Could This Have Saved Ashley Smith?

From Calm, Alert and Learning: Classroom Strategies for Self-Regulation (Stuart Shanker)

Two six year-olds were playing at recess when one fell.  The girl reacted to her friend's fall and subsequent distress by laughing and hitting him on the back.  This, of course, upset her friend even further, leading the girl, in turn, to laugh even more and hit the boy again as she became more hyperaroused.  The teacher on duty, knowing that the girl had great difficulty with social conventions and controlling her motor actions when hyperaroused, intervened as follows: She showed the girl how to console her friend by softly telling him that everything would be all right.  She then demonstrated for the child to pat her friend gently on the back.  Almost instantly, both children down-regulated.

If we look at this situation and apply how we might instinctively act, we see that there is potential for the teacher to admonish the girl for being too rough.  In this instance, chances are that the girl (and her friend) would have become even more upset and dysregulated.  As it was, the girl genuinely wanted to be kind, but her poor social skills and problems with motor control made this difficult.  With the wrong kind of adult response, the girl might continue to have ongoing problems in the prosocial domain.  With her teacher's keen understanding and gentle encouragement, however, the girl was able to learn an appropriate response to the situation and model it.

According to her adoptive parents, Ashley Smith apparently had a normal early childhood.  When she started to hit puberty (the time when the neural systems of the human brain responsible for executive function start to mature), she started to display anti-social behavioural changes.  From there, Ashley Smith's life spiralled downward into juvenile court and prison, with some diagnoses of mental health issues along the way.  

Her sad life ended, as we know, in suicide.

What if Ashley's parents had been able to learn about strategies like the one outlined above and the cognitive science behind them?  What if her teachers or prison guards had knowledge of the neurochemistry behind behaviour and been able to approach Ashley differently?  What if those same prison guards knew to look for behaviour and causes in each other and felt comfortable in providing peer support?

Could such strategies and culture shift have also saved the life of Staff Sergeant Ian Matthews?  What about Canada's veterans?

Of course, this scenario is geared just towards teachers.  It was, after all, included in a teacher-resource manual. 

There is no reason why any teacher should proactively be looking to apply such behavioural comprehension and management strategies to a justice system tragedy.  There's no reason a correctional service policy-planner should be reading a teacher resource, either.  

We have silo-based systems that encourage people to stay on target, lest they get lost on tangents.  

The sorts of cross-pollination ideas which can and should happen don't, and for a well-identified reason that also goes back to cognitive function.  We like to tell ourselves we're rational creatures, but we really aren't.  We're reactive, using fight or flight (or punishment and isolation) when there's a better way.

This is the culture change Don Tapscott refers to when he talks about networked intelligence.  It's the power of behavioural insight the Mowat Centre wrote about.  It's the sort of innovation we keep talking about, but are challenged to actually realize.  

It's within our power right now to collectively do something to prevent the next Ashley Smith or Ian Matthews from killing themselves.  We can reduce bullying, reduce crime, increase workplace productivity and positively impact quality-of-life if we can just change the view from looking through a mirror darkly.

Or, we can focus on individual toughness and invest more in crime and punishment.  

That's what's worked so far, right?

UPDATE:  But a more precise application of the criminal law, based on a better appreciation of its limits, is not evidence that we no longer know where or how to draw the line.  Quite the contrary: We are drawing it with a sharper pencil.

Who am I to argue with Andrew Coyne?

Here's the new mentality - it's behavioural economics, stupid!





But a more precise application of the criminal law, based on a better appreciation of its limits, is not evidence that we no longer know where or how to draw the line. Quite the contrary: We are drawing it with a sharper pencil.

Open Government

There are currently two key challenges facing government operations: 

1)      Government service delivery model is consumer based

2)      Government focus still leans heavily on end results without sufficient thought to the design of the experience that leads to that result

Using healthcare as an example, we

·         Don’t own our health and well-being so much as we contract it out (medicine, physiotherapy, ERs, etc.)

