courses
A couple of years ago we thought about what we wished we'd known when we were public servants - and what we learned on the way, often the hard way!
Ministers and executives are time-poor and advice to them needs to be clear, compelling and reliable. But expectations of public servants are often tacit rather than explicit.
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So out of this thinking we developed our 'Mastering the Craft of Advising Government' courses - where people can step outside of their work, put themselves in the shoes of decision-makers and explore what good advice and briefs look like.
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Since 2017 we've delivered these to over 1900 public servants in 16 government departments. Since March 2020, we have refined our courses and have also been delivering these via livestream. From October 2023, we will be offering clients a choice of course delivery either online via livestream or in person.
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We work with discrete teams and mixed groups of public servants.
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What's new?
We now offer a unique course for the community services sector, taking participants through the who and what of government decision-making to help them sharpen their influence.
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Our method
Our method lifts teams out of transactional, process thinking, shifting to a focus on outcomes and people.
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We use work samples provided by participants,* or our fictional samples, to recreate the environment in which Ministers and Directors-General/Secretaries receive advice.
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Using adult learning principles, our lively, interactive and practical courses aim to build public sector capability in providing sound advice that’s easily understood.
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Participants like our stories from our time as public servants and what we learned along the way.
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* We will sign a confidentiality agreement with clients before reviewing work samples
We give people unique resources to use in their day to day work.
Managers and directors can do a course before their teams attend our core workshop series. This equips supervisors to support their teams as they begin to apply our methods.
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As well, we offer a course for mixed groups of public servants allowing individual registrations.
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We offer teams a progress review several months after the workshop series. This allows managers, directors, executives and their teams to assess their progress and make any adjustments.
Other changes include livestream delivery in addition to in person courses.