The Buzz with ACT-IAC
The Buzz with ACT-IAC
Human-Centered Design in Government: COI's Journey from the former Soviet Union to Qualtrics
In this episode of The Buzz, host Yohanna Baez speaks with Sydney Heimbrock, the Chief Industry Advisor for Public Sector at Qualtrics and co-chair of the ACT-IAC's COI (community of interest) on talent. She shares her extensive career journey, including her transformative experience in the former Soviet Union and her efforts to integrate human-centered design principles into governmental processes. She discusses the importance of collaboration between industry and government, explains human-centered design, and explores the potential impact of AI on federal talent pipelines. Heimbrock emphasizes the value of public service and encourages the next generation of innovators to consider careers in government.
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Intro/Outro Music: See a Brighter Day/Gloria Tells
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound
(Episodes 1-159: Intro/Outro Music: Focal Point/Young Community
Courtesy of Epidemic Sound)
Yohanna: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of The Buzz. We're thrilled to have the Chief Industry Advisor for Public Sector at Qualtrics with us. She also serves as the co-chair of the Act I Yak community of Interest on talent. Today she shares her incredible journey, including an impactful stint in the former Soviet Union.
Yohanna: She'll explain how she's brought human-centered design principles into governmental processes. Enjoy the episode. This is Yohanna Baez with the Buzz. I am here with Sydney Heimbrock, please introduce yourself. Let let our audience know who you are and, and why are we talking today.
SYDNEY: Yeah, so I am Sydney Heimbrock.
SYDNEY: I'm Chief Industry Advisor for Public Sector at Qualtrics, and we are here today I think, to talk about the ACT I Act community of interest on talent, which I have the privilege of co-chairing as industry co-chair.
Yohanna: Like what is it that brought you to Acti and why is [00:01:00] it that you are, um, part of the, the COI?
Yohanna: So
SYDNEY: what brought me to ACT IAC is basically. Um, well I started working with ACT IAC a very long time ago, uh, when I was in government serving as an executive at the Office of Personnel Management. And, um, the, there was a community of interest. I think they were called something different back then. EWG or something like that.
SYDNEY: Um, but, uh, it was essentially a community of interest on workforce issues and they came and asked me to serve as advisor. And um, that was the first time I'd ever heard of ACT iac and probably because I spent the first half of my career working overseas. So there wasn't, wasn't as much opportunity to participate in some of the DC based, uh, associations, but.
SYDNEY: I, because of my work [00:02:00] experiences, I fully embraced and understood the deep importance of collaboration between industry and government. Um, basically you, you know, government loses big time when they don't get exposed to what's going on in the private sector. And the private sector can't be expected to be responsive to government.
SYDNEY: If they don't understand how government works, the only way to make those that mutual understanding happen is to bring people together. Literally, it's a very human problem and it's a very human solution. So I. I really loved, um, serving as advisor to act iac. Um, I then, uh, one of the things I did at OPM was create a little thing called the innovation lab, which, uh, was designed to teach human-centered design to the federal workforce.
SYDNEY: And obviously, you know, [00:03:00] technology is, is always important. It's how we do our work, right? It's the. I mean, in many cases it is the building in which we do our work. You know, there's, there's a building and then there's the tech and the, in, in most ways, really, the tech is even more important. Um, so I realized that if we were really going to spread this amazing, uh, discipline called human-centered design, we had to.
SYDNEY: Figure out how to get it embedded into technology, and that's why I went to my first ACT IAC event, which was in Williamsburg, Virginia, was. Wonderful and delivered an HCD workshop just to sort of spread the word that we were around and wanting to collaborate. So, um, then when I left government, obviously once, you know, once you're outside of government, you're much more free to do things.
SYDNEY: So my first stop really [00:04:00] was act I Act two. Volunteer as an industry representative to the talent COI,
Yohanna: like what is it that initially drew you to this field, whether it was government or technology or maybe that intersection of both. Where is it that you kind of, where did Sydney come from basically is what I'm,
SYDNEY: well, starting with government, right?
