Changing minds

A Formula for Change

September 6, 2012 By Otis White

Is there a way, before starting out on a change process, to know how much change the community will accept? Not really, because, as in card games, luck and your skill as a player will have a major bearing. But there is a way of thinking about what causes communities (or organizations or even individuals) to accept change. And if you use this simple formula as a guide, it should increase the odds that, luck and skill aside, the change should be significant.

It’s called the Harvard Change Model, and it has three elements:

Dissatisfaction with the status quo
A model or vision of how things would work if the issues were fully resolved
A plan for getting to that vision

When written as a sentence it looks like this: The level of change (that’s the delta symbol above) is equal to the amount of dissatisfaction times the clarity of the model (or vision) times the acceptance of the plan for achieving the model. Change = D x M x P

I’ll explain in a minute how the formula works, but first a note about how I learned about it. It was from David Connell, who was head of corporate education at a large utility company based in Atlanta. We had started work on a regional economic development project when he took out a marker and, on a flip chart, wrote down the formula and explained it to me. He had learned it from consultants from the Harvard Business School; hence, the name. We used the formula in that civic project and several others in the next few years, and I’ve used it ever since. (By the way, David is now the president and CEO of the Cobb Chamber of Commerce in suburban Atlanta, so civic work apparently agreed with him.)

Now, about the formula: It is based on the commonsense notion that no one accepts change unless he’s unhappy with the way things are, has faith that things could be better, and knows what will come next (and what might be asked of him). So the work of those who want change is to:

Increase the level of dissatisfaction (push up “D”).
Help people arrive at an appealing model of the future (push up “M”).
Win broad acceptance of a plan for reaching the model (push up “P”).

But what’s with the multiplication? It’s there, David explained, because each element amplifies the others. The greater the level of dissatisfaction, the greater the desire to find an appealing vision. The clearer the vision, the more people are motivated to take the first steps toward it. And so on.

If you plug in some numbers, you can see more clearly how it works. If you have significant dissatisfaction (7 on a scale of 1 to 10), but don’t get much buy-in on a vision (2) or a plan (again, 2), here’s how much change you’ll get: 7 x 2 x 2 = 28.

But let’s say you could somehow double the acceptance of the vision and plan (that is, from go from 2 to 4), here’s what you’d get: 7 x 4 x 4 = 112 or four times as much change. And if you could do equally as well with the vision and plan as with the dissatisfaction? 7 x 7 x 7 = 343, which raises the level of change by a factor of more than 12.

The numbers, of course, are illustrative. I’m not sure I could distinguish what separates people at level 6 dissatisfaction from those at level 7. But the point is that each element is important and connected. And by working hard on each part, you multiply your effectiveness.

After David explained it to me, he wrote down another version of the formula. This time, he said, let’s imagine you had the highest level of dissatisfaction possible along with an almost universal acceptance of how things could work in the future . . . but had no plan for achieving it. In other words, 10 x 10 x 0. What level of change would you get, he asked me.

It has been a long time since I learned algebra, but even I knew the answer. When you place a zero in an equation, you get . . . zero. And if you neglect any element of the change process, that’s what you can expect: zero change.

This is part of a series of brief postings called Rules for Reformers. For an introduction to the series, please click here.

The Leader as Strategist and Persuader

August 31, 2012 By Otis White

I’ve met a lot of mayors over the years. Some were smart, a few were philosophical, many were shrewd, but only a handful were strategic. One of the few, Frank Martin, died a few weeks ago.

Martin was the mayor of Columbus, Georgia who, in a single term in office in the early 1990s, changed his city. Yes, you read that right: He served a single four-year term. (It was his decision. He finished his term to acclaim but chose not to run again.) And in that single term he set in motion changes that are still being felt, 20 years later.

I met Mayor Martin when I was researching a book about the remarkable turnaround of Columbus’ downtown, which was a desolate and hopeless place in the 1970s, only to be reborn three decades later as a thriving business, cultural, entertainment, and educational center. I wanted to know how these things happened, and that led me to the political leader who had changed the arc of the city. (If you’re interested in the book, you can find it here.)