·          Complaining about contractors (doctors, nurses, physiotherapists) isn’t the same as direct ownership of our own care – we are motivated to gripe about service (I’ve seen a dozen specialists but don’t feel any better) not own the process of maintenance (if I did more exercise at home/monitored my diet/worked with my employer to better address at-work stress, I could proactively own and maintain my own health)

·         Government Service Providers cater to specific clienteles, providing a mass produced, more uniform experience for diverse populations with differing needs; it’s customized service, not tailored service

·         if you don’t have a lot of access, you simply don’t get the service (see upcoming Toronto Central LHIN report on Mt. Dennis); telling people they need to step up simply doesn’t do the trick, nor does trying to provide more of the same to everyone

·         ERs are like corner stores, places we go to for that emergency need – a great model if those services are being sold in situ, but they’re not

This is a model that worked more-or-less successfully for all producers/service providers over the last century or so, but society has become more complex, diverse, specialized, busier and as a result, less focused.  More emphasis needs to be placed on changing the relationship between government and taxpayers from provider/client to something more like an investor/entrepreneur model.

Similarly, there are many internal challenges facing the Ontario Public Service (OPS) that impede the maximization of service provision and the ownership of work by individual public servants.  The OPS is undergoing, in fits and spurts, a Human Resources Change Management review with the intent of identifying the internal communications, accommodations and ownership barriers that lead to avoidable presenteeism among OPS employees.

Under Premier McGuinty and now, Premier Wynne, the Government of Ontario has made great strides in empowering end-users – CCACs are an example of how government can educate and empower demographic/regional groups with specialized needs to better understand and manage their own health experiences.   I don’t believe there has yet been much consideration of the impacts of and solutions for presenteeism within the OPS, but that’s a bridge that needs to be crossed if we truly want to foster open, accessible and accommodating government services.

The challenge and opportunity I see presented with any Open Government Initiative is to shift the focus from a product/sales model to one that’s experience-based/collaborative.

REDESIGNING GOVERNMENT SERVICES

There are plenty of reports that provide examples of current government service experiences.  The upcoming Toronto Central LHIN report on challenges faced by, in particular, Somali-Canadians living in the Mt. Dennis community provide a perfect example of how current process are meant to provide outcomes for clients rather than delivering a user-friendly experience of accessing services and feeling ownership of that outcome.

Dave Meslin has a great TedX Talk about how this works in practice; if Nike designed their consumer experience and marketing the same way government has, they’d be a much poorer company.  The same holds true for internal motivation; if employees are seen as functionaries, they aren’t motivated to do their best work.  This has been identified as a real problem within the OPS which has struck an OPS HR Change Management Committee to review the internal problems they have identified.

To properly design government service delivery for transparency, efficacy and a user-friendly experience that results in the end-goal of stronger Ontarians for a stronger Ontario, here are three themes that need considered:

SERVICE EXPERIENCE

For both end-user and service-provider.  People have a much harder time motivating themselves to go through frustrating experiences, which accessing government services often is:

·         The correct entry-point for the service required often isn’t clear; you can spend hours on the phone, frequently on hold, being sent back and forth between service providers without ever finding who is ultimately responsible for your concern

o   This is because service delivery isn’t clear; there is no service map of what government does anywhere; as such, there is plenty of unidentified and avoidable duplication, gaps and overlaps that feed in to frustration by both user and provider

·         Employees don’t always have clarity of mandate – what are they doing, when direction is being changed from above, the reason for changes aren’t explained nor is front-line input solicited.  You end up with frustrated employees not motivated to go above and beyond in their work

·         A laissez-faire approach to service modelling (the service is here, come find it if you want it) leads to standardized services that make sense to their designers, but not to the variety of users intended to access them

The first step to improving service experience is to map services out.  This can be constructed like a family tree, with tiers of service and how they connect/don't connect made clear.

There is also a need to better understand the nature of current end-user experiences, both what works and what doesn’t and employ a design thinking approach (tailor the product/service for intuitive use by end-users, not try to train users to engage product/services the way they are).  This approach of designing services for mass-customization has propelled Apple to success and can work just as well for government.

