Innovate On Demand

Innovate On Demand

By Todd Lyons, Val Sosa, Natalie

With hosts Natalie Crandall and Valeria Sosa, Innovate on Demand is a podcast series centralized around the theme of Innovation – the good and the bad. In line with the Canada School of Public Service’s mandate for learning, this podcast will allow public servants, passionate about innovation, to learn and share “on demand” and their convenience. Produced by Todd Lyons on behalf of the Canada School of Public Service. An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

Where to listen

Predictive Hiring

How do you hire the right person for the job? In our federal public service, the conventional method demands that applicants use a rigid format, using specific keywords to map their education, skills and experience onto a defined list of essential and merit criteria. Canada's Free Agents went another way, assessing applicants against a set of behavioural characteristics, to great success. Our guest this episode says that whatever process we try to implement, in the end, it all comes down to first impressions.

50:18

May 4, 2020

Consensus Hiring and Surge Teams

A Surge Team is a group of employees with no ongoing files. Instead, they exist to tackle priority initiatives identified by Deputy Ministers and other senior government officials. The assignments are time sensitive, complex and innovative, and as such, depend on employees suited to this type of dynamic work. But how do you find the right people to perform in an environment of frequent change?

19:01

April 7, 2020

Working in the Open

In 10 years, we've transformed from a public service where individual blogging and tweeting was considered career-endangering activity, to one that now hosts public-facing professional networking and collaboration platforms. Our guest this episode was at or near the centre of the projects that orchestrated our transformation from then to now.

30:32

March 10, 2020

Virtual Leadership

Telework remains a contentious issue in the public service. Some groups use it extensively. Others grant it only in extreme circumstances and for limited periods of time, requiring proof of need in order to prolong the arrangement, because after all, how can you manage people you can't see? And how could a manager ever possibly consider teleworking?

47:57

February 11, 2020

Whether you're a citizen or a business, wading through policy, regulation and legislation can be difficult. How can a human being navigate thousands of words written in complex formal and legal vocabulary? Well, increasingly, we're trying to delegate that difficult work to a helper better suited to the task: software. By converting rules into code, we can concentrate instead on asking AI to provide us with the details pertaining to our situation, such as eligibility, benefits, obligations, and restrictions.

43:00

January 10, 2020

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Public Service

The Lead of the Paper Plane Exchange at the Canada School of Public Service, talks about how work and volunteer experience outside of the Government of Canada can contribute to meaningful innovation within the public service. An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

28:47

December 5, 2019

Survival of the Most Adaptable

Our guest this episode worked for a mega corporation before joining the public service and experienced first hand how any organization can be bogged down as it scales up in size and complexity. He believes that success is tied to a willingness to adapt, so what has his experience been like since joining the public sector? An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

34:30

November 8, 2019

Reflections, realizations, and suggestions for a path forward for those who've struggled to innovate in the public service: what to look for in other people and within yourself when the frustration makes you feel like quitting. An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

26:28

August 1, 2019

Individual Innovation

It can be daunting, even depressing, to be a person with an idea inside a massive organization. After all, what can one individual to do effect change from within? On this episode of Innovate on Demand, Dana Landry asks us to consider the power of one. An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

36:22

July 9, 2019

Human-Centred Impact Evaluation

What's an Innovation Lab? What is Rapid Impact Assessment, and how is it different from Iteration? And how can acknowledging failure increase connectedness to the people affected, and bring a better outcome? More honest experiences from the field, on this edition of Innovate On Demand. An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

24:27

June 12, 2019

Field of (Broken) Dreams

What does innovation even mean? Is it the magic bullet for any problem that some people make it out to be? Is it something we should even be attempting in the public service, given what's at risk? Or is it the latest shiny thing we feel pressured to chase? An accessible version of this podcast can be found on the Canada School of Public Service’s external facing website.

26:08

May 3, 2019