Adjusting to Government Work Environment… You’re a Facilitator!!??

One of the things that I have always been sensitive to or very aware of is my work environment.  The environment of a Government contract can be very challenging.  First, the environment depended on whether or not you are working on a contractor’s site or on the client’s site.  If you are working on the government site, the agency’s culture dominates the environment.  However, if you are working off site, the Prime contractor culture or a hybrid of their culture may dominate the office.   So, you are constantly learning about what is and isn't acceptable behavior.

The first time that I realized that I was in a completely different type of environment occurred when I had a casual conversation with one of our managers, Allen...  Some work had been completed, it was OK, but it wasn't stellar.  And I said, “At home we would say Good Enough for Government Work.   By the way, what do Government people say?”  He responded,” Don’t ever say that on a government job site again.  The government is very sensitive to that remark. “   

The next new discovery was Marge, our Facilitator.   I had come across managers or chairs that facilitated meetings but I had never come across anyone who had that position as their main job role.  Every department had at least one Facilitator and their job was to attend meetings and make sure that the meeting stayed on topic and was productive.   No, they did not take notes and if the meeting stayed on topic, they may not even speak.  They just attended meetings.  However, the strangest part about Marge was that she did not have an IT background.  I didn't understand how you could keep everyone on topic, when you weren't really familiar with the topic yourself.  In fact, I still don’t understand.  Also, I thought that it was ridiculous to have a facilitator in meetings anyway.  Responsible adults should be able to conduct meetings and get tasks accomplished.  I thought that it was just a waste of money until I attended a meeting where the chair did not have any facilitator skills.  We still had a productive meeting; however the products were chaos and frustration.  One complaint that I hear about Government all the time is that it should be run like a business.  However, I think that it can’t be run like a business because the end goals are different and, an extraordinary amount of politics occurs in the simple day to day operations.  And, of course don’t forget bureaucracy.