Connected-Service Discovery and Research Analysis (Miro)
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVKQpaRkU=/?share_link_id=846408747615
Service Design Recipe (Miro)
The service long-game, and some possible next steps
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVKHNLKS8=/?share_link_id=795322396105
| Info |
|---|
Refresh this page often - under construction |
CONTEXT
The below themes are the front-of-mind topics for the Band 3-5 leaders I interviewed in an org design & talent-acquisition context (hire and/or procure).
note: we still need digital talent (internal and vendor) perspectives, and the vendor (participating in the marketplace) perspectives to round out our 360° understanding
as part of this work, I had preliminary discovery touch-points with MAS and DIO, with more to do
Because I’ve rapidly and temporarily onboarded into this space, I may touch on things we’re already doing or are aware of. In those cases, I hope this adds useful evidence to our efforts - please forgive my incomplete understanding of the details.
I also hope this helps socialize topics across the Talent & Marketplace teams.
It may feel frustrating to live in the problem-space rather than jumping to solutions, thanks for sitting in it with me. For most of these topics, we need more discussion and I need the experts (staff and leaders) in the room informing the conversation.
Next steps: share themes w/ Leadership (May 22), do some rapid prioritization and identify which themes to explore further, together, toward experiments and pilots.
This page is a shared-space to identify themes & add staff insights, current experiments/partner engagements. Working in the open - in one place.
I appreciate this is a lot of detail - some folks will need it, esp. as I transition into other work.
I will also be delivering a condensed deck, or equivalent - tbd / watch this space.
THE OG QUESTION: do folks need/want a connected service?
Big picture sentiments, and how folks see our role in the system:
“In the big picture transformation context I would like to see some of the structural issues I see with agile and specifically in the kind of hiring, procurement, job description space solved. I'm working on my little corner of the government trying to do what I can to put my best foot forward under the policy and legislative constraints that are around me. One of the reasons I took this meeting is because I'm hoping that from your vantage point, possibly those policy and legislative constraints can be changed.” 🔥
“I don't know if the goal should be so much like hire more digital capacity. It's more like how do we harness what we have more effectively and more efficiently? Because eventually we just have a whole bunch of chickens running around, but like, nobody kind of gathering them or pointing them in a direction.”
what happens if we scale misaligned, relatively unsupported digital practices that are new and unfamiliar to many BCPS folk?
this participant articulated many current-state improvement opportunities for hiring and procuring digital talent, but is thinking bigger-picture and strategically as they express this point
What I see — ‘showing my math’ as I transition to other work:
Our place in the hiring and procurement ecosystem
There is a bustling ecosystem of hiring and procurement supports that folks access today - with mixed experiences and historical baggage in the big picture system (a strategic opportunity - addressing pain points, past fails, fears and differentiating ourselves)
Folks go directly to their ministry contacts and many products/services (PSA, PSB…) in addition to DTC supports
When they interact with ministry contacts and other service providers, the functions are separate - a more connected service would interrupt mental models, could be perceived as innovative and valuable if the service orients around real problems, and our capacity/eligibility criteria meets their needs
The “Digital Talent” roles we support in hiring & procurement services are just a slice of their broader org design strategies
e.g. one participant, a Leader transforming their org, isn’t managing an agile team or DT job profiles - they’re bringing in functions like change management to create the conditions for agility and service/product success, and they consider those change management roles part of the digital work
Others are moving toward digitally-literate program areas where typical agile team roles collaborate more closely with the business, toward shared ownership of the outcomes and sustainment of services and products - which considers a broader scope of job profiles than our “digital talent/agile team” role
My point: even if we broaden our scope of roles/job profiles we support (an opportunity to explore) we won’t be able to address all hiring and procurement needs, but when folks do come to us, we can make it memorably seamless while responding to their biggest blockers and desired outcomes to nudge transformation/modernization forward
Our audiences and scope
The details and implementation decisions toward a connected service will matter, to make sure our service feels welcoming and relevant to all:
We confirmed many BCPS folks hire AND procure talent, but not always - hire/procure strategies vary due to org, product context
Ensuring we keep the vendor community in the marketplace front of mind in decisions
Does our service front-door want to address digital talent attraction and resources to support the candidate lifecycle? Or is that PSA territory
How about opportunities to support the contractor lifecycle, e.g. ensuring they’re reasonably supported and feel part of the ‘team’?