SYDNEY: I had the, the sort of, basically the dumb luck of being born when I was coming outta school when I did, which was. Right after the Berlin Wall came down, after I was, um, always very interested in helping people, right. Uh, and wanted in particular to help, um, people who were essentially structurally disadvantaged.
SYDNEY: So after I finished school, I came to DC and worked as a contractor at the Department of Labor in the Office of Job Corps. Which helps disadvantaged young people who have dropped outta school out of high [00:05:00] school, um, to learn a trade and learn how to, you know, take care of themselves and financial literacy and, and health education, things like that.
SYDNEY: And I absolutely loved it. And then the Department of Labor was sending teams to the former Soviet Union to rebuild. The system because if, if you think about what the Soviet Union was, it was really like a huge labor policy on steroids. Yeah. It's all about it. It it, it instigated with, uh, you know, labor activism.
SYDNEY: It became a system in which everyone was guaranteed employment and everything was about making sure that the workforce, you know, was supported throughout their lives. When that collapsed, they had to figure out how to completely transform the system literally overnight and [00:06:00] build democracy and build market policies and programs.
SYDNEY: So I was lucky enough to get selected to serve in that role, to go and work in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe. And build workforce systems. What I learned there is how devastatingly damaging it is when a government is not responsive to its people. And that made me realize, huh? There's a whole field, right.
SYDNEY: That I had not really been part of up to that point. On, uh, public management. How do you create accountable, responsive, efficient, effective government organizations? And you know, for me, all roads always end up back to workforce. So. After I decided to stop traveling all the time [00:07:00] and come back home, um, and getting, I got a PhD and then I came back into government as an executive at OPM to basically do the same thing, but now inwardly facing, like building my own government.
SYDNEY: Um. And then fast forward, so I led human capital strategy for the president's management agenda under George W. Bush. And then, um, president Obama came in with a platform to transform government through its people, by unleashing the federal workforce's, innovation and creativity. And he came to OPM and said, you all have to figure out how to do that.
SYDNEY: You're like, uh, thank you, sir. Okay. So we'll try. So I saluted and marched and had a, a great team. You know, from the very beginning there was a great team involved of political [00:08:00] leaders as well as, um, civil service folks, and we stood up the innovation lab because we real, we there, we did a study of.
SYDNEY: Organizations that were known at the time as really cool places to work, what makes them cool? So we basically copied that, right? We created an open collaboration space. We introduced human-centered design. We did projects, programs. In fact, one of our early successes we did with, uh, Javier Inkling, who is my government co-chair on the talent community of interest.
SYDNEY: So Oh, wow. Okay. Our roads keep coming back and intersecting in, in really fun ways. So, um, anyway, so that was, that was my introduction to government, uh, former Soviet Union. Then introduction to human-centered design was the lab at OPM, uh, and. When [00:09:00] we were, you know, teaching people in the lab, I, from the very beginning, I was trying to figure out how do we scale this and how do we embed it into the everyday operations of federal employees so that the, the training and the workshopping would really stick.
SYDNEY: It would actually become the way we do the work of government. Um, and that's what led me to Qualtrics. Because essentially Qualtrics has automated human-centered design, so you can scale it and embed it.
Yohanna: When you say human-centered design, what are the tenets of it? What are some of the things that maybe I can eyeball and see like, oh, I think that's connected to this.
Yohanna: So that's what are all of the. Nuts and bolts behind it of how it is, how it Yes. Gets, how it's put together or how it works, or, you know. Yeah.
SYDNEY: So in technology, which is the world that we're talking about today, um, the, a common application of human-centered design is user experience. So the fundamental idea of human-centered design is you [00:10:00] cannot expect your product, program, policy, or service to work.
SYDNEY: If you haven't designed it for and with the people who are gonna use it,
Yohanna: right? Like Right. So like a reverse engineer of the idea, like think of the audience, think about the person that's gonna use it, and then go from there and go backwards to Exactly. Okay, cool.
SYDNEY: Exactly. Uh, Arbinger Institute has a version of it that's called outside in Thinking, which is a really nice, simple way to explain what it is, right?
