Building A Healthy Work Culture With Dugald Topshee

 

Dugald Topshee is the acting Chief Service and Digital Officer at Transport Canada. In this conversation with Adam Markel, he breaks down what a healthy work culture looks like – and why it does not only depend on delivering results. He explains why leaders must know how to connect high-level goals with technical realities to avoid creating gaps that prevent the development of scalable, easy-to-implement solutions. Dugald also talks about the beauty of building a got-your-back work environment rooted in trust, accountability, and common purpose. Find out how to develop a work culture that truly brings out the best in people and shapes them into highly responsible leaders.

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Show Notes:

• 03:32 – Lessons About Mutual Respect From Rugby
• 07:55 – Working In Public Service
• 13:43 – Finding People Who Can See Both Small And Big Pictures
• 18:13 – Learning From Your Failures And Mistakes
• 22:49 – Why We Need Leaders Who Step Forward And Make Decisions
• 29:07 – Building A Got-Your-Back Culture
• 38:34 – Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Building A Healthy Work Culture With Dugald Topshee

Everybody, welcome back to another episode. I’m so happy to be in the seat and have a great guest. Somebody that I met when I was in Ottawa, Canada, speaking and keynoting his conference and struck up at this incredible conversation after the event. I knew instantly that we were simpatico. You’re going to love this, folks. Very intelligent and very thoughtful and an interesting fellow as well. Let me read his bio and then we’re going to dive right in.

After earning a Master’s Degree in Philosophy, Dugald Topshee translated his passion for information technology into a career in computer programming. He began in the telecommunications sector working with British telecom in Europe and later with Nortel Networks. After delivering solutions for public and private sector organizations across multiple countries for many years, Dugald became an employee of the Canadian Federal Government in 2009, first at the Department of Justice, where he served as their CIO.

He currently works as the Acting Chief Service and Digital Officer at Transport Canada. I know you’re going to love this conversation, so sit back. Welcome, Dugald Topsee. Dugald, it’s fun to have somebody read all the things about you, your bio and all that good stuff. I always think it’s amusing. Since I do that a lot and get to hear that a lot, we discount it, but I know it’s not your main bag. I imagine it was fun for you to have somebody list all of your accolades and display your CV. My question to you right out of the gate is related to it but different. What is one single thing that is not part of your bio, your history, or work history that you would love for people to know about you at the start of our conversation?

The biggest thing in my life that doesn’t form a part of my bio is that I’m a very active athlete. I’ve been a Rugby player for decades. I have to be honest, when people talk about the most emotional, most resonant experiences that you’ve had, a lot of people talk about work experience. A lot of them for me came on the Rugby field. Being the captain of a Rugby club for a long time. Playing some intense emotional games having the chance to win and having the chance to have unsuccessful seasons.

You’ll learn a lot. You deal with a lot of different people and you bond incredibly quickly. I’ve had the good fortune of playing here in Canada, but also in the US and the UK, and a lot of places where you get to play with a group of people you don’t know. Within an hour or hour and a half of playing that intense high contact Rugby football, you end up close with these guys you never knew before. I’ve always loved that experience. It doesn’t make it into the resume like you say.

Now, it gets so much more because we don’t ever plan that question. You didn’t even know that question was going to be asked at the start. People sometimes think these things are canned or whatever it is and it’s not. You and I hit it off well when I came and was able to visit Ottawa to deliver a keynote to your large audience about AI, but it really was about resilience in the context of AI. We’re going to get into that in a minute.

Lessons About Mutual Respect From Rugby

You and I hit it off. We had a couple of cocktails. We were tasting this amazing gin. This was a very different take on gin and this was after the conference. Concluded for the day so everybody should know. We were off duty, technically. There was something else that we had going on there below the surface that didn’t realize till just now. Which was that, I played rugby as well. I played in England when I was fortunate enough to study there a bit for a while. There’s something about Rugby plays.

I played Water Polo in college, and then played Rugby and went overseas. Those are two sports that I would say unlike football or soccer. In the US, they call it soccer but everyone else in the world it’s football. It’s like football or soccer is a gentleman sport played by Hooligans, I’ve heard. Rugby and Water Polo is a hooligan sport played by gentlemen. It takes one to know one, buddy. We were simpatico.