Lastly, we need to revisit the employee experience and expectations based on current HR management understanding and techniques.  Companies like Environcis are doing a great job of teasing the best out of their talent by moving beyond the standard financial carrot-and-stick model of motivation.

When employees feel like they are part of their work rather than tools for their bosses, they do a better job and are less likely to look for the added-value they feel entitled to (longer lunches, using government resources for personal use, etc.).  This provides a better experience for end-users as well.

When end-users feel like government wants them to use their services and that they are an active and appreciated part in the process of nurturing stronger individuals for a stronger society, they are more inclined to participate.  Of course, services need to be designed for use, which leads us into the next theme:

SERVICE DISCOVERY

Who is trying to discover government services?  What are they looking for?  What are their instinctive search behaviours?  What tools are they using to do so (laptops, smartphone Apps, the phone, Constituency offices, OPS service offices, etc)?

In person

Compare your experience walking into a Target or a Nike store to that of walking in to a government service office. 

·         How welcome do you feel? 

·         How encouraged are you to explore, ask questions, etc.? 

·         Are the providers you engage with trained on how to zone in on your need through asking the right questions? 

·         Do those providers have a general sense of cultural sensitivity and how to identify potential barriers to communication/end-user assistance?

Borrowing from existing models of service delivery and customer experience design, it is possible for government to remove frustration from the experience and make it more enjoyable for everyone.

Online

The redesign of government websites with the how can we help you, popular and featured windows are a definite step in the right direction – we need to go further. 

End-users don’t always know what they’re looking for and might not be sure of how to phrase a query to find it.  The more complex the process is, the less likely they are to engage in it.  By having websites that facilitate this process, we can enhance service accessibility, improvement of use and also collect internal metrics to foster better design tweaks in future upgrades. 

·         Add more guidance to websites – they should look like a smartphone with labelled icons (images help those with limited English/French and ease the process for those who simply don’t know where to begin) that help narrow one’s search.

o   i.e. – I’m looking for specialized help for my elderly grandparent, where do I go? The Ontario Ministry Of Health and Long-Term Care website would have a “senior” icon that leads me to more senior-related services.  If I know my grandparent has mobility issues, I could also push on an icon that leads me to a sub-menu with related icons.  Whichever route I take I will land on the services, service locations and contact information for the specific resources/providers I need to help my grandparent

·         Add value to the experience – my previous search patterns can be remembered, allowing for pop-ups aiding in the directional process.  Other pop-ups could include “tips and tricks” (in the grandparent example, related to senior care, senior self-care, etc)

·         Smartphone Apps can be designed to help individuals better monitor and communicate their needs (this is a concept being tried out in other fields right now)

PERSONAL OWNERSHIP

This brings us back to the first point; OPS employees are largely viewed as cogs in the machine rather than part of a team; service end-users are viewed as clients rather than partners.

Revisiting internal HR practises, clarifying responsibilities and enhancing internal communication equality is a key part of nurturing an open, transparent government services that achieve their maximum potential.

Reversing our current consumer-based model of service provision to give end-users more ownership of their own care with providers acting more like EAs than sales agents/managers is a critical step is we are to ensure the financial feasibility of service provision down the road.

It's a starting point.  I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Political Murmurations in Social Media

 

Two stories playing out on Twitter right now that have caught my attention:

 

Eric Dillane‏@Tor_Grit17m

@__CCE @JoshColle people have been tweeting about it from around the city tonight. Asking about a # of councillors.

 

- Porter Airlines (or someone that supports them) has paid for a push-poll with leading questions along these lines: "The planes Porter wants to use are so quiet, they're known as whisper planes.  Would you oppose to Porter using such planes?"

 

They also have questions about the listener's impression of councilors (I suspect what the pollers have in their database as the call-recipient's sitting councilor).  It's a pretty transparent attempt to manipulate callers and also mine data on how to push councilors into voting favourably.

