Cultural Change Catalysts
- Identify benefits to the organization/agency's mission
- We have to realize that "openness" in and of itself is not a mission. Open government I'd argue that benefits need to be leaps and bounds above the status quo in order to impact organizational interia and get leadership to move away from the status quo.
- Showcase mission-relevant, tangilble success stories, include value metrics (stories are effective means for communicating).
- Build a ladder: gather a support network of evangelists/champions from the bottom of the organizational all the way to the top to carry the story of open government and "sell" it up to senior leadership
- Mentor upward: teach senior leaders about the value of openness in non-threatening, one-on-one training sessions about emerging tools & techs
- Road show: showcase it all over the organization -- to everyone who will listen
- Leverage external groups and citizens to HELP build internal openness
- Importance of "Getting our house together". Will be difficult to engage citizens effectively until internal collaboration is mastered.
- Need Conversation at the Lowest Levels. Important for work to be done "in the trenches" - that's where the work of open government will be carried out.
- Empowerment involves delegating some authority. This needs to happen, providing "permission" for collaboration
- Need a sense of urgency.
- Effort led by early adopters.
Key challenges, watch-fors, pitfalls
- Senior leaders have worked for their entire careers to BE senior leaders. Openness can threaten their power and entire raison d'etre.
- Outcomes from collaborative efforts are often difficult to predict or control.
- Management must trust team members to stay within mission guidelines, as teams seek innovative ideas and alternatives.
- Driving change (being an early adopter) involves taking some risks.
General Notes
- show top management benefits – show them why they should want to do something
- use bottom up method
- get away from checking the box
- hard to make changes, need fundamental change regarding how info is shared internally
- top of organizations only have “reports / summaries”
- replace reports with actual information – provide access to the data
- give various templates to create reports or roll up data
- give options to create your own report templates
- changes the way we think about information
- start sharing, not telling
- practice what we preach!
- don’t say “access” (as in giving access to info) – say engagement (as in engagement of employees)
- culture change is big to tackler – try to focus on behavior change
- people leading it must be passionate
- educate and empower
- look at the stock market
- companies that adopted social technology – their values have gone way up
- those that have not, their value has not grown, or has plummeted
- for management buy in, you need tangible business results / benefits – show what the company / agency will get from adopting something
- Openness is not a mission. Ie DOT – Safety is our mission
- show how openness can be a tool to accomplish safety
- empowerment is hard for managers to buy into – say “equipping employees to better do their jobs & be more transparent”
- get employees to be “not scared” of sharing ideas
-this concept would not have gone to top management 5 years ago – look at our progress already!
- level of trust issues
- issue of policy – regarding sharing data
- risk vs. opportunity
- shift from single voice at an organization to a whole group
- not a lot of leeway in regards to what govt employees are allowed to do
- jobs are specific, rights / ability to take action is limited
- policy is not up to date with technology / changing times
- government doesn’t have its own house together yet
- so if government isn’t there, how can they sort thru all of the commentary and feedback they will receive on a social platform?
- how will they find the few valuable ideas amongst everything?
- people are not aware of open government & therefore cannot participate
- its responsibility of govt employees to “advertise” open gov to the public
- need to do more to share open gov plan
- innovative ways to get the message out
- must keep in mind (ie DOT) if our mission is to be safe, and we are 100% “open” but not attaining our safety goals, then what is the point of being open
- must ensure that our missions are being met – top priority
- what is a realistic sense of getting the ship together?
- if interested in a project, ask questions about it!
- get involved
- for a lot of departments within an agency, a problem is having to get approval from the parent agency ie (FAA needing DOT approval)
- really need executives on board to get actions done
- “mentoring up” – cant just use social media to reach people – need also memos, other methods for older generations (ie possible execs)
- to get participation in open gov:
- get all execs the same info briefing
- get management to detail people to help
- set small goals that can actually be attained, and in a reasonable timeframe
- Open Gov discussions need to go below the exec level
- b/c execs only have summary info
- need to get more agency wide collaboration
- stories are an excellent way to get people engaged or to buy in
- share your success story regarding open gov!
- examples of how / where it worked
- show mission critical success!
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