So, it turns out I don't like blogging.

Prior to JSGS882 I did not have a blog and I did not Tweet. I had a twitter account, but mainly to watch others, not to have others watch me. In fact, it weirded me out when people followed me. Prior to JSGS882 I had 4 or 5 followers. I made my first tweet ever, and tweeted 22 times for JSGS 882. I gained 17 followers, and even got a few likes (46 to be exact!). Twitter analytics tell me I had a 2.6% engagement rate. After the high of seeing 46 likes, seeing 2.6% is kind of a bummer.

While I appreciated being able to share learning with fellow students of JSGS 882 through Twitter and the other platforms we used in class, keeping up with Twitter is a job in itself. Without it being a course requirement, I don’t feel I have time for Twitter and I don’t think I’ll be keeping it up. It was a lot of work for little engagement. And there’s too much pressure to get likes and retweets. Doesn’t anyone like me?

About blogging, that too is not my cup of tea. I don’t have anything that needs to be blogged about so badly that I will put my time and effort into it. Again, I enjoyed being able to share a book review with my class, and it was better than handing out paper copies. But most people that I know who blog prolifically do so because it is their job, or they are really passionate about a topic (and then it usually becomes their job anyway). Maybe it’s my life circumstances right now, but I don’t have time to blog. If I want to update friends and family on my kids, or share a missing person post, or creep on people, I use Facebook. I don’t need another forum. And related to tweeting, I don’t like people watching me. On the blog, I had 77 page views, only 8 of which were from Canada. Now, most didn’t really interact with my blog. I only had 5 page views on my book review. That makes me wonder, even if it were my job, or I was really so passionate about something that I just had to blog about it…. Would any one look beyond the surface and actually read my posts?

Now, it might sounds like I just absolutely hated all of this. I didn’t. It was an interesting assignment which forced me to go outside my comfort zone and learn something new. Maybe when life settles down and I find a passion (backyard chickens, maybe?) I’ll take up blogging and Twitter. But for now, I’m letting it go. 

A review of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon - Essential? Yes. Definitive? No.

If We Can Put a Man on the Moon…Getting Big Things Done in Government, by William D. Eggers and John O’Leary is described as “the essential guide to making our government work better”. While I would recommend this book to anyone working in the public sector who aspires to more than just passing the days and earning a good pension, this book falls short of providing the solution. To be fair, the authors never claimed the book would provide the solution; in fact, early on they say that it wouldn’t provide any easy answers.  What this book does do quite well is identify some common obstacles to getting things done in government. If we can be aware of these traps, we can take steps to avoid them. This is a key first step to improving the effectiveness of government.

The book identifies and examines seven obstacles to getting big things done in government, using case studies, humour, analogies and pop-culture references, which make the book less like a text book and more like a casual read – important if you want to appeal to a wide array of readers. The authors take us through the process of getting big things done, which looks a lot like the policy cycle most public policy students are familiar with. They then examine the obstacles that undermine big initiatives throughout these stages of the cycle.

The Tolstoy trap is essentially confirmation bias, where policy makers and implementers only look at the evidence that confirms their view of the world and ignore inconvenient voices. The design-free design trap is where policies are not subjected to a rigorous design process. We often see the ill-effects of this in the implementation stage. The Stargate is the moment when a policy passes from the design phase to the implementation phase, and the trap here is that policy ideas can be distorted for various reasons and what is left to implement is unworkable.

The overconfidence trap speaks for itself. People fail to take the chance of failure seriously, and don’t manage risk or expectations. The Sisyphus trap, which refers to a king in Greek mythology who was punished by the Gods by being made to roll a boulder uphill, time and time again as it rolled down, refers to the failure to account for the human element in designing and implementing policy. The complacency trap is the failure to critically review and re-evaluate programs and policies. And the final trap is the silo trap which permeates the whole cycle – government departments and agencies operate in silos and this is a major obstacle to getting big things done.

The authors provide some guiding principles and tools to try to avoid these traps. Each chapter has a handy summary at the end, which will be useful to refer back to from time to time as readers progress through their careers.

The book was generally well written, easy to read, and captivating. The use of case studies really helped put the theories into perspective and really helps a reader understand the pitfalls and to identify them in their own organization. The authors explain economic principles and other important concepts in laymens terms, important for readers without a background in those areas.

On the other hand, I found there was quite a bit of repetition, and some case studies were just too long and I found myself skimming them. This book relies heavily on systems thinking and I found myself wondering if the authors drank the Toyota Kool-Aid. While it does make sense to me, I am left wondering if they missed something; if the authors themselves fell into the Tolstoy trap and the overconfidence trap. I would encourage readers to keep an open mind to other theories of government failure. This book may be essential, but it is not definitive.

Despite the criticisms, this is the type of book a policy maker or implementer should have on their shelf, and refer back to occasionally. It is an important book for anyone who wants to be more than a cog in the wheel of government; who wants to be successful in getting big things done. 

I'm about to learn new things...

Twitter, blogging... it's all new to me. I thought I could remain obscure on Twitter, following others and not being followed in return but #jsgs882 is forcing me to come out of the woodwork. Follow me here for my thoughts on strategic management (ie. leadership) in the public sector. First up: a review of "If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government". Should be interesting, but will it be "the essential guide to making our government work better"? Check back here in a few weeks for my review!