SYDNEY: Mm-hmm. So, and in government. In my experience to this day, there is a tendency to take a law, write a regulation. Create business processes that implement the regulation and only at the very end think about, oh, and how are people gonna do this? Right? How are they actually going to use it? Well, what if we put people at the center from the very beginning?
SYDNEY: So one of the things that [00:11:00] Qualtrics has done is work with a team in Australia that has experimented with human-centered policy design.
Yohanna: Oh wow. Um,
SYDNEY: so, so part of the, so, so conceptually, right? If you put people at the center of design from the beginning, okay. You start with listening, you start with understanding the actual, the focus groups and stuff.
SYDNEY: Yeah. The, or just surveys or, you know, open social scraping or any form of listening. And bring that really rich experiential data to the table in a form that's actionable. Right. And that's where it gets tricky because qualitative data is unstructured and it's messy and Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so you have to have very specific tools that will surface the themes, the issues, the challenges that people have.
Yohanna: The, or like the strongest pattern, right. The strongest pattern kind of is the, yeah.
SYDNEY: Exactly. And then take action on that. [00:12:00] Right? Make decisions, make designs that actually reflect how people think, feel, and behave. Mm-hmm. And again, it's not rocket science, but it's, it kind of runs counter to how government has operated traditionally.
SYDNEY: Mm-hmm. Um, and so it has been a pretty major transformation. I mean, I'm really excited that, to see how much it has stuck so. Another application of it, uh, sort of beyond it is customer experience, which is the business. Qualtrics is in customer and employee experience. And, and the, the, the idea of customer experience, design and management is listen to what your customers want, need and experience and design everything you do to make their experience optimal.
SYDNEY: Yeah. Right. So. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And it, um, it really does, [00:13:00] you know, there's a lot of ROI data now after 15 years of doing this in, in government, um, that it, I. Significantly improves mission outcomes, it saves money. It speeds deployment. It's, it's just, there's nothing bad about it, you know?
SYDNEY: Um, it's all good. So that's why I've been so passionate about why are we not doing everything this way? We should be doing everything this way. If we wanna save money, if we want to be more responsive to. People we serve. This is how you do it.
Yohanna: So you're talking about CX and ui. I know I, I know these terms, but I know them in like super tech, in the tech world, like startups and stuff.
Yohanna: You know, why don't we do this more? Because it's, if it's efficient and all these things, you know, like, I mean,
SYDNEY: the good news is we are doing it more. We have been doing it more. There are now customer experience teams in government now, unfortunately, [00:14:00] a lot of them cut, got caught up in the big. Disruptions that have been happening.
SYDNEY: Um, but look, the, there's an executive order on customer experience that was drafted during Trump's first administration. I've been fervently hoping that he's still got, you know, the same people who are aware of how important this is because, you know, it's, it's been in the commercial sector for longer than it's been in government.
SYDNEY: Um, major. Uh, I would say all the major companies, uh, use it because it works, because it saves them money, it increases profit. It certainly has a significant impact on customer loyalty. Um, so, you know, it works. So I think during the first Trump administration, they were very interested in bringing that private sector goodness into government.
SYDNEY: So I'm very, very hopeful that, as. [00:15:00] The disruption settles down. People take a step back and look at what do we need that they realize this, this rises to the top. This is how you get the work of government done. And in fact, it's now legislated in the Government Service Delivery Improvement Act. So, you know, it is a statutory requirement that they do customer experience that's
Yohanna: there.
Yohanna: Okay, good. That's good. All right, great. So do you think the Soviet Union was like a pivotal moment in your career, or, or is there something else that you'd, you'd wanna share?
SYDNEY: Yeah, I would say the two biggest influences on what I'm about as a person were. You know, getting thrown into this very disruptive, chaotic environment and literally building things from scratch.
SYDNEY: With people who, you know, ha worked [00:16:00] in the governments that we were partnering with and were, were just struggling to figure everything out. You know, they're just people who were also thrown into an un unexpected situation. No one expected the Berlin Wall to come down literally in one night, and the Soviet Union to collapse quite quickly after.
SYDNEY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and so. Everyone and, and I think that's part of why I'm so passionate about government workforce because every government employee I've ever worked with. Has has been passionate about serving their country and doing the best that they can with extremely limited resources, you know, and, and so given those huge resource limitations, it's amazing what people can get done in government.
