Robert Paterson's Weblog

What is going on in the PEI Bureaucarcy - Kindergarten

They have done it again!

The department has advised the Government to change the rules of the game in mid year without talking to any of the people who will have to act on the changes.

Not only that they have given the premier advice which is the centre piece of the action that is simply wrong. Not only wrong but will lead to the situation that our boys face becoming worse!

Here is the meat in this sandwich.

Consultation? Could we do better? Part 2

Let's assume that when government consults that they intend to find out what is going on and how to make it better. This is not always the correct assumption but let's give people the benefit of the doubt.

Remember that the key to getting the best answers is to work very hard at finding the best questions.

The key to finding the best questions is to find the best context.The way of finding the best context is to find it as a group. No one of us is smart enough to know how best to work through complex problems.

OK so what does this mean in practice Rob - get real will you! All right, let me put some flesh on these two points with a case study:

At the end of 2005 NPR could see that the business model for public radio was in jeopardy. Until the advent of the web it was simply this. In each community was a local station. It had a protected area and a protected place on the dial. It bought a special product, programs, from central producers such as NPR that could only be heard in their locale on their terms. The stations then went out to their listeners who had no alternative and asked them to contribute because if they did not, they would lose their program.

Everyone in public radio could see that as the web grow more powerful that all the assumptions behind this model would collapse. At some time in the future all the good content would be available any time and any place on the web. The local monopoly on region and dial would be lost and hence the economics.

How might this play out?  What time did the system have? Would NPR cut and run and go direct leaving the stations to rot? What could be done?

Fear was rampant. No one trusted NPR. NPR thought it ought to support the stations but did not know in 2005 whether this was only a good intention or a reality. Small stations did not trust large one. Other producers did not trust NPR of other producers.

So what to do? Typically a government consultation process would have gone around the country and heard all the points of view and tried to make sense of it or worse tried to find a compromise. The result would have been that all the fears and local positions would have become entrenched and the system would have splintered. See how this can happen with say beef and hog producers? See how this is happening with Child Care Providers!

Instead a very different process was undertaken. A process whose intent was to bring the system together while it discerned what was true rather than fight over position.

NPR instead designed a process that would enable over 1,000 people in the system from the 300 stations,  other producers and over 300 of their own staff to explore the underlying trends that affected them all.

Meeting in small groups all over the US, everyone explored from multiple perspectives all the forces that were confronting them. Then they all worked again to define what might be the 2-3 best ways of getting out of trouble and finding a new way of being. Out of all these meetings, a pattern emerged. Not a compromise, a pattern. Not a consensus but an agreement! Over 1,000 people developed a common view of their world and a common set of principles for how best to then deal with it. They knew that these were right because in separate meetings without prior knowledge, the same patterns kept re-appearing.

How did we do this? We set up a game. People love games and people give up their office persona in games. People learn from games. Games are fun! If you care to know in detail what we did this link will tell you.

This is a process called "emergence". Emergence is when the same pattern appears all the time. It is not based on negotiation but on common experience. It can therefore be trusted. As a result, NPR learned that its best interests were not to cut and to run but to work with the system. Most stations could see that this was no longer a "position" but a fact. Here is a comment in the Pub Radio Trade Magazine the Current made just as the process was ending:

The end of NPR’s New Realities planning project is in sight, which must come as a relief to the network brass who have crisscrossed the country for months, talking with hundreds of constituents about the future of public radio.

Participants say New Realities ranks among public radio’s most ambitious and inclusive strategic planning exercises — focused, productive and well-organized.

By the end of April, NPR will have held six two-day meetings, each with 30 to 60 station leaders and other stakeholders, to consider the future of media and how NPR and public radio stations will fit into the lives of listeners. They have often ended up in close agreement about their mission, says Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s v.p. of member and station services and a leader of the New Realities process.

Trust is much better - not perfection - but much better and a schism was avoided. A common language has evolved. Alliances have formed - work is getting done - lessons are being shared.

So from my own experience of facilitating this very large process - what would I do if I was responsible for helping the government do the best job possible for our young children as they look at the Child Care Facilities Act?

Context is everything - you can't start with a solution - you have to discover the system and the forces in play. You cant tell people what this is - they have to have a process that enables them to talk it through so that they "discover it".