We had three long conversations, one by phone, one in his office, and a third for a podcast. Each time we talked I was impressed by how his mind worked. He had the ability to look at something familiar (the city he had lived in his entire life or the government he presided over), see assets and opportunities that others couldn’t, and move decisively toward them. And, in a nutshell, that’s what great strategists do.

And one more thing: He knew how to change people’s minds. That’s important because, in civic work, it’s not enough to see the right thing to do. You have to bring others along with you. Martin knew that words weren’t enough. If you wanted to change people’s minds, you needed actions as well. Bold actions.

When he became mayor in 1991, Columbus was at a very low ebb. For 15 years, a handful of business and civic leaders had been searching for ways to turn around the downtown, without much success. For one thing, there was the sheer size of the problem: Block after block of empty storefronts, sleazy bars and porn shops, and some of the tackiest retail imaginable. The good stores had moved out of downtown in the 1960s, and many of the offices had joined them in the 1970s. (No one lived downtown then.) A few new projects had been built—a convention center, a hotel, a new office building or two—but the tide was still running out for downtown.

And beyond that, there was a huge impediment to change, which was the citizens’ deep-seated cynicism. After seeing decades of decline, they thought the downtown was hopeless and any effort to help it was throwing good money after bad. In fact, they thought the same of the city itself. In the citizens’ minds, Columbus was, if not declining, going nowhere and nothing could change it.

So, where do you begin when you’re trying to save a city that doesn’t believe in itself? Martin’s answer was to start with a bang, with what he called his “man on the moon project,” a project so ambitious and difficult to achieve that, when it does succeed, the civic self-doubt fades away. He found such a project on his first day in office, when he opened a closet in the mayor’s office and discovered a complete set of plans for a civic center. A previous mayor had commissioned the plans and then quietly rolled them up and stowed them away, defeated by the project’s politics and finances.

That, Martin decided, would be his “man on the moon project.” He would build the civic center that a line of mayors had talked about but been unable to deliver. To make a long story short, he did just that, and Columbus has an impressive new civic center today. But Martin didn’t stop there. While he was working on the civic center project, he put together a huge bond referendum that in addition to financing the civic center would make sewer improvements, build sidewalks and parks, and construct a major new softball complex near downtown. He campaigned furiously for the referendum and got it passed.

From the outside, this may not seem like much, but in the sleepwalk that was Columbus in the early 1990s, it was a huge awakening. And Martin was just getting started. The sewer project had an interesting feature, he came to understand. It involved running miles of storm water pipes alongside the Chattahoochee River. And here’s where Martin’s knack for strategic thinking came in: Why not turn this sewer project into a major new public asset by placing a river walk on top of it? (The idea wasn’t his, but he once he heard it, he grasped what it could mean.) He approached the city’s foundations and businesses, and they agreed to put up the additional money. The result is one of the largest and most attractive urban river walks in America today, stretching more than 20 miles.

And the softball complex? It became the way that Columbus got a share of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when it served as host for the women’s softball competitions. The city that doubted itself was suddenly seeing itself on international broadcasts, with its beautiful new riverfront improvements as a setting.

I could go on and on about Martin’s accomplishments and how they laid the groundwork for the downtown’s revival. (Again, if you’re interested, read the book.) But at the center of things was a civic leader who combined the mind of a strategist with a shrewd understanding of human nature and what it took to move people.

And these are the things the best leaders do: They see unnoticed assets, find ways of making them greater and far more apparent, and bring others along on the journey. Cities need an army of such people, but sometimes it takes only a few. Or, at the right time and in the right place, just one.

