July 23, 2021
In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill are publishing weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.
Jill’s notes
Productive. The week was filled with prep, briefings, and meaningful conversations. This week's big takeaway was how important collaboration (and making time for it) across government is. As I sprint towards nearly three weeks of planned August vacation, it certainly feels like the pressure to get things done is mounting. I was reminded of two important things by my team of coaches and mentors that I’m attempting to adhere to:
- Listen. You really don’t know what is going on for someone else unless you take the time to ask. I’ve been burned a few times in the last few weeks due to moving too fast and missing some of that critical situational awareness.
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together.
- Space. Whether it is pre-vacation or day-to-day — my time matters. I’m taking ownership of my time and inviting others to support me. In practice, this means, let’s get really clear about why we are meeting (core question) and what information we need to address it (key bullets). I want to make sure I have time for the emergent questions, to listen, and that I’m there for my staff (and dotted line staff) when they need me.
There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want — Bill Watterson
Weekly roundup
- Facilitating digital era leadership Tuesday / Wednesday was an incredible way to boost energy. We put a lot of work into making sure materials were helpful, and guest speakers were plentiful. I cannot thank our Deputy enough for his opening words on Tuesday. It really kicked off the day and set the tone for a service-oriented few days. Jaimie Boyd opened the second day with a tie to corporate initiatives and the broader trust-based systems of innovation we are tasked to build. Most importantly, thanks to all the BC Parks and ENV staff who joined in the middle of a hectic field and fire season. Your attention and engagement left us all feeling energized.
- Several conversations with our leader James Mack this week. He continues to impress me with his thoughtful attention to this new-to-him area. His advice and guidance are always appreciated.
- James Mack, Denise Rossander and I briefed the Deputy this week on how we might implement our digital strategy and drive to a deeper understanding of our current state. We have a plan to communicate (Fraser Marshall was enjoying his vacay, but I’m sure he wished us luck from afar).
- We followed that up with our SIP Committee (ED’s across the ministry), assuming responsibility for the implementation and signalling a desire for a deeper opportunity discussion in the fall. I heard, “How can our challenging policy problems be brought to the table for discussion, recognizing that they all have a digital element? YES. Kevin and I can help with that.
- David Tesch led the NR Data Architecture council in a good discussion on the next steps. We agreed Data Literacy was the most actionable and that re-thinking our role would be top of mind in the fall.
- Parks. Parks. Parks. Briefings, financial talks, help from our CSNR colleagues — a ton of action this week. Kevin has many of the details below, but I can certainly say I’m nervous, I’m excited, and I’m ready. The 8-month plan is shaping up, and despite a late-week crisis about taking a vacation, I’m looking forward to it all.
Important update below
Buoy is now only 2lbs lighter than his sister, a week away from 5 months. I think he is equally as long and several inches shorter. He remains happy and ridiculously in love with his sister, who patiently entertains him before she turns into a gremlin at 7 pm. So he hides under the couch.
Kevin’s notes
After the compression of my previous two weeks, it was nice to have 5 contiguous days to get things done. I even went to the office! Although an IDIR lockout caused me to lose a few hours of unsaved work from my desktop. This is pretty inside baseball for public servants, but apparently, your personal phone attempting to join BCNGN can trigger this. Shoutout to our uber-vigilant security networks, I guess?
First up this week was our Digital Era Leadership course, broken up over two half days. Topics covered at these sessions focus on digital leadership competencies, including the Cynefin framework, Wardley mapping, Agile ways of working, Lean, product ownership, and governance. I spoke on human-centred design and its relevance and value to our mission in the BCPS. It was truly rewarding to work with such an engaged group (mostly from Parks) who share the passion for designing and delivering high-quality public services in challenging times of crisis and complexity. A big thanks for the positive feedback on the content, looking forward to engaging with other parts of our Ministry in our organizational transformation towards a more performant design-centric culture.
BC Parks
As previewed last week, the bcparks.ca project stakeholders met to flush out the roadmap through to launch. Some crunchy conversations to develop common understandings — no more worthy use of time than rallying around the commonly-understood priorities and deliverables. Connecting design activities to a low-redundancy development cadence is always a challenge and was a good point of conversation in this meeting. How can we ensure the designers are delivering artifacts to the devs in ways that de-risk the process and has everyone producing at speed? The 3 C’s: communication, communication, communication. You simply can’t be overly collaborative in a complex digital project with a vanishing runway.
Cheers to Mark (our intrepid client services lead at NTT) for wrangling additional design capacity to close the project strong. There’s a lot of UX/UI considerations outstanding on the new site, and it requires design leadership at a resourcing level I’m not able to provide right now. I think we have a pretty stacked team for the next couple of months, and I’m excited for what they’re going to deliver.
And on the current site, we launched a new recruitment call to action! Continuing to connect with a diverse range of British Columbians keen on participating in our design research is a big priority. Thanks to Becs Hoskins for helping stickhandle the approvals (which went up to the Minister’s Office). Qualitative engagement with the public in how to design better services —it just works. And we’re going to need these insights as we scale transformation across the Parks service ecosystem. Slowly but surely, we grow more comfortable with this outside-in model across government, from frontline staff to top decision-makers.
We posted the long-awaited brand standards RFP. Another awesome Becs collaboration. Quality responses, now to select the vendor and get it done. A great asset and north star for Parks moving forward.
I also met with the Indigenous Relations team in our continued discussions on how to better represent the reconciliation journey of the org and the unique stories of Nations as content on the forthcoming site. Some unsolicited user feedback through our current design research activities includes:
- Very important to have Indigenous Relations info on the site
- Where will you talk about Indigenous culture on the site?
- BC Parks should be acknowledging whose territory the park is in. This is something Parks really needs to get on!
This is no small content exercise and work which requires diligence to navigate. I’m honoured to help and strongly believe in its value — and as seen in the verbatims above, the public is eager for this as well.
The thing we can’t really maybe someday soon kinda sorta talk about
We had a Minister’s briefing this week, which was new terrain for me. As always, my colleagues showed experience, poise, strategy, and execution, which are equal parts of learning and inspiration from my vantage. We had an excellent reception and are empowered to move forward. Excitement tempered with pragmatic anxiety, but this is what I’m here for, impact work alongside a galvanized team, delivering for the public.
Other things!
Jill and I had some freeform time with our ADM James Mack to catch up on what we’ve been doing at the Service Transformation Branch and how we continue to engage across the Ministry, service our collaborators, and scale to meet the need. I took away an implicit validation of our approach to date and an acknowledgement of the positive outcomes we’ve seen in a relatively short time. Hard to believe that Jill’s only been at this for 6 months, and me for under 4. Time flies! In ways both good and bad.
On that note: we have a lot of work spinning up and roles which require tenacious designers who are comfortable operating in ambiguity and complexity, are relentless in their dedication to centring user needs and love to work across silos. Is that you or someone you know? If so, please send me an email, I’d love to connect.
Bonus content: moisture-laden Arctic Lupine (Lupinus arcticus), as captured during a run last weekend. These jolts of colour in the greyscale of the alpine are welcome reminders of the sublime and enduring beauty of the natural world if we slow down enough to take notice.
