Originally delivered at Web Directions Culture in Sydney in 2018, a talk on building adaptability into a matrixed government tech and design team in difficult circumstances.

1. Getting to
Resilience
Cyd Harrell
WebDirections Culture 2018

2. After the Healthcare.gov disaster

3. November 9, 2016

4. The theory (given a friendly administration)
➔ Recruit “the best” technologists into
government
➔ Give them a great work environment
➔ Let them do what they do best
➔ WIN

5. A generic environment...
➔ Fancy computers
➔ Snack bars
➔
➔ Project choice & 20% time
➔ Managers focus on staff’s career development
➔ Clear alignment on goals

7. Eng
The
Matrix
Design
Product
Strategy
Acquisitions

8. EngDesign Product Strategy
Client
Self-organizing!

9. Even given a friendly administration:
➔ Who handles performance problems?
➔ Do we recruit the right people?
➔ What kind of practice works here?
➔ How do we make practice consistent?
➔ What about our billability requirements?

10. Things are strange now.

11. During the first year of the new administration
➔ We were reorganized 3 times
➔ Technology Transformation Service
➔ Federal Acquisitions Service
➔ Centers of Excellence

12. Burnout became common.

13. July 2017: Chief of Staff

14. Past
decisions
Happy Halloween today, also!

15. EngDesign Product Strategy
Leads
SMT

16. SMT GMT

17. GMT

18. Communities of practice in a flat org
➔ 18F-only guilds with ½ hour weekly meetings
➔ government-wide Communities of Practice
➔ Considered side projects
ContentResearch DevOps Front-End

19. New standards
➔ All types of CoP open to all within TTS
➔ All CoPs provide advice freely
➔ Official CoPs advice management on the
practice they support.

20. Communities of practice in a flat org
➔ Guilds with ½ hour weekly meetings
➔ open email Communities of Practice
➔ Considered 20% time for billing purposes
ContentResearch DevOps Front-End

21. Hiring freeze lifted
Spring 2018

22. We weren’t serving anyone by signalling
to techies that we were a free-for-all
startup environment.

23. A new profile for hiring:
➔ People who want to collaborate above all
➔ People whose skills are beyond question
➔ People who make colleagues of clients
➔ People senior enough to have opinions
➔ People who aren’t ashamed to be consultants

24. Resilient organizations...
➔ Hire with full transparency
➔ Talk about performance openly
➔ Empower the front lines
➔ Open their practices

25. I worked for President Trump.
I worked in the Trump administration.
I worked for the federal government.
I worked for the American public.

26. Healthy institutions withstand.

27. Questions?

28. Thank you so much for coming!
@cydharrell any time you want to
talk about this