It is interesting that in those sports, it’s very physical. For those of you that don’t know Rugby, it’s American football without equipment. On some level, it’s harder on the body even for that reason, but for other reasons. To see how despite the fact that there is all that physical contact, I didn’t witness a lot of injuries personally like you’re taking care of. You don’t do anything cheap.

There’s no cheap play that’s happening because you are so exposed and vulnerable. What would go on after these matches at the pub between opposing teams that were killing each other on the field but literally, we’re singing songs and put and slug and pints. It was just beautiful. It’s the camaraderie.

That’s how it should be. You play incredibly hard. You’re trying to kill each other and then after the game, as you said, it becomes friendly. It’s a funny thing about the injuries. I met a guy once who did work as a physiotherapist and an athletic trainer with the Winnipeg ballet and with the National Rugby team of Canada. He said he had more injuries from the ballet that he did from the Rugby players. At least more complicated ones.

It’s always been like that. That’s one of the traditions I loved when I played in the UK. After the game, you get together and the home team feeds the visiting side. You always buy a drink for your opposite number and that starts right away. It’s a great social experience and you get to meet people quickly. To me, the biggest thing is when you’re playing, you don’t know people. It’s like you say, a very physical sport. Some people step up and they’re going to be there beside you, making that tackle, helping you bring someone down. Once you’ve seen that from people, you just feel like that bond. It’s a great and special quick attachment you form.

I won’t believe the point for our readers that might be like, “These guys are going to talk about Rugby the whole time.” I’ll just say. In the world that we’re living in, and we all know what that world is. Nobody needs a reminder or to have some of the same words used again and again. The example of that is you play hard on the field and you genuinely appreciate it. There’s humanity both in the game but then outside of the game that we see the big picture.

It’s not like people don’t behave badly. You don’t see plenty of fights. They don’t last longer like Rugby like in a pub incidentally. The idea that you can see the bigger picture outside of it. Maybe the bigger picture. LOL is like the drinking that goes on. The fantastic drinking experience that occurs after one of those matches but that would be missing the deeper point. Which is that there’s genuine respect. I’ve even used the word love that exists between people combatants. Put it all out there on the field and live to talk about it with each other and laugh.

I completely agree. Laughing about it is the point. I was going to say mutual respect as well and that’s what you want. They play against and with people that love the game and love that competition. You know when you have a laugh and shake hands with the guy who tackled you incredibly hard or if you get one over on somebody. It’s great to have that mutual respect and as you said, if you take it off the rugby pitch, that’s the expectation that we can have, even when times are difficult. Hopefully, we can respect each other. Have that mutual respect even if we’re competing against each other in some ways. At least, we’re doing it the right way and respectfully. The world could use more of that quite honestly.

Working In Public Service

Dugald, this is a great segue into what we were going to talk about, too. I’d love for you to lay out a little bit of the role that you’re in as well as the challenge because even before this, we were talking about just what an uncertain world we’re in like markets and other things. Will you create a context for us in terms of what you’re seeing in your role.

Sure. I’m the acting Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Service and Digital officer here Transport Canada. We’re part of the federal government in Canada. We regulate the transportation sector. My responsibility is to run all the digital programs. All the IT, the information management and the services. We provide oversight over how to deliver services to Canadians and internally to all of our staff. Being transported applies across the board. Everything from providing the overall guidelines for road safety and what equipment cars can be manufactured here with the rules are that they should be subject to.

Inspecting the trains, the airplanes, and the marine traffic through the country. All that work falls under the proviso of Transport Canada. My team I should say provides digital tools to support that way for Canadians to interact directly with us if they need to get a license to drive a motor boat, for instance, or certification as a pilot or air traffic controller. We build applications to help deliver those things.