 

Given all the attention robocalls have gotten of late, a large percentage of receivers are wise to the game and pretty annoyed with it - so much so that they're taking to Twitter to comment about how blatant the poll is.  There's strength in numbers - when you feel you're being manipulated and know you've got a crowd with you to stand against the manipulator, what's the impact on the manipulation?

 

Story number two:

 

André Picard‏@picardonhealth3h

Donations to @CdnLiverFdtn soar after Tory attack ad on @justintrudeau by @AllisonCross http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/17/surge-in-donations-to-liver/ … via @SalSpadafora @WeirDoug

 

The Tories did their thing and unleashed an attack ad against Justin Trudeau moments after he was declared the new Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.  They used footage of Trudeau participating in a Canadian Liver Foundation fundraiser where he "stripped" - down to his undershirt.  Hardly shocking in the scheme of things, but the CPC are never ones to worry about context. 

 

Team Trudeau, however, did something the CPC weren't prepared for:

 

P.S. I raised a bit of money for the Liver Foundation but I bet we could raise more if you made a donation too.

 

In an email out to his membership, Trudeau used the attack as a way to promote donations for the Liver Foundation.

 

It worked - the Foundation has seen a spike in donations thanks to that letter.  The end beneficiaries are happy, the LPC membership gets a laugh and feels like they've contributed to something positive and the Liver Foundation people are gonna be that much more favourable to Trudeau as a result.  By pulling the team together and giving their attention a positive outlet, Trudeau has reinforced his message and mitigated the impact of the attack, leaving the CPC a confused predator unsure of where to strike next.  He's also demonstrated the kind of leadership he stands for - always finding a way to create wins for the people.

 

Don Tapscott would be proud.

 

If Trudeau's people are smart - and they are - they'll keep this trend up and judo-flip every attack on their man by oppositional parties into a chance to build Trudeau's brand.

 

Rapid-fire social media has changed the game; while the masters of yesterdays tricks try to use a tablet like a desktop, tomorrow's leaders are figuring out how to maximize the inherent potential of these new tools. 

 

As with all communications innovations, the aggregate impact of social media is an increasingly pro-social one; society becomes more integrated, collaborative and collectively strong.  Predators lose their teeth as weak links stop being left behind.  As for the Conservatives - the next gen of successful Tories will be a tad more liberal than their predecessors.  It's how social evolution works.

Democratic Disengagement, Occupy and Social Evolution

Even now, in these days of microphones and loud-speakers, we all know that a group meeting is no way to resolve issues for a group of thousands of people.  Hence a large society must be structured and centralized if it is to reach decisions effectively.

 

- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel

 

 

The Occupy and Tea Party movements share one thing in common - they both think our current system of social organization is broken.  Both agree that the voice of individuals is being lost in the functioning of our model of the democratic process.  From that point, though, the two movements diverge; while the Tea Party folk embrace an Ayn Rand view that disavows society and focuses instead on individual agency, Occupy is committed to finding ways to raise individual concerns up to the level of societal awareness.

 

The Tea Party enjoys great popularity, but only among a segment of the population.  Their organizers tend to appear angry, aggressive and close-minded in how they present themselves.  While they have been successful in stirring the pot and generating attention, it's questionable how much chance they have of nurturing actual change.  The radicals among their ranks turn off moderate conservatives while those politicians who tack their way lose the opportunity to build broader coalitions of support among their populaces.  This doesn't have to matter - as Stephen Harper has proven, you can completely write off whole provinces in your political calculations and still win.  But what does this do to democracy?  Voter turnout is dwindling for a reason - people are feeling less and less represented by their Representatives and tuning out.

 

It's difficult to figure out just what Occupy stands for.  Certainly, it has no defined leader, no bureaucratic system of information gathering and policy formation; a key rule adopted by Occupiers was decision by consensus.  This has proven difficult, not just because of differences of opinions, but sheer logistics.  I remember visiting the Occupy Bay Street camp in Toronto and witnessing the challenges of information sharing in its most basic form.  If you've ever been to a Q&A with one microphone, a long line of questioners, a poor sound system and limited time, picture all of that happening out of doors, without the audio.  Without question, however, Occupy has changed politics - politicians have noticed the broad social representation to be found among the ranks of Occupy and its supporters and have begun to throw some recognition there way.  The 47% fits perfectly into that narrative.

