This post is written by Kitty Wooley, founder of the Senior Fellows and Friends network and retired civil servant in the US federal government.

  • The problem: Able young employees who are recruited into government service with great effort are not staying long, partly because their attempts at autonomy befitting their adult status have been thwarted.
  • Why it matters: Powerful boundary-spanning energy is released when employees’ unique gifts connect with problems that cross organisations, whether a problem is complex and public-facing (child hunger, redlining) or primarily internal (employee engagement, reporting standards).
  • The solution: Maintain relationships within your office while at the same time talking with colleagues in other units and learning about their work.

As an able young employee, does this statement resonate with you? “I feel stifled and I worry about the effect that being restricted to my silo will have on my career prospects. Being discouraged from initiating conversation with anyone I choose is depressing. The idea of reaching across silos is attractive, but it’s hard to know how to begin.”

Some employees are able and willing to do specialised work without much human contact, and that may work for them. However, this article series is for those whose urge to “reach across” has been stymied. Far from participating in cross-boundary work, they’re discouraged even from crosscutting internal conversation that would help them understand what the real problems are and get their creative juices flowing. The bureaucracy is shooting itself in the foot by unnecessarily constraining the connectivity of new hires once they’ve been onboarded.

If you see a project that looks cool from the outside, find out more about it and strike up conversation with project team members.

As a prospective boundary spanner, you do not have to wait for the organisation to modernise before you can develop self-efficacy and ease in “reaching across” or refine your current capability. Practising boundary spanning to the point of ease alters others’ perceptions and creates opportunity – you come to be viewed as an adult who builds bridges with colleagues so more progress can be made, rather than a “wet behind the ears” newbie of low rank who must be kept safely in the nursery. The demand for such bridge builders always exceeds the supply.

You came to make a difference. How do you identify worthwhile directions?

Two ways to begin are (1) noticing what attracts you and (2) digging into something you might be equipped to improve without additional training. Don’t under-rate attraction – if you see a project that looks cool from the outside, find out more about it and strike up conversation with project team members. And try to understand what about it attracted you – that self-knowledge can lead to career happiness.

Something as seemingly dull as understanding what other parts of the organisation need to accomplish – and what’s causing them pain – is huge. For example, do you know that large IT projects around the world have failed because employees who administer government programmes and employees who develop supporting technologies didn’t understand what the other group needed in order to achieve its objectives? If you understood both groups, kept a constructive attitude, and desired to contribute, you would become someone who could volunteer or be enlisted to “translate” back and forth so solutions could be jointly shaped and have a better chance of succeeding – even without knowing much about either the programme or the technology.

If you’re in the doldrums and don’t care much about anything at the moment, then identify someone who does and ask them for a chat – find out what they’re doing and why they care. Look for people who want to share what they like doing. As you research your organisation, connect the dots and wonder about things, there’s a good chance that you’ll see how what you could care about overlaps with what matters to colleagues. That’s your sweet spot. Learning to play there has many benefits and could even lead you to your life’s work.

Become a more valuable colleague by reviving your curiosity.

As five-year-olds, we were curious. Can you revive that feeling? Probably so – consider people who recover from serious illness or injury or learn to live with grievous loss. At a certain point, their curiosity returns and yours can too. Begin asking questions. Bootstrap yourself into a mindset of attention, wonder and caring again.

What, really, is your responsibility?

Does this mean we leave our assigned work undone, and go running off to chase work that looks more interesting? No! That’s a career killer – do you want to become known as someone who doesn’t help, or who actively obstructs your office’s work? At the same time, it is your responsibility to grow and become more able to think, contribute, and lead. That growth is part of the mission, too – HR leaders and training departments always have workforce development as a strategic objective because it expands capability to do the organisation’s work.

How much autonomy can you handle – or do you simply wish to leave everything to HR and your boss? Behaving like a passive sponge who always has to be fed and told is comfortable yet disempowering, whereas becoming a boundary-spanning adult who talks to everyone expands your comfort zone through practice. Think about this now, so that you avoid the learned helplessness that eventually cripples careers.

What about the naysayers?

There will be those, including some of your leaders, who will tell you that something can’t be done. If the “something” involves informal partnering or formal collaboration, take it with a grain of salt. People who use this sort of language tend to be uncomfortable reaching across silos themselves, mostly because they’d rather be with people they already know. Trust your own reasoning and your growing experience. Decide to become someone who reaches across.

Learn more here

From Curious to Competent

“For 30 years our executive search firm has been in the business of assessing leaders along two broad dimensions: potential and competence. One key conclusion? You can’t have either without curiosity.” This is part 2 of a Harvard Business Review Spotlight Series, The Business Case for Curiosity (entire series published in Sept.-Oct. 2018 issue). The 3-article series is worth purchasing if you can’t find it in a library.

Permission to Practice: Public Service Boundary Spanning

Free ebook, interviews, and role-plays by the author and eight colleagues, 2021.

Give yourself permission to practice: The case for developing ease in boundary spanning

Preceding Apolitical article in the series, 2022.

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