See Service Design Recipe - Step 1 (Miro)
Our service opportunities
I see opportunities for us to:
continue to provide trusted, expert guidance and bureaucracy-hacking supports to optimize talent capacity-building strategies (org design) inclusive of hiring and procurement options
continue to provide hands-on support and SME expertise to:
help acquire talent that are well-suited for the work - quickly
connect folks with vendors who are aligned with our ways of working and desired outcomes
support the enablement of strong digital practices, e.g. formalizing the foundations (e.g. job profiles) for guilds/chapters
explore talent development opportunities with the many partners developing pilots and programs, and consider change management/ re-skilling supports to bring the broad BCPS workforce along with us and ensure healthy collaboration between ‘digital' and ‘business’ folk toward digitally literate and performant program areas
and maybe disrupt a systemic barrier or two (classification, job profiles, agility x PSA/BCGEU, modernizing slow & admin-heavy processes…) toward good outcomes, while retaining guardrails that protect equity, diversity, inclusion and healthy, safe workplaces
I’m curious how much storytelling we can do about the Alexandria work (e.g. a visible roadmap) to let folks know what we’re working on already. People know this work is hard, small signals about where our effort and attention is going could build a lot of trust, but I’m mindful of sensitivities and risk here.
Operational considerations re: sustainable pace, healthy roles, happy humans
While there are connection-opportunities, there are also operational considerations to explore (depends on how we move forward). I’m looking at it as ‘tracks’ or ‘layers’ of work to scope and prioritize:
foundational layer: do we have a common knowledge base, alignment on the theory and perspectives that guide our work?
e.g. what guides our org design advice? how do we onboard new employees? are these foundations aligned with advice MAS, DIO, etc. provide?
maintenance layer: sustaining and continually improving the current-state services and products, with tight capacity, e.g. supporting ongoing/upcoming competitions and procurements
collaboration layer: staff actively informing any change, participating in co-design and pilots, could involve storming on common talent-procurement journey touchpoints e.g. “evaluation”
discipline layer: staying sharp and current as practitioners in an ever-changing tech and policy landscape across product, design, development, AI, HR, legal, etc.
change layer: participating, processing and integrating all of the Digital Office change - scaled scrum, pulse checks, learning opportunities, new ways of working (e.g. OKRs)…
strategic/systemic layer: taking a longer view, bigger picture, poking into systemic challenges and opportunities
I always have more questions
My questions for you - in context of the themes below:
who do we want to be in the ecosystem? how do we want to be known/spoken about?
what are our strengths and differentiators?
what are the boundaries and limits of our service? (non-negotiables for political, feasibility, etc. reasons)
how much demand can we support in the near-term?
As we make connected-service decisions:
where are we today? which problems are we solving across Talent and Marketplace?
how are we measuring our impact?
have we moved the needle on what we set out to do?
is there more work to be done on the current problems?
what have we learned?
what opportunities do we see in this research & other data?
do we see higher value opportunities?
more feasible opportunities?
a compelling reason to pivot to new problems?
where are we headed?
same problems? new ones?
how do we operationalize to support where we want to go? Service Design can help, in collaboration with Product, User Experience, and everyone on the ground delivering our products and services today.
...
Vibe check: passionate leaders, striving toward sustainable orgs & products
Digital delivery outcomes = evidence for transformation value, sustainment
Org design strategies, service-thinking and digitally literate program areas
Hire vs. procure strategies, the hiring-forward moment in time
Maturing & supporting digital practices, incl. guilds/chapters
Hiring ecosystem insights
Procurement ecosystem insights
Service expectations
Passionate leaders, often playing whack-a-mole 😄
TL;DR: Folks are thinking strategically toward sustainable organizations/products and good outcomes for BCPS and the Province, with surprises and systemic ‘moles’ popping up along the journey - where digital talent producing outcomes provides compelling evidence for Sr. Leaders up to ADM/DM levels: to show what transformation looks like and prove that it’s a worthy investment
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
“In the big picture transformation context I would like to see some of the structural issues I see with agile and specifically in the kind of hiring, procurement, job description space solved. I'm working on my little corner of the government trying to do what I can to put my best foot forward under the policy and legislative constraints that are around me. One of the reasons I took this meeting is because I'm hoping that from your vantage point, possibly those policy and legislative constraints can be changed.”