 

So, on the one hand, we have the Tea Party crowd being dismissive of viewpoints that differ from their own and on the other, Occupy trying to raise the voices of those who feel they have been dismissed.  It may be the anthropologist in me, but I think the two perspectives boil down to this - the  Objectivist Tea Party unconsciously wants to recreate a Band-type of social organization, described by Jared Diamond as one "where everyone is closely related to everyone else, people related simultaneously to both quarreling parties step in to mediate quarrels."  Occupy wants to infuse the State model with a Band-level of voice afforded to all members of society, especially those who with less influence due to lineage or circumstance.

 

Both of these movements face a basic problem of numbers.  A Tea Party Objectivist model only works in smaller groups, where there is less variety of opinion (and ethnicity, religion and social stratification as a result).  The same holds true for Occupy - you cannot have a Circle of discussion that gives voices to thousands of individuals located in pockets across thousands of kilometers of geography.  Similarly, Stephen Harper is finding his quasi-Objectivist perspective at odds with a growing number of stakeholders demanding centralized coordination for far-reaching programs like healthcare.

 

More broadly, there's a growing recognition that our representative democracy isn't all that representative; disaffected voters feel like they don't know the issues, their concerns aren't being listened to and that it doesn't matter who gets elected, their voice doesn't resonate.  Of course, it has always been thus, with the divide becoming sharper the larger and more diverse society gets.  The only reason this trend is getting more attention today is due to the rise of social media, allowing for groups like Samara to spread their findings more widely and for media to pick up on countless, specific voices of disaffection through mediums like Twitter.

 

I disagree with Don Tapscott when he suggests that our social system is broken - rather, I think that society has simply grown beyond it, just as we have the Band or the Tribe.  While we still have sub-units of organization; the family, the kin circle, the class, the province, the state - society has grown so large and integrated that we need to add another tier to the top of the organizational pyramid, facilitating greater connectivity and coordination for all.

 

At the same time, there is demand for greater specialization within society itself.  Specialization is the history of civilization; the division of labour has separated food producers from tool producers from bureaucrats, always building the base of the pyramid outwards.  This applies to institutions as much as it does to individuals; Head Men were separated into Kings and their courts, then Kings and Churches, then Heads of State, Churches and Governments, etc.

 

The global integration of people, labour and the trade of goods has brought us to a point where societal needs are too complex; our modern systems of governance and representation aren't up to the job.  Change is inevitable.  What that change will eventually look like, I don't know.  It's worth noting, however, another line from Guns, Germs and Steel: "societies of thousands can exist only if they develop centralized authority to monopolize force and resolve conflicts."

 

I'm not sure if I agree with the words "monopolize force" - I think that's too limited, and also neglects some powerful historical examples of unifying causes that didn't rely on force.  The initial spread of Christianity and Islam were due to the power of the vision and charisma of their leaders - the sword only came later.  For Buddhism, it's always been the message that has brought people together, allowing them to coordinate efforts and resources towards common goals.  Politics works a lot like this, too, at its best - Trudeaumania was a phenomenon because people bought into Trudeau and the concept of the Just Society, rather than being forced or coerced into believing.   

 

To me, it seems the major challenges that society faces today are:

 

- the disparity that is inevitable in a massive populace with minimal internal coordination and the resulting social disconnect

 

- the sheer challenge of engaging all citizenry through a representative system that allows for a majority of voices to be heard and opinions to be represented through policy

 

- a dearth of strong, common visions and strong, engaging leaders that broader segments of the populace can rally behind

 

Unlike those trumpeting the end of civilization and the demise of innovation, however, I think that we're going to expand upwards and outwards, overcoming this hurdle as we have all others in the history of society.  I think that we'll be seeing a re-emergence of rock-star leaders with powerful visions that people can see themselves reflected in and feel inspired by.  These trailblazers will be buffeted by communities of engaged individuals using social media as a key tool to lift up their leaders.  Invariably, the brands these leaders engender will be bigger than the leaders themselves, leading to the risk of burying the men and women beneath the hype (as happened to Barack Obama).