SYDNEY: Um, so anyway, so that was. You know, being, being in [00:17:00] that world and being part of such an exciting, historic moment, um, fed my passion for government. And then, uh, starting the innovation lab, learning human-centered design. That was pivotal because my experience with human-centered design was once I, uh, learned what it was and went through the experience of doing a design project, I.
SYDNEY: I realized, oh, this is the language. That's how I think. It's like this has been here the whole time. Wait a minute, trust me. It was so frustrating to then look back and realize, oh, what we could have done right in the former Soviet Union if we'd only applied human-centered design and we did the best we could, but we, we just didn't have the language and the methods and the tools.
SYDNEY: Yeah. So,
Yohanna: yeah. Okay, cool. All right, so when you made it out of, uh, the Soviet Union, you made it out of the chaos and you got back to the States. [00:18:00] Um, I'd like to know kind of what brought you to the ACT IAC community. I know that you, uh, mentioned it earlier in our conversation. I just wanna know, I. Has your journey evolved over the years in contact with us or with our events and, and the things that we, we do?
SYDNEY: Yeah. I mean, I would say, first of all, like I said, I hadn't heard of it until I was approached to serve as, um, an advisor for a community of interest. And so at first, you know, I was just an advisor. I was very busy. Executives at OPM have a tendency to be given. Pretty vast portfolio to, to lead. So I, I would characterize my initial role as pretty, pretty passive.
SYDNEY: I would show up to the meetings, people would tell me what they were up to. I would give them advice, let them know what OPM was up to, you know, and that was it. Then it was really the Williamsburg event, and I think it was an ELC, um, where I realized, oh [00:19:00] wow, this is a very vibrant. Innovative community, right, of people who are really passionate about changing government for the better.
SYDNEY: Um, and so, you know, the lab was pretty involved with ACT for quite a while. Several people from the lab and. Again, like I said, once I left government, it, it really was the first stop I made was, okay, now I, I have more time. I'm freer. I don't have ethics restrictions, you know? Now I can actually. Give my time more fully.
SYDNEY: Uh, and so obviously, you know my expertise and experiences in workforce, so I came to the what is now known as the talent community of interest.
Yohanna: Expand on that a little bit. When you think of your role, do you think of, are you like someone who's just, uh, making introductions or do you see yourself as like someone who is like.
Yohanna: Open to mentoring [00:20:00] others and, and guiding them. I mean, I think it's
SYDNEY: all of the above. If you think of, essentially, I think of the talent community of interest as a community, what does it take to make a community cohesive? It's social capital and trust. Yeah. So we bring people together, we create meaningful.
SYDNEY: Activities, projects, um, that are, that we know are going to help people to be better leaders of the workforce, um, by, by incorporating workforce into their thinking and driving improvements, right? I mean, that's essentially what it's about. And so. We have those projects and activities. Um, a lot of focus on just convening people so that they can share what's going [00:21:00] on.
SYDNEY: We always provide structures so that you know it, it doesn't just become a random get together, it's purposeful. You know, people are, people are convening around a shared passion for workforce issues. And we have, you know, because, and I think it's partially because we're all talent people, we're all workforce people.
SYDNEY: We always focus on developing the next generation of talent. And so, uh, we sponsor associates projects. Um, I have mentored several associates groups over my time with ACT iac. Individuals who have connected with me through the, through the association. So yeah, it's, um, it's just being, uh, I would say it's, it's being [00:22:00] the people who remind everybody that you can't get anything done.
SYDNEY: Without the workforce. Right. So, yeah, absolutely. I agree. Yeah. And that, and that brings us to the other communities of interest that are exploring. You know, more technology focused innovations and transformations, and I think our role is sort of just to keep our hand up and say, Hey, what are you, what are you gonna do about workforce?
SYDNEY: Right? Mm-hmm. What are your workforce challenges with and how can we help you, you know, account for and design for the people who are actually going to implement the stuff you're bringing into government.
Yohanna: Yeah. So that, that keeps you engaged across different chapters and, and career and organizational shifts.