Now, we’re in a position where increasingly people are used to an advanced digital experience. The biggest question for us is, how do we give them that same feeling they get when they’re using an iPhone or an Android smartphone getting this sophisticated modern app? Can we try to emulate that ease and efficiency with the stuff that we do? How do we do that being within the federal government? How can we manage the fact that the government has a lot of complicated expenses coming out of the pandemic?

We need to get a control on the spending in the government. If there’s less money, we need to increase efficiency some other way. Also, the big topic that I think you mentioned earlier is artificial intelligence and what that is going to mean for us, especially from a public sector context. We have to be very respectful.

The AI has to be developed ethically and has to follow appropriate principles. Increasingly, in Canada, we have to make sure that we’re using sovereign solutions that aren’t controlled by foreign companies. There’s a lot of concerns that we’re wrestling with. I have a great team with several hundred people that are developing these solutions and figuring out how we can make this department more efficient. Get it to provide the kind of services people expect in a changing world.

AI must be developed ethically and adhere to appropriate principles. Share on X

What would you say is the greatest challenge that your workforce has these days? The word uncertainty again comes up so frequently and burnout and a lot of other things. What are you seeing? What’s your experience in terms of what’s creating the greatest impediment to a greater expression of innovation and productivity even in the work?

It’s an interesting question. I’ve been in the IT space for a long time for decades and the challenge is trying to find a connection between the people who know the job that you’re trying to improve. Have that deep work experience and the more technical people that develop the solutions like your programs. I have a lot of great programmers here, but they can get into the weeds. One of the challenges that we’ve always had is how you figure out what the overall vision is for building enterprise systems that could be used everywhere.

We’ve had a tendency in the past, if I’m completely honest. You get a keen client who’s like, “We need to do this specific thing so that we can improve the way that we inspect ships that are loading bulk grain onto them.” Unfortunately, I have these great developers that start hearing about the problems. They go, “I can do that and that,” and they start solving the problem. Often, there’s no one to take a step back and say, “How do we solve the problem generally so that it doesn’t only work with a giant ship loaded with soy or barley? It will also work if we’re inspecting rail cars or railway tracks or airplane cockpits and so on.”

That’s probably our biggest challenge, is how we find the right enterprise perspective. The person, sometimes we call them unicorns in my space, who can combine that knowledge like, “This is what the business needs. This is how they do their work,” with enough technical understanding to give clear instructions to computer programmers so that we don’t end up with 400 different applications when we should have like ten.

The ability to think big and think small. This idea of understanding the imperatives of the things that happen in the short term but also see what long-term looks like.

I would agree with that because to be perfectly honest, it’s well said, “Think big but also think small.” One of the ways that you can do things wrong and sadly, we’ve had some big examples of this. Even in the Canadian federal government. Not all of our IT projects has gone. I’ve gone as well as we’d like. Sometimes, you can try to build a giant system that’s going to solve every problem but you build it like a castle in the sky. You lose that connection to the ground.

You end up with this giant system that’s supposed to do everything for everyone and you say, “Big bang. Let’s move everyone on to it,” and that’s when you start to see all the problems. It’s a much better approach as you say to have an idea of what the big picture is. Build something small and specific that you can gradually add to in order to develop it out of a cluster model, as the way we like to talk about it now because that’s been successful. Start with a small piece and then add people from a cluster of similar like-minded organizations or people that need the same thing. Build from there. That’s what we’re trying to do nowadays.

Finding People Who Can See Both Small And Big Pictures

I want to talk about culture. Not culture writ large but a business or organizational culture because you’re in a business. Yet, it’s also the government. It’s public service. Nonetheless, it’s still a business. This happens in tech as well, to operate at a loss. To continue to operate with a budget that’s upside down. Let’s just say from an organizational standpoint. What do you notice about culture? I don’t want you to give your own culture grade. You could certainly say what’s working, what’s not working and all that.

 

What do you notice seeing in organizational culture? In the culture of your organization because it might speak to some of what you said or earlier. Which is, is it a skill set? Is it a mindset? If we want people that can see both large and small, be able to take in the totality of things. Is that something that you can train? Is that something that you can onboard or be part of the culture, the DNA of an organization or a structure so that everybody can experience that? Is it like trying to put a round peg in a square hole?