 

A solution to this challenge will be for the Leaders - the Head Men and Women - to share the spotlight a little with their teams, spreading the wealth and responsibility, putting less burden on the shoulders of one.  You can see that happening already with Justin Trudeau's rockstar campaign launch and the visibility of his young, likable and capable campaign team.  In short, we're going to be turning the person at the top into a community, trickling responsibility further down the chain and leading to yet further social specialization.  With such a strong degree of specialization, there's increased demand for more bodies to develop greater, nuanced skills, which results in more stuff, more demand, more production, greater prosperity and less poverty.

 

But you don't have to take it from me.  Family, Band, Tribe, State - the trend lines are the history of social evolution.

 

Art Imitates Life

 

 

 

The script was informed by Russell's own experiences with people who have struggled with mental health problems, the filmmaker said on Sunday.

 

 

World War II and the probing fingers of media shot our collective illusions of independent solitude full of wholes.  Now, the immediacy and addictive transparency of social media is shining strobe lights on the glass houses of our inner most selves.  In the words of Don Tapscott, we're all consciously naked in this new reality - yet only some are looking for fig leaves to cover themselves with.  Sprouting up here and there is a willingness to be naked and to let the sun light our souls.

 

 

Those who have stripped themselves of the cloisters of their solitude are being bombarded by consciousness of the world that inhabits them; the ecosystem that we are all, consciously or not, part of.  As the veils of illusion fall away, the realities laid bare are both inspiring and horrifying.  There is no Other; what we fear is just a reflection of ourselves.  Those we look upon as lesser than - less moral, less pragmatic, less sensible, less human - are equally valid in their judgements of us.  Beyond the Garden of Good and Evil, the world is a far less binary place.  There are no easy answers, no simple choices; decisions must be considered with content, context and consequence in mind.

 

 

While these pilgrims grapple with the vertiginous awareness that they are but trees in the forest, there are others who continue to see themselves as islands in the gulf, or points of light in the darkness.  These folk see safety in walls and threats in diversity; to them, reality is as it was intended and the only natural law is survival of the fittest.  The social ecosystem, as diverse and connected as is the natural one is not, to them, evolution; it's a fall over the edge of the world they know. 

 

 

Hence, we round out 2012 with hopeful films about the connectivity of people through space and time like Cloud Atlas and meditations on the silos of the self like Cosmopolis.  Elections on both sides of the Canadian/US border aren't about politics, they're about the end of our countries as we know them.  Even in our outlooks on diversity, we come down to poles.  But the world isn't like that; ours isn't a bipolar existence, it's a cyclical one.  There's also a little film called The Master, which is about people's need to believe in something and what they're willing to sacrifice on behalf of those beliefs.

 

 

What does all this have to do with a film about mentally ill people trying to support each other in building a new life, directed by a man not afraid to talk about his own brushes with mental illness?

 

 

That's for you to interpret.

What Has Greater Impact: Facts or Feelings?

 

 

Had the pleasure of attending Rotmans' Social Media Experts Series debate between Don Tapscott and Andrew Keen.  I tweeted a fair bit about my thoughts at @__cce, so I won't cover the whole thing.

 

 

One exchange in particular stuck out.  Tapscott was arguing the value of openness and collaboration; Keen was arguing that both of those things were detrimental to businesses.  When Tapscott refuted a point with an example, Keen said "Look, we can both argue specific cases until the cows come home but that won't change anything."

 

 

It suddenly occurred to me that he was right.  They could provide facts to support their views, but then the secondary pieces that became the focus.  At its core, Keen is afraid; change, the loss of privacy, the potential of his self to be lessened by the fostering of a more connected society.  He admitted himself that he's hardly the first person to be afraid of change. 

 

 

To really get at the root of debates like this, it's that cognitive response piece that should really be considered first.

