Redesigning Government from Within

Dolly Parton once said, “find out who you are and do it on purpose.” Over the past four years of my Civic Tech Tour of Duty, I faced the most complex problems at the intersection of people, data, and technology. In experiencing these challenges, I confirmed who I am. Whether serving as Chief of People and Culture with the IT Modernization Centers of Excellence at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration during a global health crisis, or getting wrapped up in so much red tape I couldn’t see my own two feet, or leading dialogue about the Future of Work 2.0 with the Institute for Education at the Singapore Embassy, I dug deep within myself. I accessed hidden pockets of internal resilience and worked elbow to elbow with our federal employees to improve our government. I listened. And I learned more than I could have imagined. The biggest truth? People are the center of our government. And the biggest challenge? Keeping them at the center. I found that keeping them at the center requires daily practice and intention. We redesign government from within.

The following are three pivotal moments that changed how I think and work to improve how people connect & serve one another. These experiences are rooted in my belief that improving government means reimagining how people connect and serve one another. Connection is the nexus of possibility. Connecting and serving are not just words — they’re experiential practices people must learn and embody. Democracy is a daily practice that includes listening with ongoing feedback exchange. Behaviors aren’t things people can suddenly perform overnight. Learning and play open the door to behavior change. Coaching then cultivates sustainable change. Only after learning, play, and coaching will behavior change drive those sought-after business results. 

It’s a People Problem Opportunity

On my first deployment as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow to the Biden Cancer Moonshot, I experienced my first awakening moment in the early months of duty in 2017. It happened in conversation with a leader designing a data science workforce upskilling effort from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Chief Technology Office. We spoke of the promise of seamless customer experiences to deliver more personalized healthcare, leveraging automation and AI. I recall the glowing gem of what we discussed as something like this: 

“None of this is a policy problem. It’s not a funding problem. It’s not a technology problem. We have all that. It’s a people problem. And data moves at the speed of trust. Trust between people.”

That exchange forever changed my vantage point. Not only was the transformation work we sought to drive a people problem — it was a people opportunity. If data moves at the speed of trust, a leader has to facilitate better connections between people. So that they may connect and serve one another better. This moment opened a new opportunity for me to reimagine how we build community and bring people together during operational transformation. Check out previous posts I’ve written about smart leadership, power of collaboration to save lives, and the role of leaders who listen. 

Closing the Gap: Employee Experience and Customer Experience

Most of the federal experiences I’ve led centered around a core philosophy of helping the government work better with technology. As Director of Workforce Solutions with the U.S. General Services Administration’s IT Modernization Centers of Excellence, my profound realization was that if we are to improve service delivery to the American public, we must improve service delivery within federal agencies, first. We must close the gap between customer experience and employee experience. 

During this period of my services, my role as a leader was to create conditions for others to perform, cultivating trusting environments that enable good work more quickly together. My initial position in coaching transformation teams focused on breaking down barriers to building trust and opening mindsets to learn new technology tools. I captured insights on barriers on digital.gov here (time, place, routine, relationships, scale). With my teams, we piloted strategies to break through the growth barriers in personalized apprenticeships, accelerating collaboration and quantifying culture change across federal agencies. Much of this work is carving new territories of possibility that begins with listening. When we increase our awareness of what's happening across our organization, we strengthen the chain of connections between the customer and employee experience actions.  

A favorite quote from this time of duty is from one of our U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Modernization Apprentice: “The people, the culture, it’s what makes a transformation successful.” Closing the people gap between customer experience and employee experience rests on increasing the frequency of how people:

• connect

• listen for continuous awareness

• take frequent actions to show that they’re listening

• design threshold/keystone experiences (including transitions)

• tell stories about all of the above!

Be About It

The most enlightening, and perhaps the lesson I get the most passionate about, is that an effective leader “be about it”. It was an honor to soak this wisdom up through the leadership of Nina Walia, an exceptional visionary and White House Presidential Innovation Fellow whom I served alongside at the U. S. Food and Drug Administration. Nina once told me she used to promote “don’t just talk about it, be about it” and write “be about it” (for short) up her arm daily when she was leading product at Google. 

When she told me this story, I had one word: YES. 

What does “be about it” really mean? To me, it’s the essence of being a courageous and mindful leader. It means to be the change you wanted to see. Be the leader you want to see. Don’t wait for an invitation. Show up and be about it. In every moment. Everyday. Don’t just talk about diversity and inclusion, be about it: lift others around you. Open doors for learning, growth, and connect dots so that people get the promotions they deserve—advocate for those who are shining stars, glowing from within the government. If you’re a new leader, don’t stop after a 60-day listening tour — be about it. Create space, don’t fill it up. Keep listening. 

Being about it is prototyping the future you want to see. You don’t have to wait for someone to create it for you. Before joining the government for a Tour of Duty, I knew how to tape a dream together with duct tape and MacGyver it with the resources I found around me. This was probably the essential skill set I brought into government: a willingness to get creative and get hands-on. 

Be about it! We explored what it would look like to have a Chief People and Culture office at the FDA. We led unprecedented employee experiences, some worked with phenomenal success, and some did not! And “being about it” means trying things, learning from mistakes, and scaling what works over time. 

People connect best with authentic leaders who are “being about it. The government of tomorrow does not look like the government of yesterday. If we want to evolve government to serve people better, we must keep people central and engaged. Starting with the federal employee. Innovative work experiences are going to drive transformation. Upgrading the government work experience is how we connect and serve one another better. 

 You, too, can be about it. Be honest about it. Don’t delay. The sooner you can be about it, the better. Excellence is a learning journey — here’s to the next chapter! Let’s make more amazing things together — as Dolly would say — on purpose.