To your first point about the need for profit. I will say it’s a little harder for us to spend taxpayer money than to spend venture capital money if you’re like one of these tech companies that doesn’t need to post a profit for years. In our case, as you say we have to be very cautious. Even though we’re not trying to make a profit, we do have to spend the money appropriately. When it comes to culture, it’s an interesting question because it’s something I’ve been wondering about for years.

There’s all these people out there literally running business schools, teaching leadership and things like that. I’ve always wondered if it’s something that can be taught or not. Some people have the right skill for this. My education was in Philosophy and I think philosophy is a fantastic study for people because it teaches you to think generally, to reason, and to make arguments. One of the unintended consequences of a philosophy degree. It’s what we do. In philosophy, early on you realize, it’s much easier to tear apart other people’s ideas than to come up with your own new ideas for how to do things.

You get a lot of practice tearing each other’s arguments apart, but you also learn to separate your emotional feelings about it from the argument that you’ve made. One of the problems about corporate culture that I see. Not just in the public service. I’ve worked a long time in the private sector as well but all over the place. Some people have a very difficult time separating the emotional side from the idea that they’ve made.

When it comes to trying to deliver a transformative solution and technology or new service to Canadians, you want to have an open discussion. Free argument about what the best solution is. What’s right and what’s wrong about it. There’s a tendency for some people to get caught up, whether it was their idea or not and lose touch with the goal, which is to be corporate. We’re trying to deliver this service. It doesn’t matter who’s going to get the credit and it doesn’t matter who put the ideas forward.

 

One of the things that I think is whether it’s possible to teach it or not, it has to be shown from on high. One of my core principles is, the worst way of making decisions is the highest paid opinion rule. It’s the worst. As I said in philosophy, that has to be the way you approach things. It’s about the logic of your argument and the strength and accuracy of your premises. That’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter who came up with it. It just matters how strong the argument is. That’s been an advantage that I’ve had for a while.

Circling back to your question about culture. That’s what you have to embed in the organization. It’s that corporate sense. We’re all headed to the same goal. We’re not trying to play politics or get ahead of each other or compete with one another. We’re definitely not just waiting to see what the highest paid person thinks and agreeing with what they say.

It’s got to be about how strong the arguments are and who’s making the best case. Increasingly nowadays, what is the evidence saying? Don’t just assume that you’re right. Test and then move forward if your test proves that you’re right, so evidence-based decision-making. Always have off-ramps and milestones in your projects, so if things aren’t going the right way, you pivot. You do something different.

Learning From Your Failures And Mistakes

How important is it to be able to fail?

That’s a complicated question for the public service because it’s very big and say, Silicon Valley or I should say in Ottawa, we had a huge tech sector as well. You got to be able to fail fast and learn from it. When it comes to the public sector, there’s a bit of a sense that you have to be careful because you shouldn’t be failing with taxpayer’s money. It’s important to have the right failure. You got to be able to learn. The last thing you can do is have a big failure that doesn’t teach you anything. Increasingly, I hope this is going to prove to be the case. We’re more willing to learn from other people’s failures as well.

Certainly, in the public sector community, there’s a lot of exchange. We talk all the time to similar organizations and different jurisdictions around the world and within Canada to find out what they try that didn’t work. What did they try? Where did they fail? How can we learn from it? You can learn these lessons without going through the painful process of failing yourself. To me, the right failure is a failure that you learn from, where you figure something out and then you move forward.

The right kind of failure is the one you learn from and helps you move forward. Share on X

That makes a lot of sense and it’s logical in my training as a lawyer and first is an English major with a different philosophy but similar in that literary criticism. It was about making an argument creating a theory of the case if you will before I was and pursuing it or making the best argument based on the information and how you could spin it. That was a good lead into being a lawyer because every case was basically that.

You could take the facts and argue them one way or the other. The most compelling argument typically was the winner, but it had to be logical, as you said. While emotions play well to the jury in theory, and while they’re great for TV and movies. In the real world, that’s not very rarely the case. It has to be logical. When I hear you talk about failure, I certainly see that my dad was a civil servant for 30 years. I realized that we’re more intolerant in that environment of “failing.” Maybe I chunk it down and ask a different question. Which is, how important are mistakes?