 

Innovating the Solution: Canadian Workers and Cognitive Labour

I call this cognitive labour.  The motivating employees for innovative success, the fostering of collaborative teams, the supporting of can-do attitudes and critical thinking - even the online supports and processes are completely doable.

To quote Don Tapscott - let's make this happen.


Canadian workers lacking resources and engagement needed to get the job done

By Ofelia Isabel, National Post

Canada’s productivity gap continues to present questions for organizations trying to become more competitive.

Towers Watson’s latest study of employee attitudes and concerns around the world, which included more than a thousand Canadians, reveals what could be a hidden contributing factor: a lack of sustainable engagement in the Canadian workforce.

Traditionally, engagement has been recognized as employees’ willingness to give discretionary effort to their jobs. While most employers intuitively understand the value of an engaged workforce (and many have programs in place to measure and support engagement), the research shows the steps organizations are taking to improve engagement are falling short.

What organizations fail to take into account is that engagement today concerns more than giving extra effort. To be highly engaged in today’s challenging workplace, employees must also be given the capability to excel (which we call enablement) and the capacity to maintain their efforts over time, (which we call energy). Employers are failing to create this combination of discretionary effort, enablement, and energy — the combination that forms sustainable engagement and yields a significant performance advantage over time.

Sustainable engagement matters because it is the proverbial canary in the productivity mine

Sustainable engagement is at risk globally due to prolonged economic turmoil and work environments in which people have been doing more with less, and for less, for more than half a decade — and Canada is no exception. Prospects for improvement anytime in the near future seem limited. The result is a workforce that is anxious, stressed and risk averse. These are not good traits for a company or a country trying to grow.

Sustainable engagement matters because it is the proverbial canary in the productivity mine. A growing body of evidence — both empirical and anecdotal — shows the clear value of sustaining engagement over time.

When we look at productivity and retention metrics relative to sustainable engagement, we see that organizations with high levels of sustainable engagement have less absenteeism and lower “presenteeism” (lost productivity at work) than those with high levels of disengagement. Organizations with high sustainable engagement also have less trouble retaining employees than those with disengaged workforces.

In Canada, the advantages are startling for companies whose workforce exhibits high sustainable engagement. Companies lose an average of 8.8 days annually to presenteeism for employees with high sustainable engagement versus 17.7 days for the disengaged. For absenteeism, companies lose an average of three days per year for employees with high sustainable engagement versus nearly six days for the disengaged.

And when it comes to the important productivity measure of employee retention (losing experienced employees is a significant drain on productivity), only 14% of sustainably engaged employees in Canada are high-retention risks compared with 58% of disengaged employees.

How do sustainable engagement data fall to the bottom line? Towers Watson studied the performance of a group of 50 global corporations and compared their engagement data with their specific financial results. Those with the highest level of sustainable engagement had average operating margins three times greater than those organizations with low levels of engagement.

The disturbing issue for Canada, considering how sustainable engagement affects absenteeism, presenteeism and retention, is that only 33% of Canadian workers are sustainably engaged.

But there is good news for Canadian employers: An additional 24% of workers are considered “the unsupported” — engaged in the traditional sense (willing to put in the effort) but stymied by organizational barriers to enablement and energy. Canadian workers either don’t have the tools and resources to do the job, or don’t have the capacity to do it. That presents a huge opportunity for employers to take measures to address the productivity needs of their employees, and to think about managing to sustainable engagement — a far more robust 21st century form of engagement.

Among sustainable engagement’s three components (traditional engagement, enablement and energy), the most actionable focus area for addressing the unsupported is enablement. Driving enablement entails removing the barriers that make it easier for the unsupported to become sustainably engaged. It requires giving employees the tools, resources and support to get work done efficiently.

Examples of enabling unsupported employees might include prioritizing and organizing work for employees whether they are in the office or working from a remote office thousands of miles away. It might include making sure employees have access to efficient technology that works. It could be encouraging and rewarding a collegial work team that is ready to jump in to help; or, providing online tools and processes — with ready guidance and support — that give workers access to information to make rapid job-related decisions that promote customer satisfaction.