[ADM/DM, Sr. Leadership layer] “We do really have to sell it, umm, in terms of why we need it (talent, investment). They're starting to open up. I think the more that they see the value of the work that the Digital folks are doing or transformational work we're getting there. We have some great senior executives who are, like, you know… you know exactly what you're doing. Do it. Report back. And they're totally comfortable with it. Where we have, like other conflicting personalities who aren't like that, that wanna know everything.”
[Program area layer] “We've had, you know, a lot of delays in decision making just because there are not accustomed to what it is and so they want all the information to feel comfortable in making those decisions where you know we're running agile. We're like, let's go. Let's go.”
Intersects with the digitally literate program areas, businesses don’t know how to support agility, and also haven’t been prepared to carve out time and capacity for collaboration, co-creation, attending demos
Existing research / staff insights
Experiments & Collaborations
Digital delivery outcomes = transformation buy-in, sustainment
TL;DR: Talent power the outcomes. Matching talent to the right problems, supporting healthy digital practice becoming more important as we bring in more digital talent and get deeper into the transformation work.
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
Existing research / staff insights
Experiments & Collaborations
Matching humans to opportunities, aka “fit”
TL;DR: Mindset, personality, knowledge/skill/ability - are there experiments we can run, within the PSA/BCGEU context and our commitment to EDI, to giving hiring managers a sense of control and confidence?
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
“Job profiles are like a nice shortcut, like a heuristic, and they can say like, generally like you're qualified for this level of pay and this this type of position, but it completely misses the nuance of what a specific team needs… And sometimes somebody who's qualified for a role generally is not qualified for the specific skill sets you need in that role.”Connected-Service Discovery and Research Analysis (Miro) | https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVKQpaRkU=/?share_link_id=846408747615 |
Service Design Recipe (Miro) | https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVKHNLKS8=/?share_link_id=795322396105 |
| Info |
|---|
Refresh this page often - under construction |
CONTEXT
The below themes are the front-of-mind topics for the Band 3-5 leaders I interviewed in an org design & talent-acquisition context (hire and/or procure).
note: we still need digital talent (internal and vendor) perspectives, and the vendor (participating in the marketplace) perspectives to round out our 360° understanding
as part of this work, I had preliminary discovery touch-points with MAS and DIO, with more to do
Because I’ve rapidly and temporarily onboarded into this space, I may touch on things we’re already doing or are aware of. In those cases, I hope this adds useful evidence to our efforts - please forgive my incomplete understanding of the details.
I also hope this helps socialize topics across the Talent & Marketplace teams.
It may feel frustrating to live in the problem-space rather than jumping to solutions, thanks for sitting in it with me. For most of these topics, we need more discussion and I need the experts (staff and leaders) in the room informing the conversation.
Next steps: share themes w/ Leadership (May 22), do some rapid prioritization and identify which themes to explore further, together, toward experiments and pilots.
This page is a shared-space to identify themes & add staff insights, current experiments/partner engagements. Working in the open - in one place.
I appreciate this is a lot of detail - some folks will need it, esp. as I transition into other work.
I will also be delivering a condensed deck, or equivalent - tbd / watch this space.
THE OG QUESTION: do folks need/want a connected service?