Again, mistakes don’t help you if you don’t learn anything from it. If you constantly do something wrong and you’re not bothering to learn. Mistakes, though, are extremely important but the way you put the two together is introspection. In a leader, you have to be able to look into yourself and try to understand things. If you have that natural way of looking and judging yourself and what you’ve done. Why did I arrive at this? How did I come to this? That’s how you’re going to learn from the mistakes that you made. Ideally, you don’t repeat them. You learn something and then you move on. It’s not something that you continue to do. To me, it’s very important. It would be ludicrous to think you’re going to get through life not making mistakes.

I feel like you touched something so important to all of us. On some level, who hasn’t been raised to some degree, whether it’s expressly programmed or it was implied in some way that it is better to not make mistakes? In fact, let’s say it differently. It’s better to avoid making mistakes at almost any cost and to the consequences that come from them. Where does that translate into as you were saying?

The reason I’m tracking this in my own brain is just because it might not be transparent at the moment. When you were talking about this ability to see the big picture, but also be able to dial into how you get there so that it’s not just all pie and this guy’s not building castles in air. We have to stay connected to the ground on Earth.

To be able to do both of those things, you can’t do that from a place of fear. Certainly, I don’t think you can do that from a place of avoidance either, of trying to avoid failing or avoid making mistakes. I’m not a Canadian citizen. I’m a US citizen, but I’ve seen failures in civil servants, civil service or in government and in our Civics here in this country. It’s in that mediocrity. That space is a mediocrity that comes from simply trying to avoid error.

Why We Need Leaders Who Step Forward And Make Decisions

You’re right. One of the things that’s interesting. If there’s one way that I’d be not too arrogant to say. I might have distinguished myself a little bit. Certainly, something I noticed as I became an executive in the public service. One of the things that surprised people was that I would make decisions. They’d come and they briefed you. They would have recommendations that I’d say, “Great. I agree with your recommendation. Let’s do it.” I hate to say it. A lot of times, I am met with shock and surprise.

They couldn’t believe that someone was willing to make a decision. There is, unfortunately, a lot of that reluctance to step forward and decide things right. Take ownership and say, “This is what we’re doing.” You get to it through principle. We have a code of values and ethics. It means a lot to me as a public servant to follow it. You have to understand what it means. As long as you’re acting in the right way and you’re doing the right thing with the right intentions, then you do it. You make the decision. You move forward. If it’s wrong, then you’ll deal with the con sequences later.

For me, as a leader, you also have to embed that culture in your whole staff. From my perspective, you have standard operating procedures to protect the frontline staff. They have a list of things that they have to do, and they’re like, “This is how it works.” They can deal with the volume of requests that they have to deal with but you have managers. Their job is to interpret and decide when to make an exception and when to do the right things. They should understand the principles and be empowered to make those decisions.

That’s why, like me, you protect them. If they make a mistake, as they always say, you correct in private and you compliment in public. Ideally, that’s the culture that I strive to create here. I’m willing to be the one to make decisions and defend decisions that are made by the people that work for me. If we need to make corrections afterwards, then we go and do it. You put your finger right on a point. That’s important. Too many people maybe are afraid to step forward and make a decision at all. That is what causes the mediocrity alluded to in some places.

Too many people are afraid to step forward and make a decision at all. This is what causes mediocrity in a lot of places. Share on X

All this established consensus. At some point, whatever the idea du jour was, good, bad, or otherwise. It disappears. If any decision is somehow made that nobody can point a finger at who it was. I’m a fan of this term, blameless problem solving, as well. Which is an interesting take on how you create. I want to ask you this question. This idea of blameless problem solving creates something in a culture. I’m also thinking as we’re speaking, that it’s the idea of whatever the converse of that is. Maybe you can help me come up with the language for this.