You have to find the best questions - best being questions that open up the perspectives not close them down

You have to design for allowing the truth to emerge naturally rather than to force an answer.

Think of what might happen if we approached our challenges in Agriculture this way? Or what about the Child Care Facilities Act?

If we went down this road we could take the fear and the position out of the process and find ways of helping us all.

But as long as we stay on the surface, as long as we pit one interest against another, we will have a mess.

Here is what we did in detail - as you read this - imagine your issue being dealt with like this

Consultation? Could we do better? Part 1

The Guardian leads to day with an important editorial - It asks whether all the consultation about many issues is valid. Will the process end up with a report gathering dust? Will they deepen the divides on key issues - will they exhaust everyone to no purpose?

It's encouraging when governments consult voters on the major issues of the day, presumably to take the pulse on the direction they should take when it comes to forming policy.

But can there be too much of a good thing?

As we speak, government is in the process of getting public input on several subjects. There are commissions, panels and committees looking into nitrates in the water system, child-care facilities legislation, disability services, Sunday shopping, heritage policy and regulations governing cosmetic pesticides, just to name a few.

While it's laudable that Islanders have been given the opportunity to express their concerns, the question is, what will come of all this public consultation? At the end of the day, will government be able to produce coherent action on these fronts? Or are these reports destined to end up on government shelves somewhere?

What does not work and what does work? This is what I would like to talk abut in a few posts.

Let's start in this post with what does not work and then in Part II I will offer some suggestions about what does work.

But first - what do we mean by "work". What is then outcome of a good consultation? I think that the root cause for failure is that most fail to even start with an outcome in mind.

Bad process would look like this:

• Shall we ban pesticides or keep them? Why is this a bad process? Because what it does is simply set up two sides who can never agree. The real outcome that is inevitable politically for this type of process is to do nothing. This by the way may be the desired outcome - if so then we have all been taken for a ride

• What can we do to ensure that First Nations People do better? This is a bad process because you will end up with a 1,000 item list and with all advocates competing between each other - the First Nations Community will splinter further and the report can never be acted on because there will never be agreement on what are the 2-3 best options. The outcome also here will be no action. Again this may be the desired outcome. If so, again, the public has been hoodwinked.

• Let's ensure quality in daycare by limiting spaces. This is a bad process because when neither assumption about what is the problem or the solution may be valid it assumes both. The desired outcome here is that the changes can be made and the appearance of consultation has been given. Again the public has been abused.

Process with the wrong context or the wrong question can go no where. Let's look at our beef and hog farmers as a case study.

The current context is that prices are too low. The assumption is that with luck and a prayer they may go up in the future. Another is that if only we could find another market, we might be ok.

But that is not the right context and not the right question.

The real question to ask is  "Why are prices low?' If we ask that question we start to see the real problem.

The real problem is that our current distribution system is over concentrated in favour of the 2 buyers who buy from suppliers all over the world.

If you don't look for the system - you cannot find even the starting point for complex problems.

Once you see the "system" you can start to see a direction to help the industry. The direction is find ways of giving the seller more power.

So a better process for all those involved in our hog and beef industry is to look at what they are really up against rather than merely providing a process to reinforce their natural fears and helplessness.

So before I end this post and later go onto talking about what I have learned works, I would like those in politics who may read this to ask themselves - what is your objective in all these consultations? Do you really want to find a better way?

If you want to find a better way - then here is an example of a better way to find real answers and to unite people around them.

I have found that it is best to begin with a small group whose job it is to find a starting place - who will set in motion the initial conditions or the small snowball that will accumulate insight over time and become a snowman.

You will find in the Follow On what this Starting Point looked like for public radio - as you see this example think - Disabilities, Children, Agriculture - what would your starting point look like?

Define the who and what of your systm and how it works - what is the business model or say in social tertms what is the outcome and what is the nature of the process that is meant to deliver on the outcome - what are daycares meant to do? What is the outcome that we all need for agriculture on PEI?

Then see what the key trends are - what is the actual reality - in agriculture the ROI is going down, debt is accumulating as margins get squeezed all the time. There are fewer kids than ever before, their & social educational outcomes are in decline.

Then do your best to find the crux of the problem/opportunity - in agriculture it is the power imbalance in distribution - for kids the opportunity is before they get to school

Then determine how best to engage the community so that their overall wisdom can produce more clarity, trust and energy.