Big picture sentiments, and how folks see our role in the system:
“In the big picture transformation context I would like to see some of the structural issues I see with agile and specifically in the kind of hiring, procurement, job description space solved. I'm working on my little corner of the government trying to do what I can to put my best foot forward under the policy and legislative constraints that are around me. One of the reasons I took this meeting is because I'm hoping that from your vantage point, possibly those policy and legislative constraints can be changed.” 🔥
“I don't know if the goal should be so much like hire more digital capacity. It's more like how do we harness what we have more effectively and more efficiently? Because eventually we just have a whole bunch of chickens running around, but like, nobody kind of gathering them or pointing them in a direction.”
what happens if we scale misaligned, relatively unsupported digital practices that are new and unfamiliar to many BCPS folk?
this participant articulated many current-state improvement opportunities for hiring and procuring digital talent, but is thinking bigger-picture and strategically as they express this point
What I see — ‘showing my math’ as I transition to other work:
Our place in the hiring and procurement ecosystem
There is a bustling ecosystem of hiring and procurement supports that folks access today - with mixed experiences and historical baggage in the big picture system (a strategic opportunity - addressing pain points, past fails, fears and differentiating ourselves)
Folks go directly to their ministry contacts and many products/services (PSA, PSB…) in addition to DTC supports
When they interact with ministry contacts and other service providers, the functions are separate - a more connected service would interrupt mental models, could be perceived as innovative and valuable if the service orients around real problems, and our capacity/eligibility criteria meets their needs
The “Digital Talent” roles we support in hiring & procurement services are just a slice of their broader org design strategies
e.g. one participant, a Leader transforming their org, isn’t managing an agile team or DT job profiles - they’re bringing in functions like change management to create the conditions for agility and service/product success, and they consider those change management roles part of the digital work
Others are moving toward digitally-literate program areas where typical agile team roles collaborate more closely with the business, toward shared ownership of the outcomes and sustainment of services and products - which considers a broader scope of job profiles than our “digital talent/agile team” role
My point: even if we broaden our scope of roles/job profiles we support (an opportunity to explore) we won’t be able to address all hiring and procurement needs, but when folks do come to us, we can make it memorably seamless while responding to their biggest blockers and desired outcomes to nudge transformation/modernization forward
Our audiences and scope
The details and implementation decisions toward a connected service will matter, to make sure our service feels welcoming and relevant to all:
We confirmed many BCPS folks hire AND procure talent, but not always - hire/procure strategies vary due to org, product context
Ensuring we keep the vendor community in the marketplace front of mind in decisions
Does our service front-door want to address digital talent attraction and resources to support the candidate lifecycle? Or is that PSA territory
How about opportunities to support the contractor lifecycle, e.g. ensuring they’re reasonably supported and feel part of the ‘team’?
See Service Design Recipe - Step 1 (Miro)
Our service opportunities
I see opportunities for us to:
continue to provide trusted, expert guidance and bureaucracy-hacking supports to optimize talent capacity-building strategies (org design) inclusive of hiring and procurement options
continue to provide hands-on support and SME expertise to:
help acquire talent that are well-suited for the work - quickly
connect folks with vendors who are aligned with our ways of working and desired outcomes
support the enablement of strong digital practices, e.g. formalizing the foundations (e.g. job profiles) for guilds/chapters
explore talent development opportunities with the many partners developing pilots and programs, and consider change management/ re-skilling supports to bring the broad BCPS workforce along with us and ensure healthy collaboration between ‘digital' and ‘business’ folk toward digitally literate and performant program areas
and maybe disrupt a systemic barrier or two (classification, job profiles, agility x PSA/BCGEU, modernizing slow & admin-heavy processes…) toward good outcomes, while retaining guardrails that protect equity, diversity, inclusion and healthy, safe workplaces
I’m curious how much storytelling we can do about the Alexandria work (e.g. a visible roadmap) to let folks know what we’re working on already. People know this work is hard, small signals about where our effort and attention is going could build a lot of trust, but I’m mindful of sensitivities and risk here.
Operational considerations re: sustainable pace, healthy roles, happy humans
While there are connection-opportunities, there are also operational considerations to explore (depends on how we move forward). I’m looking at it as ‘tracks’ or ‘layers’ of work to scope and prioritize:
foundational layer: do we have a common knowledge base, alignment on the theory and perspectives that guide our work?
e.g. what guides our org design advice? how do we onboard new employees? are these foundations aligned with advice MAS, DIO, etc. provide?
