[Thread - it's *framework* time! 🧐] As we're thinking about the future of government at @CPI_foundation and as we're exploring the shift from *enablement* to *empowerment* (see image) we've come across a couple of great "from-to" models. Here are some of them:
3/ @piawaugh's four paradigms:
- #1: Central to distributed
- #2: Analog to digital, human to machine
- #3: Scarcity to surplus, closed to open
- #4: Normative to formative, compliant to creative
14/ John Seddon’s (@VanguardMethod) description of the difference between “command-and-control thinking” and “systems thinking” (p. 58 in “Systems Thinking in the Public Sector”)
15/ John Seddon’s “purpose - measures - methods” under command & control thinking and under complexity thinking (p. 68 in the book mentioned above):
16/ ~~ quick interlude / update ~~ our latest thinking on what we’re now calling the ‘shared power principle’ (because ‘enablement’ seemed to passive) is here: resources.centreforpublicimpact.org/production/201…
@HilaryCottam@CollaborateCIC 26/ ...and four more "shifts" from the same @CollaborateCIC manifesto (there's also a fifth on p. 17 of the doc but Twitter won't let me add another screenshot)
The 'Manifesto for Better Government' which we've recently shared builds on many of the ideas expressed in all of these 'from-to' frameworks: medium.com/centre-for-pub…
At @staatslabor we run a weekly "learning session". Not long ago I did one on email writing.
Why? Writing good emails is a superpower, and it's not taught often enough.
🧵 So here are 11 practical ways to write good emails:
Before we get there, a few quick *preliminary thoughts*:
🛠️ Email is a tool. Like any tool, you can use it well or you can use it poorly.
🚀 None of this is rocket science. It’s easy. Yet few people do it. If you do it, you will almost effortlessly differentiate yourself.
👩🏫 Many professional services firms teach good email writing. It’s OK to not know all of this.
💕 People will love you for writing Good Emails because they make it easy to work with you. Everyone wins. Whoever you correspond with will be pleased and you will get what you want.
This week I was asked to give a presentation about some lessons we might be able to learn from Switzerland's crisis management in this pandemic. It was a welcome opportunity to take a step back and reflect on that.
- a thread 🧵
Going into this, one could have thought that Switzerland should be able to nail this. And yet - judging by almost any metric - we didn't/aren't.
Why could one have thought, prima facie, that we should totally own this?
You could make a long list but just to mention a few rather favorable facts: CH is rich af, enjoys highest trust in government (out of all OECD countries), has the highest total expenditure on health p.c.
I've been cleaning out my notes and wanted to share a short thread with four things I've learned/I've been wrong about/surprised by in the context of the pandemic.
The usual disclaimers apply (Twitter doesn't allow for a lot of nuance, your mileage may vary, etc. etc.).
1️⃣ Narratives are (much) more stable than I would have ever thought possible.
Switzerland is, by any sensible metric, doing badly in this pandemic. And yet this hasn’t filtered through to public discourse. It boggles the mind.
The logic seems to be “we usually do really well, therefore we must be doing well now”. Except we aren't.
Loved all the generous responses to the question below. Thank you.
Here's the current structure of the argument on "new forms of organization in public administration (as a response to a changing environment)" (subject to - *a whole lot of* - change)
(Note that this is for an audience which is inside government but is primarily composed of pragmatic practitioners, so this isn't the Association of People Who Are Deeply Into Public Administration Theory or what have you)
1⃣ Public administration structures are always necessarily 'of their time', i.e. contingent, no matter how permanent they might seem.
Max Weber changed our ideas about public admin, as did New Public Management. The obvious implication is that they can change again.
🧵There have been a few good pieces written about ‘learning in/from a crisis”, some of them from a government reform/innovation angle, some from a more general learning perspective.
Below are a few that I’ve found useful. I might continue to add new ones as I find/read them.
“Is anyone deploying ‘Innovation and Learning’ people alongside COVID-19 Response Teams?” by @whatsthepont