Overconfidence Breeds Stupidity

“If you don’t want to do something stupid, you probably don’t want to have higher expectations of your abilities than you should,” Aczel said. “The worst thing someone can do is act confidently, and seriously, and still not act rationally. That’s as stupid as it gets.”

When you see yourself as the winner, and everyone else as in your way, you get sloppy.  

When you see yourself as smart and everyone else as dumb, you get lazy.

When you see yourself as history's actor and everyone else as the audience, be mindful you don't fall into the concert pit.

Leaders are humble.  They don't seek the spotlight.  It may find them, but that's not the point.

When it's not about you, when you don't think of yourself as the only one in the room whose ideas matter, when winning isn't your goal, mindfulness is a lot easier.  

In the long-term, it's better to be aware than it is to be selfish.

That's just smart planning.

The Opposite of Consistency is Hypocricy

"On Tuesday, The Rebel’s Brian Lilley accused the national newspaper of interfering with the federal election by sitting on the story."

So, the Globe and Mail wasn't interfering with its somewhat unique endorsement of the CPC but not its leader - was shameless interfering by holding back a provincial story.

What are Lisa Mcleod's thoughts on the Post's refusing to run Andrew Coyne's column because it didn't fit with the narrative they wanted to present?  

From a partisan perspective, this all makes sense - you are supposed to cheer your side and demonize the other guys, right?  Everything they do is an affront to the nation while everything your team does is the best thing ever conceived of?

It's the role of the other parties to do the same, n'est ce pas?  Tough competition, let the people sort out where reality rests?

Thing is, for the average person all it just looks like cynical, selfish hypocrisy.  

There's a reason why public faith in public institutions - and politicians as individuals - is on the decline.  Until partisans on all sides of the fence start remember what they are elected to do - not win, but collaboratively ensure the best policy that represents the interests of all, not just your side - things are only going to get worse.

Shame.

#HowMightWe Canada?

But to allow our doubts to cloud out hope would be a mistake. Rather, we should take guidance from the Liberal campaign slogan: “hope and hard work.” In the coming months we will need a lot of both. Not just from our new government but also from ourselves. This government at the very least represents possibility — possibility that will go unfulfilled if we give ourselves over to despair rather than push the government toward something better. For our children and our health and the health of our communities, let’s allow ourselves to hope.

Justin Trudeau isn't Jesus.  If we expect him to be so, we'll be sorely disappointed.

He's not a demon's spawn, either.  Trudeau isn't out to punish the wealthy, placate unions or destroy one sector or another.  What he wants is to govern well.  

Fortunately, he's smarter than our last PM in that he knows to govern well, one can't govern alone.

That's where we come in.

Job creation, new policy ideas, opportunities for youth, environmental initiatives, city-building, new partnerships with foreign companies, solid work on addressing climate change - government can lead, government can inspire, but much of the heavy lifting has to come from every day folk like us.

Ask not what your government can do for you - ask #howmightwe build the #countrywewant together?

Open Canada: Trudeau's Number

Liberal campaign chief Katie Telford has a thing for numbers.

Lots to cover, so let's dive right in - and, as Katie always suggests, I'll include a call to action at the end.

Justin Trudeau has made some bold commitments around Open Government and Open Data.  These particular promises were more than a way to define the Liberals as different than the Tories - changing the way government works is something his inner circle has been committed to for a long time.

One commitment that has a lot of people both outside and inside the public service excited:

– Involve Canadians in policy-making: The Liberals would use technology to engage more Canadians in the development and evaluation of public policy.

So, here's a question:

How can Canadians play a meaningful role in policy-making, impact-checking and avoiding unnecessary duplication, gaps and overlaps?  Government has a hard enough time doing this on its own, which is why silo-busting change management/culture development are popular pursuits right now.

Policy Hacks and Civic Engagement

Under Tony Clement, the federal Open Government team has done some amazing work around opening data and engaging Canadians with the goal of empowering citizens to turn public data into profitable enterprises.  The Canadian Open Data Experience was the largest hackathon in Canadian history.

At the same time, some Virtuous Schemers from that team have been exploring ways to strengthen engagement between the public service and every day political citizens with the intent of addressing structural concerns and wicked problems like poverty and climate change.