Photo of the Columbus Riverwalk from The Great Project, used with permission

Why Patience Is a Virtue in Civic Work

April 17, 2012 By Otis White

The Grand Coulee Dam in eastern Washington State is a marvel of engineering and one of the world’s most successful public projects. It is the single largest producer of electricity in the country and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. It was begun in the depths of the Great Depression as a New Deal project and began producing hydroelectric power—and lots of it—just months before Pearl Harbor. Because it produced so much power so cheaply (it cranks out enough today to electrify the Seattle area twice over), many give it some credit for winning World War II since Seattle needed a huge power source during the war years for airplane production. And get this: It was actually designed and built under budget. In 1933, when the project started, the estimated cost of the dam was $168 million. It was completed for $163 million.

So, if you are looking for a well-conceived, well-designed, well-managed government project, you need go no further than the Grand Coulee Dam. It’s a little surprising, then, to learn that the idea of the Grand Coulee Dam took shape in . . . 1918. It was then that a group of leaders in eastern Washington found the exact spot for a major hydroelectric dam and conceived its purpose and benefits (cheap power and irrigation for the parched countryside) 15 years before construction started and 22 years before it began producing power.

Why? For the reasons any experienced civic leader knows: Great ideas don’t sell themselves; the barriers to change—any change—are high; and sometimes it takes a crisis to motivate decision makers. And, yet, when the right moment comes along, bold ideas seem almost to leap off the shelf. Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933. Immediately, he and his advisers scoured the country for big public-works projects that could be started in a hurry. One of the first they found—and by far the largest—was the Grand Coulee Dam.

This time lag between concept and acceptance (often followed by frenetic action) is so common that economist Milton Friedman once offered some advice to those who despaired about change, especially his fellow conservatives:

There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

And it’s not just at the federal level that this lag occurs. Many people know that New York revolutionized police work in the mid-1990s by adopting the “broken windows” theory of social disorder. (Briefly, the theory holds that by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes such as littering, graffiti, turnstile jumping, public urination, and so on, you will head off major crimes. The name comes from the idea that, if a building has one window that’s not repaired, vandals will soon break all the windows.) Here’s the surprise: The theory was published in 1982 and thoroughly discussed at the time. It took 15 years for “broken windows” to get its high-profile test.

In Washington, D.C., there’s a mixed-use development going up on the site of the old Washington Convention Center at New York Avenue and 14^th Street. It’s a big project: condos, apartments, offices, shops, and restaurants, packed into 10 acres. Sounds great until you learn that the city has been working on getting something at that site for almost two decades. Most of that time, officials knew they wanted a mixed-use facility—they even chose the developer in 2003—but one delay after another postponed it.

Given this sometimes long and frustrating delay between idea and execution, what should civic leaders do? Five things:

Don’t get frustrated. Ideas are often formed in a burst of energy and creativity and then . . . nothing. But simply knowing that the road ahead is likely to be long may help you keep spirits up. If an idea is a great one—if the benefits to the community are obvious—then it will find its moment. Be patient.
Keep talking about the idea and refining it. Use this fallow period to prepare your idea and prepare others for your idea by coming up with new ways of illustrating its benefits. If it’s a new museum or a streetcar, how many ways can you help people see the museum and its collection or experience the sensation of moving on rail?
Build a committed group of advocates. This is the other thing you can do during the fallow period. The social media allow nearly unlimited ways of keeping the converted in conversation—and converting new people. Use them.
Watch for changing circumstances that may allow the “politically impossible” to become the “politically inevitable,” to use Milton Friedman’s words. It could be a crisis, a change of leadership in a key agency or government—or both. And when it happens, bring your new idea and your growing list of supporters to the new leaders’ attention immediately. If FDR had learned about the Grand Coulee Dam idea in 1934 instead of 1933, chances are it would never have been built.
Search for a work-around.

The last point bears a little explanation. Sometimes bold new ideas can be presented as, well, not so bold. In fact, even the biggest changes in cities can be offered up as small and safe—if they are presented as experiments. This is how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has remade huge parts of New York, building bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, allowing “pop-up” restaurants on city sidewalks, and so on. If he had presented any of these as bold new city policies (which they eventually became), opponents would have killed them.

