I’ve been interested in sharing more of my internal process with you. Why? Well, I talk a lot about staying with the problem instead of immediately jumping to solutions, and embracing the process instead of racing for results. The process of coming to a solution can be messy, non-linear, and dynamic. In my experience, the process of arriving at a solution is often just as important as the solution itself. Solutions may solve one problem, but the right process can solve many. This week, instead of talking about process as a concept, I wanted to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at what mine recently looked like.
Adrian Lee, an editor at The Globe and Mail, reached out to me a couple of months ago and asked if I would be interested in writing an 800-word opinion piece about the current challenges in Canadian civil service.
My first response was, “No.”
A shift I’ve made that has been significant as a regular over-committer is to evaluate potential opportunities and commitments through the lens of “the full body yes.” It’s a concept I picked up from Scott Schute’s book, The Full Body Yes, which I wholeheartedly recommend. I didn’t think there was anything there for me to say. I was reluctant to be seen as a U.S. citizen critiquing Canada from the south, especially when American institutions are fraught with their own challenges and deficiencies. Adrian told me to think it over. You see, I’d written an article for The Globe and Mail around the time that Meltdown came out, and he believed there were connections to be made.
So, I went away and thought about it, jotted some ideas down, did a little bit of outlining, and started forming a conversation. Once I got started, the ideas kept piling up! I got to a place where I thought, “Okay, I have something to say here, but I think I’ll need more than 800 words.”
Zooming Out
As I zoomed out, I began to think about the examples we wrote about in Meltdown. I realized that a lot of them really are public sector challenges. We wrote about the Washington State Department of Corrections releasing prisoners early, for example.
The last couple of years have seen no shortage of public sector institutional challenges—delays in the U.S. State Department, disruptions in Britain’s National Health Service, backlogs in the Canadian passport system, the global handling of COVID (and how successful different countries were with that).
As my thinking broadened, it became clear that my resistance was needless. Really, this is a global question: “How can leaders who are responsible for essential systems implement the changes they need without breaking the metaphorical plane mid-flight?”
While Meltdown is about systems and organizations, my work since then has been to support leaders to build cohesive and empowered teams. So, the question put forth by The Globe and Mail was not so different from my own day-to-day work with organizations and the leaders who run them. The complexity and challenges faced by modern organizations are not limited to commercial enterprises. Public sector organizations are likewise affected by rising complexity.
It became clear to me that the tactic to employ here is similar to one I use with the leaders I work with: Rather than come at the challenge through the lens of systems and complexity, we need to approach it through the lens of leadership.
Writing the Article
The process of writing the article itself was an exercise in working across multiple teams, collaborating on a goal that was broadly defined at the outset but desperately needed focus. The initial goal of an 800-word opinion piece about Canadian bureaucratic issues ballooned into a 2500-word treatise on the challenge of being a leader charged with combating the global decay of civic institutions. It’s a deep, heady topic — big, and easy to get lost in.
I paused for reflection often, allowing ample opportunity to collaborate with The Globe and Mail’s team and to receive feedback on what was working, what wasn’t, and what we wanted to try next time. Fortunately, this process of using open curiosity and co-creation is one that I teach leaders to employ in their own organizations and with their own teams. I found the synchronicity of that to be gratifying.
You can see how my thinking shifted throughout the process, slowly morphing from a “No” (or at least not quite a “full-body yes”) to a “Yes,” but with iteration — namely the expansion from an 800-word essay to a 2500-word article. By slowing down versus rushing to an answer, and by focusing on the process instead of the end result, I was able to turn an opportunity I nearly declined into something I’m really proud of.
So, how did the article turn out? I’d be so grateful if you gave it a read. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know what you think. After all, feedback is an integral part of the process.