It’s not like you don’t celebrate a success but, to your point, whose is it? It’s our victory. It’s not an individual’s victory. It’s like, who’s credit? Who gets credit? It’s almost like being blameless. What’s the inverse of blameless problem-solving as it applies to the credit that’s given to somebody that came up with the idea in the first place? Anything comes to mind for you?

We succeed as an organization. That has to be the idea. We all share the benefits of success. We don’t like to fight over credit. As I said earlier, we are all proud of the accomplishment. In my case, I’ve just always had a corporate mindset. Whether when I was in the private sector or in the public sector. You have to think in terms of the goals of the organization. You have to approach everything that way. The way that people get into trouble is they start to think too much about their own personal interests. That’s not the job.

You don’t get paid and hired to take care of your own personal interests. You get hired to take care of the interest of your organization. It’s sad to me that not everyone seems to naturally come with this attitude. In some cases, quite honestly, you don’t get rewarded for thinking that way. You often, in some places, more likely to get rewarded for self-promotion and for making a big case. The right way for things to work is for credit always to be shared across the entire organization and reflected onto everybody.

It’s an interesting thing. One of the things that we will do is we’ll have awards or recognition for a successful project or group that have accomplished something. I’ve always been reluctant and it sounds maybe unfair, but to share the credit too widely. What ends up happening is, sometimes they’ll give an award for a successful work. They’ll give it out to 50 people. You know that some of those people, 8 or 10 maybe we’re hugely involved and didn’t do an incredible amount of work. Some of them just happened to sign off or get involved at some point towards the end.

Ironically, I find people are less happy about getting recognition if it goes out with this broad brush and across everybody. They all know who contributed and who didn’t. I like the idea of trying to democratize it somehow and saying, “Who is most deserving?” Ask the group who did the most or who was the most successful in delivering this and take it from there. Identify the 3 or 4 or maybe 5 or 6 key people who contributed. To me, that’s always a much more impressive thing than giving out these different people recognizing something. Even though some were hugely involved and others asked through.

We have a lot of leaders that tune in to this show and by leaders, I mean across the board. It’s a very senior level and plenty of people in the middle as well who are getting started. That’s a great message to remember because that’s a great process in figuring out how you reward or knowledge and celebrate a success. You find out from the peers themselves for anybody that was involved and who they think. It can be anonymous to figure that part out.

Building A Got-Your-Back Culture

This idea of blameless problem solving. I want to come back to that for a second. How would you describe it? What does it take from a cultural standpoint? In part, I’m asking because I’m a researcher on that. I’ve got a book. I say I but it’s a we, for sure. It’s a complete team that goes into this but our book is called Re-Culture. It’s our newest book based on research and anecdotal evidence in philosophy. Hopefully, some logic, too. I’m curious. On the side of that blameless problem-solving, how would you describe a culture where that’s more the rule than it is the exception?

It’s a great question and it’s one that I’ve often wondered about. I’ve had the good fortune in my career of being a part of some truly great teams. Both, as I said on the Rugby field but also professionally. You can tell the difference. It has energy and cohesiveness. To me, it’s that sense of a common purpose. I can just think and remember back when I worked in the private sector. I worked in an organization at Nortel Networks many years ago. We had this tight group. Everyone would call for each other.

We all had individual assignments, but if someone got behind, everyone would dive in and they’d go out of their way. We had one person join the team briefly who just didn’t share that culture. It upset the whole apple card because the same thing happened, we were falling behind. Everyone pulled together and started working on this thing and he just left for the day at 4:00 or whatever. We wandered around looking for him.

As three of his colleagues are desperately trying to meet a deadline, h e’s already left. It was so shocking because for everyone else and the team, it was about the team. We’ve never missed a deadline and we all care a lot about it. To answer your question, I look back on that. I was part of another great team in the government. I used to work in a different department years ago. I’m going for dinner with them because they reached out. They said, “A couple of the former players, like employees, who retired. We will all get back together.” It’s for the same reason.

It was a cohesive team. Everyone believed in the mission that we were trying to achieve. You asked how do you go about creating that? I wish I knew. Some teams are just special and they have that close-knit bond. To try to answer your question. It’s about that sense of a larger goal. Greater than the sum of the individual parts. In the case when I was working at Nortel, we’ve never missed a deadline. We’re good at this.