All of this should continue.  In addition, it would be amazing to see more engagement/hackathons between public servants and other players to hack policy issues and solutions that don't necessarily have to originate from government. (Think Civic Design Camp, Civic Tech, Community Solutions Lab)

MP Committees and touring consultations and whatnot are great - imagine they could tap into local/regional/national policy-making groups that were using open data to assess, prototype and refine policy, programs, co-design opportunities that could be citizen-led and private-sector/foundation funded?  Imagine government was a facilitator of civic leadership rather than CEO?

This is all happening in small-scale ways across the country.  What's needed to bring it all together is a stone in the soup, a source of inspiration (and, let's be honest, permission) - in short, someone like Justin Trudeau.

ACTION ITEM #1: Task the new President of Treasury Board/their Parliamentary Secretary to do a landscape assessment of groups, orgs and initiatives already in this space and start convening them in collaborative ways, offering them moral support, connections to funders/partners.

Open Data/Data Stories 

Opening up public data for public use is a monstrous task, not made any easier by the fact that different levels of government and even different departments of government aren't all in agreement with processes or platforms or even definitions.  There are even governments out there with significant caches of data still being kept on paper.

Worth remembering - what we're talking about here is a massive culture change.  If you've ever had a secretary who was insistent on keeping paper records because they didn't trust/feel comfortable with computers, picture that on a national scale.

As has emerged from Ontario's Open Data Directive process, it's not enough to make new demands of the public service - major culture change, support and a shift in agency to younger staff more comfortable with new ways of doing this is required to really make Open Government a reality.  More on this in the next point.

Beyond all this - who is Open Data for?  Is the goal to reach out to hackers or entrepreneurs, foundations focused on impact investment or not-for-profits?  If it's for everyone, what needs to be done to make it easier for Canadians in general to be aware of open data and comfortable navigating it?

This is a mighty challenge, but a doable one.  If Apple could transform computers from tools for the elite into necessities in daily life, there's no reason Canada can't do the same thing with data.

ACTION ITEM #2: Develop a national campaign geared towards increasing public awareness of Open Data and its value.  This campaign will also target governments, encouraging/enticing them to strengthen existing efforts to standardize data and data presentation.  (sales analogy: public = kids, government = parents, data = cereal)


That's Open Data - what about Data stories?

No offence to Katie; numbers may tell, but stories sell.  Stories also have the power to transform complex data sets into narratives people can wrap their heads around (instead of focusing on ingredients, talk about what those ingredients can make)

Here's where maps come in - GIS, data layering, money-tracking and all that fun stuff.

Picture sitting down at a computer and opening up a map-based portal that allows you to layer data in comprehensible ways to see how different sets interact.  Imagine this portal could even animate data presentation so you could see changes over time (and even predict them to a degree, like weather maps).

An example - I go to this portal with a particular interest in, say, Eastern Ontario.  I'm given the option to pick some data layers to add in:

- age demographics
- employment rates
- existing/planned healthcare infrastructure
- time frame of 2000-present

The portal would create a map that displays all these things in visual terms (a bit more sophisticated than what WellbeingTO does) and let's me see how they have evolved over time.  Down the road, the system might even add value by recommending related sets to add in for a more robust picture.

From another angle - imagine this portal could map demographics, quality-of-life-indicators, services offered locally, providers and funding.  Where is money being spent to achieve specific goals, but those goals aren't being reached?  What best practices exist on a small scale in one region that could be invested in and expanded?



A platform like this would address so many concerns funders, service-providers and end-users (citizens) have right now.  Entrepreneurs looking for new markets and new opportunities could use this platform to find gaps - as could governments themselves.  Government wouldn't need to be the owner of such a tool, just a supporter. There are brilliant young changemakers playing around with concepts like this right now like Oohee Lee (not even a Canadian citizen, worth noting, but none-the-less a person adding incredible value to the country).

Fun side-bar - when you create platforms like these, either in person or online, you end up with entire communities dedicating themselves to support solution-making in communities not even there own. Case in point: Pakathon. Can you think of anything more Canadian than that?

ACTION ITEM #3: In conjunction with the Open Data capacity building campaign, have a challenge/hack/competition that empowers the Canadian community to develop a digital data hub which allows individuals to access public data and use it to tell stories, identify challenges in user-friendly way.

Open Government/Responsible Society

There is a big challenge that comes with Open Data which hasn't been fully addressed.  As more and more data becomes open, we're going to see more and more examples of government getting things wrong.  Money has been spent without results.  Important problem areas have been missed or avoided.  Presenteeism is a big issue in our public services.