Energy, the third leg of sustainable engagement, entails actively supporting employees’ physical, emotional and interpersonal well-being. In this kind of environment, people come to work early and stay late, not simply because they have to, but because they’re involved in what they’re doing.

To move a larger group of employees into the sustainable engagement camp, employers need to understand and respond to what drives sustainable engagement in their organizations. The particulars will be unique for every company, but we know the top drivers of sustainable engagement among Canadian workers are related to leadership effectiveness, stress management and work-life balance, and career development. Employers need to involve their employees at every level — leader, supervisors, human resource officials and departments and employees themselves — in addressing these areas.

Ofelia Isabel is Towers Watson’s Canadian leader for talent and rewards.

© The Financial Post

The Politics of Memory: Mental Maps and Digital Government

Most of us think of memory as a chamber of the mind, and assume that our capacity to remember is only as good as our brain. But according to some architectural theorists, our memories are products of our body’s experience of physical space. Or, to consolidate the theorem: Our memories are only as good as our buildings.

Close your eyes and picture you're in your kitchen at home.  How do you get from there to the washroom?  What colour are the walls?  Where are the cupboards?  Could you draw a map from point A to B?  How many of the details along the way could you replicate with accuracy?  It's not as easy a process as you think; even the distances between rooms isn't as consistent in your memory as you think it is.

That, essentially, is the process that police walk witnesses through in describing suspects or recalling details from memory.  It's one we do very poorly.  If you're asked, however, how those spaces, faces or experiences make you feel, you're on much safer ground.  People who have touched your life deeply leave lasting impressions; you might look kindly at a cactus if, say, a favourite grandparent always had a cactus in their space.  You might mistrust all dogs, because you were terrified by one in your youth.  Emotional impacts are much more deeply ingrained in our memories. 

Marketing understands this, as does politics - the best messaging doesn't present information; it conveys emotional content.  Neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP relies on the manipulation of emotion to direct thought and is employed to some degree in the design of any tribal event, be it a religious service or a partisan rally.  Even Scientology incorporates some understanding of emotion's role in memory.  Ever heard the expression "number tell, but stories sell?"  How about this one - "a picture is worth a thousand words?"

"Syrian forces had killed 500 children."  It's pretty sickening.  Think you'll remember the number in an hour?  Click this link and tell me how soon you think that image will clear from your mind.

Now, think of government services; press 1 for this, press one for that.  Lists of hospitals, lists of doctors, forms and rote information.  Click on this link to 211 Toronto and tell me where your eyes gravitate.

I'm going to guess it wasn't the text on the left, but the pictures on the right.  Yet, our services aren't picture-based, they aren't designed for intuitive use; they're lists of terms that link to other lists of terms, or they're people on phones reading out "if A, then 1; if B, then 2" scripts.  The emotional resonance is missing; the map-like feature cues are entirely absent.  It's the dimensional equivalent to black-and-white, silent films; there is so much more detail that can be realized, if we have the right technology to map out that third dimension.

Of course, we're only now developing the digital tools that will allow for government services to be presented in a way that fosters maximum efficiency in public uptake.  The US has put together a roadmap for digital government that is doing just that - building a digital map that provides mental cue landmarks and will facilitate access.  This is where Wiki meets Googlemaps; the realization of what Don Tapscott calls Networked Intelligence or what I like to call The Conscious Society.

The future of government services, much as the future of work, is going to capitalize on this deeper understanding of what resonates with constituents/employees and how to design services, work spaces and work itself to promote maximum efficiency of use and maximum productivity.  The Henry Fords of the Cognitive Labour Revolution are busily designing the assembly mind lines that will propel the information economy forward.  The process will start in work and be picked up by labour, but where the most amazing transformations will occur when this trend hits our education system - where good teachers are already employing some degree of cognitive space design.

It's an exciting time to be alive; there's a whole new world of opportunity being opened up before us.  The challenge we face now is putting together the map.