We have pride in our collective ability to deliver. Similarly, when I was at the Department of Justice in Canada, we had this great project to deliver. Everyone believed in it. We all work together. We accomplished an incredible amount. A really successful project. Ever since, we’ve all had pride in being part of that and achieving these goals that were bigger than any one of us. That’s a key part of it, that sense of cohesion and bonding over something greater than the individual people. How to create it? I wish I knew.

It’s so interesting. Your identity becomes a part of it. For me, that place that I use as a defining environment and experience in early life as a lifeguard at the beach. I was very involved, dramatic, life and death context and all that stuff. Our small team was skilled or lucky or whatever you want to call it. We were successful. As a team, after a tragedy, it showed us something else.

We decided that our mission was our purpose, as you say, the thing that was greater than ourselves. It was this idea that no one would go down in our water literally became such a strong point of buy-in for all of us. That we worked together and we were successful. We refer to that as a got-your-back environment. Versus, in some respects the one where people are competing against each other is like a watch-your-back environment. This is the way we refer to it lately. It’s just this distinction between those two.

Know it when you feel it. Know it when you see it. What creates a got-your-back culture? You get a list of a bunch of different things but you know when you experience it. You know what it feels like to be on the other end of it when you’re watching out for yourself before you watch out for the team. It is a reasonable rationalization that says, “If I don’t watch out for myself, nobody’s going to watch out for me.” How’s that going to help me and my pursuits in life and my family or whatever, or the things or my priorities? Everybody watches out for themselves and from a cultural standpoint, that is a very different environment than the ones that you were describing. The ones that I can think of.

It ultimately becomes toxic.

I feel like that’s the norm, though.

Unfortunately, in a lot of places. I have to be honest. It hasn’t been in my experience. I’ve been very lucky but then I’ve had the privilege of, “I got skills. I’ve got confidence. I’ll go where the work takes me.” I’ve been laid off before and it’s always worked out well. I would never stay in a place that has that toxic culture. I should take a second just to say that you spoke about that life gardening experience that our professional development week for DPI.

You knocked it out of the park. It was a fantastic talk. It’s a nice way of expressing it too, the got-your-back versus watch your back. The one strand that we haven’t explicitly mentioned yet is authenticity. In a watch-you-back environment, you don’t believe that people are being authentic. They’re often very nice. They’re smiling and saying the right things, but you don’t trust what they’re saying. Whereas, in a got-your-back environment, you can expect your colleagues to hold you accountable because you have that trust and belief in them.

You can have healthy conflict and disagreement and say, “This is the wrong way to do this and being you respective. You believe it.” You’re going to support each other. We have a natural ability to sense what’s authentic and what’s not. If you get a few too many people into a group that are saying one thing but meaning something different. That’s how you’re going to completely eliminate the got-your-back mentality. As you said earlier, everyone is now going to start thinking, “Do I have to watch out then because I don’t trust some of the people on this team?” It just breeds a lack of trust all the way through it.

Maybe this is a great place for us to land the plane to come back to something we started talking about to close the loop. In that sports context, and I know not everybody’s a sports fan. Not everybody’s been a person who’s gotten involved. Whether you’ve been athletic or not. It is a great analogy for this. Whether you’re coming from that place or not. I think a lot of people do as well, but on the field, it can’t hide. There’s no authenticity in the field. How you do anything is how you do the exact standard but it shows up so visibly on the field of play or in the field of play that you can’t hide from it. Maybe it’s just a little bit easier to determine.

It is. As you say, it’s all very visible. It’s true of all of us that play a lot of sports. We love the players that just do the right thing all the time. I’m a huge Tim Duncan fan obviously because I’m a San Antonio Spurs fan. The big fundamental is just always doing the right play to win the game and he didn’t care about anything else. You and I both know there are guys in the NBA that are thinking about their next contract or are deliberately missing a shot to collect the rebound to give themselves a triple double.