Imagine heeding the call and becoming a public servant, excited to make a difference for your country, only to find yourself in a culture where your expertise is dismissed, you're rarely allowed to see the big picture and you're regularly on eggshells, terrified of being the next Public Servant Zero.

That's a common story right now, and this is before open by default has become common practice.

Some big challenges to open:

- a culture of gotcha politics
- a public that has become used to reacting against negatives instead of contributing to solutions
- a culture class between traditional, top-down management structures and a more Millennial, flat-org approach to engagement
- stakeholders focused on what they want/what they aren't happy with rather than systems thinking

It's not enough to say "government, be open!"  There is a lot of supportive work that needs done to enable a culture of openness and engagement within the public service and, just as importantly, between governments, the private/not-for-profit sectors and civil society.

Where to begin?

Real change begins at home.

Government culture change, new forms of internal engagement/cross-pollination, even redesigning working spaces to facilitate the sorts of engagement and results we collectively want are all tough nuts to crack, but great strides have already been made.  There are some cool partners out there to work with, too.

A selfish example - the Centre for Social Innovation has pro-actively developed the kind of working environment and culture that government should be looking to emulate.  Heck, the CSI model is being studied and borrowed across the globe; even Kathleen Wynne has mulled the idea of a CSI Queen's Park.

What would a CSI Parliament Hill look like?

How could the right culture-change and space development empower engagement, resiliency, a can-do mentality and all the soft stuff necessary to help public service transition to Open By Default?

The key thing is that the answer isn't going to come in the form of one-off sessions on culture change; it has to be engaged into the every-day operations of government.

ACTION ITEM #4: Develop a culture change-management strategy for the Canadian Public Service (and Parliament) that emphasizes emotional resiliency, collaboration, systems-thinking, #HowMightWe vs #YouCantDoThat thinking, etc.  

ACTION ITEM #5: Pilot a CSI-style collaboraiton/community animation space on or near Parliament Hill to facilitate cross-pollinated engagement and solution-finding for public servants and beyond.

It's not enough to have a government that's open, however - you need a society that's comfortable and supportive of the bumpy transition it'll take to get there.  Make no mistake - change at this scale is messy.  There will be a lot of things that happen and even more discovered that could (and should) make communities and stakeholders angry.

This is a big reason why successive governments make promises about new ways of doing things, transparency, etc. and don't follow through.  It's not just about falling into behavioural traps; it's a big challenge to change when the public wants change to be painless.

If you want a government that is truly open, you need a society that is willing to work with government through the process that will get there.  You can't have an Open Government without a Responsible Society.

So how do you nurture that?

Anyone in politics has the answer to this question, even if they don't realize it.  What sells a person, product or process best is a third party validator.

Lucky for government, there is an entire movement of people and organizations already playing that role.  It's not just a national thing, either - it's international.  The world wants open.

And if Canadians can position themselves as global leaders of open and engagement, the catalysts for government/civil society engagement change everywhere, I think you'd find a steadily growing amount of Canadians would happily join that movement.

Especially youth and New Canadians.

Which brings us back to our first point about involving Canadians in the policy making process.  If the people see themselves as active, valued participants in a shared mission of transforming Canada into a world leader and catalyst for open, transparent, engaged - moving forward together/leaving no one behind - everything else will fall into place.

ACTION ITEM #6: As part of their landscape assessment, the new Treasury Board President/Parliamentary Secretary will actively nurture relationships with the Open Community (including support of Open events through attendance, social media promotion, etc).  

ACTION ITEM #7: The Open Outreach campaign will develop awareness, capacity and appetite for open gov/open data, but with an emphasis on why this matters and what we might collectively achieve.

Katie Telford likes numbers; numbers tell a story.

To pull a page from Justin Trudeau's book, here's my number - one.

One singular vision of the #countrywewant that can rally, inspire and engage Canadians in common purpose to be active participants in shaping a Canadian whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

It doesn't matter what this vision gets called, though it will definitely help to have a catchy brand.

What matters most is that the leader embodies it.  When that happens, others will follow.


There are 7 action items in this post - that's the number of ideas an organized mind can keep afloat in its working memory at one time.  The last two are really tag-ons to the first two, so you could even say there are just 5, which is a number most Canadians can hold on to.

Which leads to my call to action.

There is nothing on this list that isn't being tackled in one form or other already.

We have hackathons.  We have partnerships between public servants and community groups.

