New Year. New Questions. New Tools.
Learning. Collaboration. Connection. Three of my favourite words, and also descriptors for the projects I’ll be working on over the next year. What is this new role? What started as an unexpected conversation about shifting how public servants learn has morphed into a year-long assignment at the Canada School of Public Service on a small team designing and managing a new “Enabling Skills” program. This work will happen in what is now the Transferrable Skills Faculty, along with teams of colleagues supporting learning in the areas of Leadership Fundamentals and Business Acumen. Can you hear me tap dancing yet?
What do public servants want and need to learn about new methods and tools? How can we curate, partner, or create opportunities to support them?
What we mean by “transferrable skills”? Our aim is to support public servants in developing and maintaining skills that enable them to collaborate, and take on evolving roles within and beyond government. As for what we mean by “enabling skills”, we’ll be spending the next few months asking how our colleagues what they need, and how can we support them. How are people developing their crafts in areas such as experimentation, public engagement, partnerships and meaningful collaboration, working with data, or with design? Many of our public service colleagues are already leading practitioners in these fields. What do they want? How can we amplify their knowledge and experience?
How can we be creative and responsive with our offering? Should we review and curate existing offerings? Are there topics best addressed through a podcast or video series? What about offering ongoing individual or group mentoring on a live project? When are courses genuinely useful? We have some starting assumptions about what we can offer. Our intent is to test those and identify others, and work with leaders in a number of fields to bring them to life.
Where should we start?
Some colleagues laughed when I drafted a very specific workplan for the next few months, and left my intentions for the rest of the year very vague. My first big step is to work colleagues to undertake a needs assessment. Who can we talk to about how to support who want to add methods or tools to their toolkits? How much do we know about the contexts in which we could support them? What would our goals be? We’ll be reaching out, doing lots of listening, reflecting on and sharing what we’re hearing, and developing a strategy. I’m also starting on a few pilot projects to test our approach, and feed my own need to see action. Based on what we hear and learn, we’ll figure out what comes next.
What would help you, or your team, level up?
Want to chat about learning? We’re thinking about our questions, and hearing from others would be a huge help. I also plan to share my work and our progress, and would welcome a conversation anytime.