That’s the thing that a player like Tim Duncan would never do because he’s always focused on winning the game regardless of who gets the credit and how it happens. That’s the attitude you see when people are playing sports. That person must be on us that you want to be around. Team first. Obsessed with the goals of the team above any individual goals.

 

Dugald, I love the conversation that you and I had after the conference when we were standing around with that robot that was there and was answering my questions. That is so trippy. Very cool.

I should mention the gin from the Bunrobin Distillery outside of Ottawa. The earl grey gin is very nice.

Truly memorable. Thank you, my friend. I consider you a friend. Now, I know we have even more in common, which sometimes you just vibe with somebody. You don’t even know exactly why but the fun of it is to figure out why or to have that be revealed. Thank you for making the time to join us on the show. I appreciate your time.

I was glad to do this. It was very nice to see you again, Adam. All the best.

Thank you again.

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Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words

I think you would agree that it did not disappoint. Dugald is again thoughtful. Such an interesting person. You can tell that he genuinely cares about things. He thinks about things. He’s got that, as we were talking about, one wonderful combination of being able to see big things, see a vision and have a vision. Yet, also dial in on the small stuff. Think big and also think small. I loved our conversation about information technology, culture about, and the things that are challenging folks in the workforce. He spends a lot of time in artificial intelligence in the federal government in Canada and in particular, as it relates to transportation and transportation services.

He’s a leader and I would say a leader of leaders. That’s how I would frame him up. You could tell just by the way he thinks about things and talks about things. That his perspective is inclusive. That is not elitist or looking at things for silos but rather is broad-based and how it is that we develop these structures within an organization to bring out the best in people. It’s similar to the way that on a team, in his case, a Rugby team and in my case was a Water Polo team, but also a Rugby team for a short while as well. He developed a system of play that brings out the best in people.

He and I talked a lot about in various contexts, both personal and in business, how you create environments where people feel like other people have their backs, versus an environment, a system, a structure where people feel like they must watch their backs. I love that discussion. It’s very relevant in the world that we’re living in, whether you’re in the private sector or the public sector and also in our personal lives as well. Lives that are members of a broader community.

If this is an episode that you also enjoyed, and I hope that you have. That you’ll share it with somebody. Let someone know about it. Be it a family member or colleague. Simply send them a link. If you could give us a review or rating on the platform that you consume this show, whether that’s on Apple or iTunes or Spotify. Whatever that platform might be, a five-star rating is always great. We know it takes you time to do it. Please accept our appreciation. I mean that sincerely both for taking the time if you do that but even more so for being a part of this community.

For joining us, for leaving your comments as many of you do at AdamMarkel.com/Podcast. You can leave a comment for me or for Dugald right there and we can respond to that real time. Not through a bot or an agent, but us ourselves. For now, anyway, I want to thank you once again for being a part of all that we’re doing here. I wish you a beautiful rest of your day, your evening, or wherever we find you that you are feeling good or that you are doing things.

Take care of yourself to be more resilient. That you’re leaning into the change that is everywhere. You have to change the proof. That’s ultimately one of the most important skills that any of us have in personalized or professionalized. That we’re able to adapt and be adaptable to the constant change that is the norm. The new norm, but the now norm will likely continue to be the case for there you for very long periods of time. It is the way of the universe after all. Thank you so much again and I’ll just say ciao for now.

 

Important Links

• Dugald Topshee on LinkedIn
• Nortel Networks
• Transport Canada
• Re-Culture: A Leadership Connection Collaboration Disconnected

 

About Dugald Topshee

After earning a master’s degree in philosophy, Dugald Topshee translated his passion for information technology into a career in computer programming. He began in the telecommunications sector, working with British Telecom in Europe and later with Nortel Networks in Ottawa, before founding his own consulting firm, Phrontisterion Incorporated, in 2001, that specialized in applying XML technology to business process automation. After delivering solutions for public and private sector organizations across multiple countries for many years, Dugald became an employee of the Canadian Federal Government in 2009: first at the Department of Justice, where he served as CIO; he currently works at Transport Canada as acting Chief Service and Digital Officer at Transport Canada.