Open Data Days and related events are all trying to build community and empower people to be agents of change.

Speaking of agents of change - CSI is helping empower good ideas for social impact in a variety of ways.

And virtuous schemers are attempting the Herculaneum task of changing government culture from the inside out.  These are unspoken heroes whose efforts probably won't be felt for a generation and whose impact they'll never get credit - but they do it anyway.

You can be part of this change.  In fact, the change we seek can't happen without you.

Get informed, get engaged, make a difference.  It's great if there's a central leader who gives us the inspiration, but ultimately the power is ours - and always has been.

Here's one last number to help you get started - 200.

Canada's bicentennial will be celebrated in 2067 - far enough away that we can't predict what the world will be like at the time, but close enough that we could play a major role in actively shaping that future if we put our minds to it now.

There are countless Canadians doing just that, right now.

Are you with us?

Team Trudeau: The Why Before the Win

“I have always felt optimistic about our chances if we offered the right kind of concrete but ambitious vision of this country that reflects what Canadians need and want,” Trudeau said. “That’s what we put forward and that’s what Canadians responded to.”

Tip of the hat to Team Trudeau and, leading the charge, Katie Telford and Gerry Butts.  Yes, the other parties defeated themselves/each other, but the Liberals must also be credited with delivering a win.  

That their win was predicated on an unwavering commitment to "sunny ways" is to their great credit. They have defied common political wisdom and hopefully kicked the ball in a different direction, reversing the slide of Canadian politics into smears, divide-and-conquer cynicism and the vile use of wedge politics we saw during the campaign.

If you go back to the beginning, the core Trudeau team has been committed to doing politics differently from the very beginning (and for some of them, that goes back to previous campaigns). With (it's true!) a lot of hope and hard work, they have done what they set out to do.  They resisted hard attacks and persevered through attacks and criticisms not just from opponents, but even from fellow Liberals.  That's a big deal.

But.

If you read through the piece linked above (or really, any piece on the Liberal campaign) you see that the "win" is being attributed to a small group of smart people who sat down and hashed out a plan together. It will be awfully tempting for the rank and file to just trust that group to keep on delivering wins, just as it will be awfully tempting for that group to see themselves as the face and wisdom of modern political success and start disregarding opposing voices.

I like to say that you govern as you win - and if a win is attributed to a small group of insiders largely trusting their own instincts, there is a real risk of that group sticking to that approach, which is a bad idea.

Not every idea that came out of this core group was a winner.  There were good ideas that came from all over the place.  More to the point, the real change they have been pursuing for ages is predicated on increased civic engagement, not just increased voter turnout.

Caucus has to have a say.  The Opposition must be taken seriously.  The people have to know and be reminded regularly that civil society has an active role to play in democracy - and that Open Government cannot function without a Responsible Society.

So far, the evidence is comforting.  Let's hope it stays that way.

It would be a good gesture for Team Trudeau to reach out to some of the Liberals alienated along the path to victory, help them feel engaged again.  

Going forward, leave no one behind, etc.

Let's Build a Death Star!

Can you imagine the pitch?  

"Hey, boss - I know we're trying to make our mark and it's a competitive market out there and whatnot.  So how about this - we build a death star, scare everyone into submission and blow up some bad dudes."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't that been tried before - at great expense?  Didn't it not work out all that well?"

"Boss, come on - it's big, it's iconic, we'll be remembered for this.  You don't want to be seen as weak, do you?"

Remember that time the CIA supported Osama bin Laden?  Or the US supported Saddam Hussein in his pitch to beat out Iran?  Those sorts of incursions have worked out pretty well, haven't they?

Or how about Tim Hudak's "let's straw man the Ontario Public Service and make like this game show - "who's gonna get laid off?"

Let's not leave out the Stephen Harper/Lynton Crosby niqab/barbaric practice hotline play - "if all else fails, let's target a minority!"

History's actors - the alphas with the aggressive positioning, tough talk and complete willingness to sacrifice others and future stability because the win right now fixes everything - have this cyclical habit of repeating history's failures.  

Maybe they don't do their homework.  Maybe, they feel that no one else was as capable, determined or smart as they are.  Either way, the result is the same - massive, aggressive assaults that ultimately result in losses that could really have been both predicted and avoided.

You can jump the shark, you can nuke the fridge, but those are both just whimpering ends.

If you really want to be remembered, build a death star.

At least that way, you can bring others down with you.