Public service in the hour of chaos

The central job of our times is to create a new and living culture within our organisations and wider society that is capable of rising to the challenges we face. Regular readers will know that I think culture precedes most other things, because it defines what a group of people believes to be possible.

Adrian Brown has written elsewhere about the way that we focus too much on what government should do, and not enough on what it should be. He’s right, as usual. But the same argument applies to us as public servants. What (and who) should we be? Here’s where the idea of the connexocrat might come in. Let me try and explain…

For me, the fundamental job of public service is social change. Trying to approach this job with a regression analysis is pretty useless. If we want change, then policy goes beyond analysis, money and decisions and instead encompasses a vastly wider range of tools. It depends on the cultures we create, because ultimately culture is the biggest constraint on any large organisation. And the cultures we create depend on who we are, our relationships to one another, our behaviour within those relationships, and the behaviour we inspire from others.

The connexocrat needs data and analysis, but she would use them as a way to validate and explore the warm data, never as a starting point. What public servants really need in this world are skills around presence, self-awareness, solidarity- and movement-building.

One way I’ve started thinking about this idea is by imagining who would speak at a Solace conference for connexocrats. I’d have Gail Bradbrook as the keynote, because she’s the most interesting thinker on social change in Britain today. Anab Jain would speak on futurism. I’d find a way for pretty much the entire Impact Hub Brum crew to be involved, but particularly Immy and Meg. We’d have Audrey Tang on Skype and someone from Enspiral. Nora Bateson would chair everything. Hilary Cottam was at the actual Solace conference this year, and she can come to mine as well. The only evaluation question will be whether or not Catherine Howe has a good time.

The idea of the connexocrat is designed to help us break out of the remaining vestiges of new public management and start embracing a wilder and more romantic future. I don’t want us to ignore the possibilities of technology or the power of data, but I do insist that these things are put at the service of our dreams, as we try to rebuild the emotional fabric of a traumatised society.

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