Yohanna: I'm, you know, I'm assuming[00:23:00]
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Yohanna: What has helped you stay grounded and committed during transitions, whether between jobs, administrations, or personal milestones? Well,
SYDNEY: I think what keeps me grounded is my [00:24:00] personal mission.
SYDNEY: I mean, I, you know, I'm here walking around on this planet to make it better for people, and I do that my. Particular place where I do that is government. 'cause everybody has a government. And so it, it, it really behooves us to make sure that people's governments are responsive, accountable, efficient, effective.
SYDNEY: So that keeps me grounded. It doesn't, you know, the way I think of it is I'm moving around across different platforms to get this done. First platform was overseas. The second platform was in the federal government. Now I'm on a tech platform. A platform. Yeah.
Yohanna: Okay, good. So yeah, so the, your core values and your goals still remain constant.
Yohanna: It doesn't matter where you are, you know? Right. You, you still stay. You. Yep. [00:25:00] Exactly. What does true collaboration between government and industry look like to you and how, how have you seen it done right within your COI?
SYDNEY: So I think it's really important to be very clear about the range of outcomes that collaboration gets you to.
SYDNEY: So yes. Act IAC exists for as a partnership between industry and government to share information, develop mutual understanding, so that we're faster and more effective in continuously improving government operations. Right, and collaboration is the way we do that. Collaboration also builds social capital, right?
SYDNEY: This is so in [00:26:00] political science, there's a long tradition of study of what makes democracies work. There's literally a famous, uh, study by Robert Putnam with that title, and what makes democracy work is trust. What built between government, industry and people, there's like a three-way trifecta and there has to be trust.
SYDNEY: How do you build trust? I mean, think about your own personal relationships. You have to spend time together, right? That takes time. So there's, you know, the, when trust is the outcome. Efficiency isn't the, isn't the goal. It's connection. Right? It's trust, it's mutual understanding, it's empathy, it's listening, [00:27:00] you know, so, and those things just.
SYDNEY: Take time.
Yohanna: Moving at the speed of stress. Having empathy. Having vulnerability. Exactly. I guess walking into a room knowing like you might not know everyone or know everything, but then also there's like, it's like I don't, people are just shy when it comes to things like that. Like, I don't know, should I, you know, open up.
Yohanna: How much of myself should I open up?
SYDNEY: The reason people are shy is they feel vulnerable. The reason they feel vulnerable is because of power. The reason there's power is because of incentives. Right. So how do you, how do you kind of flatten all of that? Yeah, right? Disrupt all of that. You focus everybody on the outcome.
SYDNEY: You know, this comes straight out of military doctrine, military leadership doctrine. If you're gonna win a war, you gotta be listening to the war fighter on the front line. It doesn't matter how many stars you [00:28:00] have, you gotta listen to the war fighter on the front line with no ego, with no power imbalance, right?
SYDNEY: And that, again, it's, it's a leadership skill. It's about, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, developing the willingness to listen and not Yeah. Immediately react with a power move. Right.
Yohanna: Was there a moment where. The disconnect between talent and mission became especially visible or personal for you. What I'm asking is mostly like what happens when that isn't, when everybody isn't on the same page, it's difficult to kind of like present and say like, Hey, this isn't working.
SYDNEY: Okay. So there are kind of two different problems embedded in that. One is alignment and the second is skills. Um, I'll deal with the second one first. Yeah. I've been in. I, I would say almost everything I tried to do [00:29:00] in government, we had a skill deficit and we knew we had a skill deficit. Um, and so you have two options.
SYDNEY: You either train the people you have or you bring in new people and either one takes money, so. I think it's, uh, it's important for, for us who worry about effective government to really look at the, um, number of times that we've failed a mission because of a skills deficit, and then compare the cost of that failure to the cost of training or hiring people.
SYDNEY: So anyway, get off my soapbox on that one. You know, oh, one [00:30:00] really graphic example, when we stood up the innovation lab, we needed people who knew human-centered design, and there in government it was new. So what do you do? I went out and I hired people from the outside. Yeah. Thank God I had enlightened leadership who realized, yeah, if we're gonna accomplish this goal, we gotta have the right people.