maintenance layer: sustaining and continually improving the current-state services and products, with tight capacity, e.g. supporting ongoing/upcoming competitions and procurements
collaboration layer: staff actively informing any change, participating in co-design and pilots, could involve storming on common talent-procurement journey touchpoints e.g. “evaluation”
discipline layer: staying sharp and current as practitioners in an ever-changing tech and policy landscape across product, design, development, AI, HR, legal, etc.
change layer: participating, processing and integrating all of the Digital Office change - scaled scrum, pulse checks, learning opportunities, new ways of working (e.g. OKRs)…
strategic/systemic layer: taking a longer view, bigger picture, poking into systemic challenges and opportunities
I always have more questions
My questions for you - in context of the themes below:
who do we want to be in the ecosystem? how do we want to be known/spoken about?
what are our strengths and differentiators?
what are the boundaries and limits of our service? (non-negotiables for political, feasibility, etc. reasons)
how much demand can we support in the near-term?
As we make connected-service decisions:
where are we today? which problems are we solving across Talent and Marketplace?
how are we measuring our impact?
have we moved the needle on what we set out to do?
is there more work to be done on the current problems?
what have we learned?
what opportunities do we see in this research & other data?
do we see higher value opportunities?
more feasible opportunities?
a compelling reason to pivot to new problems?
where are we headed?
same problems? new ones?
how do we operationalize to support where we want to go? Service Design can help, in collaboration with Product, User Experience, and everyone on the ground delivering our products and services today.
RESEARCH THEMES
Vibe check: passionate leaders, striving toward sustainable orgs & products
Digital delivery outcomes = evidence for transformation value, sustainment
Org design strategies, service-thinking and digitally literate program areas
Hire vs. procure strategies, the hiring-forward moment in time
Maturing & supporting digital practices, incl. guilds/chapters
Hiring ecosystem insights
Procurement ecosystem insights
Service expectations
Passionate leaders, often playing whack-a-mole 😄TL;DR: Folks are thinking strategically toward sustainable organizations/products and good outcomes for BCPS and the Province, with surprises and systemic ‘moles’ popping up along the journey - where digital talent producing outcomes provides compelling evidence for Sr. Leaders up to ADM/DM levels: to show what transformation looks like and prove that it’s a worthy investment |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
Digital delivery outcomes = transformation buy-in, sustainmentTL;DR: Talent power the outcomes. Matching talent to the right problems, supporting healthy digital practice becoming more important as we bring in more digital talent and get deeper into the transformation work. |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess) |
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
Matching humans to opportunities, aka “fit”TL;DR: Mindset, personality, knowledge/skill/ability - are there experiments we can run, within the PSA/BCGEU context and our commitment to EDI, to giving hiring managers a sense of control and confidence? |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
Org design strategies, service-thinking and digitally literate program areasTL;DR: Some folks are moving toward org design strategies where digital folk collaborate directly with business folk, toward service-thinking and shared ownership of outcomes. There is still a time and a place for well defined agile teams… “it depends”. The system is learning that program areas need support to be ready for an agile team, by default they don’t know how to work with them, or don’t have the capacity to support the additional workload introduced by design processes, SME requests, engaging in demos, and making decisions can block digital delivery. Deadlines get missed, trust gets broken in the promises of modernization. I’m also seeing some risky ideation - folks are trying to find clever workarounds to build more flexibility into their org, e.g. resource pools where they move folks around to different products as needed, or positioning Designers to work across the research, service, content and ux design job profiles as needed. |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
...
Growth & development, re-skillingTL;DR: Develpment intersects with org sustainability, retention, digital delivery outcomes, and is front of mind for Leaders, with opportunities for DTC Branch to lean in: on the ground, and in a systemic-change context. 3 components in this section: agility and flexibility in context of PSA/BCGEU (hard/systemic), up/re-skilling current staff and managing change, programs to attract & develop jr. talent (Sam is running discovery now). |
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Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
What we know of & can learn from today:
|
Experiments & collaborations:
|
Maturing & supporting digital practices, guilds/chaptersTL;DR: |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
Hiring ecosystemTL;DR: Insights into where folks go for hiring support, and what they experience/care about. Competitive intelligence |
|---|
Connected-Service interviews (Tess)
|
Existing research / staff insights |
Experiments & Collaborations |
...