects have been started, and more than 50 collaborative wikis are being used, including one where staff work together to develop CIDA’s media lines and keep them evergreen.

Collaboration is also about engaging more deeply with those beyond the boundaries of the Public Service: with other nations, other levels of government, the private sector, civil society, and citizens themselves.

And I’m pleased to say that public servants are already experimenting with these engagement approaches:

• For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) has been piloting an Open Policy Development Model that uses social networking and technology to leverage ideas and expertise from both inside and outside the department.
• At a recent full-day event, they convened 400 public and private sector participants and produced a number of open policy pilots, such as an emergency response simulation that involved both consular officials and a volunteer community of digital crisis-mappers.

Innovative

We also need to push ourselves to be innovative. Doing new things in new ways comes about only by trying.

We must focus on the results we want to achieve on behalf of Canadians and open our minds to different approaches to delivering on our mission.

We’re already seeing some exciting innovations in how we provide services to Canadians.

• One example that was announced in Budget 2012 is a proactive enrolment process that will remove the need for many seniors to apply for the Old Age Security (OAS) pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).
• Previously, when a Canadian turned 65, they had to send in a multi-page form to tell us they were 65 and to let us know their income level. Well, guess what? We already have all that information in our systems.
• So we are simply automating all of that so that we’ll be able to send out what I like to call our “birthday card” to let them know they are now eligible for these benefits.
• This is a great example of how we’re making government services more accessible to Canadians. And being innovative at the same time!

Web 2.0 and social media tools also have incredible potential for helping us transform the way we work and serve Canadians and I’m pleased to see how many departments are making use of these technologies.

• The Canada Border Services Agency is a great example. They’re using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to engage directly with Canadians on border-related issues.
• The Agency has even created Twitter accounts for all ports of entry, making it fast and efficient for Canadians to receive border wait-time updates.

As managers, you all have a key role to play in fostering innovation—both large and small.

I want you to encourage your teams to ask how their work can be done better, give them the space to experiment with new approaches and support them as they learn from mistakes.

Streamlined

We also need to push ahead with streamlining the systems and processes that underlie our work and the services we provide to Canadians.

By pooling efforts and resources across departments and deliberately standardizing many of our processes and systems, we’ll be able to drive innovation and get better value for money.

Our technology infrastructure is the backbone of our operations and services.

We have made progress in enterprise-wide management of such things as our pay and pension services, and now the creation of Shared Services Canada has ushered in a new era for our internal systems and services.

• Launched last August, Shared Services is the new common-service organization that will consolidate the resources and personnel for more than 60 internal email systems, 300 data centres, and 3,000 electronic networks.
• This whole-of-government approach will enable us to modernize our systems, as well as improve efficiency and help lower the cost of our services to Canadians.

This type of streamlining is also being done at the departmental level.

• For example, Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s new Global Case Management System has allowed them to fundamentally re-engineer the processing of thousands of immigration applications every year and to optimize the use of their global workforce.
• Using this powerful system, higher-risk applications are processed where locally-based knowledge and expertise is needed, while lower-risk applications are reviewed anywhere that resources and capacity exist in order to speed up processing. 

Moving forward, we will also need to adopt a more standardized approach for some of our other key common services, such as human resources and finance.

These initiatives have great potential to improve our work environment. We need to continue to push the envelope.

High performing and agile

The Public Service of the future will continue to be a high performing and agile organization.

Boosting productivity across our organizations will be key to achieving excellence in all our core functions—in policy development, in program and service delivery, in regulation and in management.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re facing a period of uncertainty and disruption in our organizations. It is going to take some time to get through this.

But we continue to have important responsibilities and mandates that we need to achieve. We need to reinforce that, as professional public servants, we have to get on with our responsibilities.

Moving forward, rigorous performance management is an essential element—we must develop, encourage and expect excellence from public servants at all levels. And managers themselves must lead by example.

The e-polling conducted at last year’s NMC Forum signaled that many of you are looking for greater support in dealing with employee performance. Important work is being done to help you build your performance management capacity:

• The Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer has developed a Performance Management Tool that is now available on their website and the Canada School of Public Service offers a Performance Management for Managers curriculum. 
• It is a myth that managing performance is not worth the effort and it doesn’t pay off.  Effective performance management has a significant impact on employee performance and retention. 
• And, when performance management efforts address poor performance, if managed properly and with due diligence, the employer’s decision will likely be upheld if brought before the Public Service Labour Relations Board.
• You can also turn to your colleagues for advice and support here—this community is an incredible wealth of experience and expertise.

As well, as we position ourselves for the future, Public Service organizations and individuals alike must become more agile. Standardization and greater adoption of IT will enhance our agility. There is no doubt about that.

And, in a world where social media can propel an issue squarely into the spotlight in mere hours, our lead-time for advice and decision-making is shorter than ever.

As we position ourselves to meet the demands of a new age, we also need to experiment with more nimble workforce models that will allow our knowledge workers and specialists to contribute where and when they’re needed, rather than only where they’re located.

Another way we are getting ourselves ready for the future is through the innovative “Vision 2020” project that we are currently carrying out to support the work of the Deputy Minister Committee on Public Service Renewal.

This project is using advanced foresight techniques to develop a vision for the federal Public Service.

This vision will help us to better anticipate change, explore the opportunities that this change represents, and experiment with new ideas in how we serve government and Canadians with excellence into the future.

You’ll be learning more about this exciting work in the next few days here at the Forum and I look forward to hearing more from you about the future you see for our Public Service.

Diversity

And now I’d just like to touch on a last key characteristic of the Public Service of tomorrow: diversity.

As I noted in my Nineteenth Annual Report, welcoming, respecting and valuing diversity in the workplace just makes good business sense.

Different perspectives enrich our understanding of issues and inject new energy and creativity into our work.

Through our renewal efforts, we’ve been working hard to build a Public Service that reflects and benefits from the rich mosaic of backgrounds that make up our nation.

So I was very pleased with the results of the 2011 Public Service Employee Survey which show that the vast majority, 88 percent, of public servants believe that in their work unit, every individual, regardless of race, colour, gender or disability, is accepted as an equal member of the team.

All of us need to continue to actively build diverse and welcoming organizations.

This will result in productive and fulfilling workplaces and improve our ability to attract and retain great employees, as well as reflect our diversity as a country in the advice we give to our government.

Conclusion

So—collaborative, innovative, streamlined, high performing, adaptable and diverse—this is my vision of the Public Service we are striving to build.

While I realize that the months ahead will be challenging ones, I believe we all have a unique opportunity to be part of something important—the chance to shape our institution for a new age.

By working together, I am confident that we can join creativity with courage and continue to take the bold steps needed to transform Canada’s Public Service.

We owe it to Canadians and to ourselves to take on this challenge.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you today and I wish all of you a very productive and stimulating Forum.