SYDNEY: That's good.
Yohanna: You, you identify the problem and, and you, you know, saw that disconnect between, I guess digital talent, you know, mission delivery, you saw that gap. A lot of folks, a lot of folks see those gaps and they like, might be too scared to like say, Hey, we gotta do, I had
SYDNEY: another situation where I didn't do it right.
SYDNEY: I just tried to keep slogging through and it was, I, I actually hurt somebody and. Cloud, I will never do that again. I will never do that again. Yeah. I asked somebody to step in and do way more than they [00:31:00] ever should have been expected to do. Um, and, you know, they got sick. Hmm. And it was like, Nope, I'm never doing that again.
SYDNEY: You know? That's good. So, but the other, the, the, the other thing embedded in your question is alignment. And that takes us back to leadership. You just have to spend the time with the team. Yeah, you have to be open and transparent. Sometimes decisions come from above, and guess what? We're lucky that we all are adults and adults understand that sometimes, especially in government decisions come from above and your job is to execute the decision.
SYDNEY: To the best ability that you can and, and point out critical dependencies, right? How are we gonna get the right skills? How are we gonna get the right tools? How are we, you [00:32:00] know, and you point those out, but then you figure it out together and. That's, that's just about spending the time with the team and being willing to listen, but also being really clear on where the what, what are the drivers, and getting everyone willing to keep going and try the best they can and recognize when people do that, right, when they give discretionary effort, when they come up with creative solutions.
SYDNEY: When they show up, even though they don't agree. Yeah. You have to recognize when, when people are doing that because that's, that's a good job. It's doing a good job
Yohanna: and it's motivating. Mm-hmm.
SYDNEY: It is very much so.
Yohanna: All right, so this is a two-part question, and I, and I think this is a, a relatively solid segue.
Yohanna: Like what's one bold idea you think could reshape how we approach federal talent pipelines over the next [00:33:00] decade? So that's one part of. The question. And then the second part is imagine it's 2035 and your idea actually worked. What's different now and what does success look like?
SYDNEY: I mean, I hate to be that guy, but I am gonna say ai.
SYDNEY: I am really interested in how AI is going to shift our ability to listen to people. It already is shifting our ability to listen to people. So, you know, I've watched recruitment and hiring people, um, in, in government and the approaches that they've taken, and there is a very human aspect to it. Obviously that has to be retained.
SYDNEY: Because you know, it's a human experience to figure out what you're interested in doing to find the right [00:34:00] place to do that work, to connect with people, you know, to make sure they know you're there to, to go through the hiring process, et cetera, et cetera. Um. But how might we actually be able to listen for people's perspectives on the kind of work that we do in government and engage with them to shift their perspectives so that they're interested in joining government?
SYDNEY: I think there's a lot that recruiters and hiring staffing specialists have to do today. That can easily be automated, especially now with agentic ai saving the talent that we have in, in our HR shops for the very strategic human experiential element of building talent pools, you know, [00:35:00] bringing people in, um, giving them a good onboarding experience, which we know is pivotal for performance.
SYDNEY: So, um, that's, you know, we're looking at that obviously at Qualtrics, and it's mm-hmm. It's definitely, um, has huge potential to, to really shift people's experience with, um, jobs searching. With interviewing, et cetera, et cetera. So,
Yohanna: so, so you would start probably with a pilot program. 'cause like a lot of that data has to come from what's currently happening.
Yohanna: And then I think from there, trying to figure out where the holes or the gaps are, you know? So then in 10 years, what does it look like? Like in your, in your world, what does that look like in 10 years? Where AI has been has been able to like help us with just, I guess, time management and taking a lot of admin work off our plates.
SYDNEY: Yeah, exactly. So that we, [00:36:00] we humans can focus on understanding the people that we're trying to bring into government and understanding and designing for them, you know, so for example, and this is gonna sound a little creepy, but. Recruiters set up tables at recruitment fairs, and some students go to the recruitment fairs.
SYDNEY: Many students don't go to the recruitment fairs. Um, I mean, I, I will admit I was one of those students that never went to a recruitment fair because I found it too intimidating. Okay. So a recruiter's understanding of the students. Is based on that in-person interaction at the recruitment fair. That is as a only a small segment of the student population.
SYDNEY: They don't know what they don't know about who's missing what If we could listen to student [00:37:00] conversations? Absolutely. Like, like in the dorm, like, I mean, I'm not advocating this, but in the quad, in the dorm, like obviously right, you'd have to pay attention to privacy and security. Mm-hmm. However, it would be interesting if you get, if you had volunteers who were willing to gather, you know, willing to wear this pin you're talking about.
SYDNEY: Mm-hmm. And, and just have conversations. And what if a recruiter could listen to those conversations and, and develop a much deeper understanding of how students perceive different employers, different jobs, different career opportunities. Right, different recruitment events. Mm-hmm. Like maybe. Maybe we stop setting up tables that were group affairs because the students say, God, I would never do that.
SYDNEY: You know? So, um, I think we would, but again, it's [00:38:00] human centered and we'd become way more efficient and effective at Oh yeah, for sure. And who otherwise we're missing? I mean, we're missing the vast majority of the population. So, yeah, but I still think
Yohanna: that that's worthy, it's still a worthy pursuit to, to be like, to have that physical contact with folks and actually like handshake, I think that's like not going, going away.
SYDNEY: Yes, exactly. But, but again, it would be much more effective if you went to the right place. Right. So again, you know, being human centered and, and this is part of why. AI now opens new opportunities for us to listen across channels. Why is that important? Because we're going to where people are. We're not asking people to come to us.
SYDNEY: That's much more [00:39:00] human-centered. You know, you, I can tell you for sure, you're missing all the introverts because they're. No way. Are they gonna Oh, absolutely. You know, show up or if they do, they're nervous, they're uncomfortable, so they're not showing up. Well, yeah. Um, and then, you know, how often are we able to get out to a rural community college?
SYDNEY: Right. How often are we able to get to a tech school? And so again, we're missing the vast majority of talent in this country. I. When, you know, when we do traditional recruitment. And so again, being able to yeah, connect with people at scale across channels, that's, that's nirvana.
Yohanna: Um, I guess my last question is, we were talking about college students and stuff.
Yohanna: Uh, if you had one minute with the next generation of public service innovators, what would you say? I would say
SYDNEY: ignore the [00:40:00] headlines serving your country. By working in your government is the best job there is. You become a part of history. You contribute your skills to things that actually matter, that make a direct impact on the people around you, your communities, your state, your region, your country, and you can put yourself in a position to actually create better experiences for people today.
SYDNEY: And design your future. Design the future for the people you serve and design your own career future so you don't have to stay, right? This was a myth that I heard a lot is, oh, once you get into government, you never leave. Well, I'm testimony to that, right? I left twice and came back. It's not it. You can treat it as a career progression step.[00:41:00]
SYDNEY: Um. And I think that, I think that's a great goal to have to, I think everybody should serve in some capacity at least once. Whether it's, you know, serving in a federal government agency, a local or state government agency. You should, you should get on the inside at least once in your career. Uh, just to understand.
SYDNEY: Not just how government works, but how amazing government really is when done well. So encourage everybody to, you know, to treat that as a, a really valuable part of your career.
Yohanna: Thank you so much. That's a great, that's a great minute. I hope it was only a minute. I dunno. That's great advice. I, I, I'm taking it.
Yohanna: I don't know if anybody else is gonna take it, but I'm gonna take it. [00:42:00] Um, yeah. Thank you so much for your time. This has been really fun. Very great conversation. Is there anywhere folks can reach out to
SYDNEY: you? I have folks reaching out to me all the time on LinkedIn, so yeah, feel free to contact me there.
SYDNEY: I'm always happy to chat. Uh, yeah, I, I'm toward the end of my own career and really spend a lot of time now just helping people who are starting out or in a transition, uh, just to figure out what the options are. So always happy to help. Great.
Yohanna: Thank you so much. Yep. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Buzz.
Yohanna: Stay tuned for more conversations and insights in future episodes. Until next time, stay curious and connected.