So how did he do it? He offered them as “pilot projects,” experiments in a small area for the purpose of observation. In part he did this because it allowed the city to do things without going through the cumbersome and delay-prone public review process. But Bloomberg is also an astute observer of human (and political) nature. Had he proposed narrowing hundreds of New York streets for bike lanes, the howls of protest would have drowned out the idea, all of them predicting economic and physical gridlock. But by doing just a few blocks at first, then a few more, then a few more, then a lot more, the mayor and his staff proved that even the busiest New York streets could accommodate cyclists, motorists, and truck drivers—and be more humane for it.

Bloomberg has done this repeatedly over his three terms in office, quietly making small changes that paved the way for big ones. Often, by the time the larger ones are made, controversial changes aren’t controversial any longer. One of his critics, looking at the mayor’s use of pilots to pave the way for change, told the New York Times, “It’s masterful.”

You may be able to offer your change as bite-size pieces, or maybe not. It’s hard, for instance, to build just part of the Grand Coulee Dam and use it as a demonstration project. But whether you offer your great idea as a series of small steps or one long stride, the same advice applies: Be patient.

Photo by Jeff Hanway licensed under Creative Commons.

Decision Phase: Focused Persuasion

December 31, 2011 By Otis White

In a series of postings, we’re exploring how conscious change happens in communities. If you haven’t read the first posting in this series, please take a moment to do so.

We’re on the final leg of our community change process. This is the “decision phase”—although, to be completely accurate, perhaps we should have called it the “decisions phase.” That’s because power is widely dispersed in American cities among levels of government (federal, state, local), types of government (city councils, school boards, authorities, agencies and courts), and individuals. And if you’re involved in major change, you’ll probably need a number of governments and agencies (and maybe a group of nonprofits and other funders) to say yes to your project.

Before getting to the decision phase, though, let’s review a few things you should have mastered in the previous stage, the planning phase. To begin, you should know precisely who has to approve your project and in what order their approvals should come. As you mapped these decision points, I hope you met with some of the decision makers to hear their advice and concerns. By now, you should also have a well-developed narrative, explaining the needs that your project is responding to, how possible solutions were considered, and why the solution being advanced is the right one.

There’s more: You should have lined up champions to talk about the project to different groups of citizens and decision makers. By this point, you should have mastered the details of your project so well that you and your champions can easily explain to decision makers how your initiative will unfold over time, what it will cost in each stage, and where the money will come from. And I hope you’ve built public support along the way, especially among groups most affected by the changes. With your champions, you should have met these groups, listened to their concerns, and answered them well enough that, if they’re not supporting your project, at least they’re not opposing it.

So what’s left to be done after all this? In a word, persuasion. Persuasion that’s focused on the handful of people who must say yes in order for your project to go forward.

In thinking about persuasion, it’s helpful to think first about decision making itself. How do people make up their minds about important decisions? Well, no two people are alike, but it’s safe to assume that most use a combination of two approaches: some sort of logical, cost-benefit analysis, and an emotional calculation involving intuition.

The funny thing is that it’s often hard to untangle analysis (appeals to the mind) and emotions (appeals to the heart). People who are good at persuasion move easily back and forth between them . . . and people who are being persuaded do, too. They get excited about the possibilities of a change, and a minute later think of a hundred reasons it won’t work. So as you’re persuading people, be ready to move back and forth between analysis and emotion, keeping in mind that some people want more of one, some want more of the other, but all need some of both.

But where do you begin in persuading public officials to say yes to major change? You start in the place where we began the map of community change, with the need—the problem or opportunity that your change process was intended to answer.

The need is a powerful motivating force because, if you are skillful in making it felt, it makes people uncomfortable with the status quo, creating a cost for standing pat. Put another way, it creates a “push” for change. But that’s not all you’ll need to motivate citizens and leaders to act. You need a “pull,” as well, and that is a vivid description of how things will be better once the solution is in place. In other words, a vision. Let’s be clear: A vision is not the same as the solution. It’s how the community will look and work once the solution is in place and the need answered.

Example: In the early 1990s, as organizers were trying to rally Atlantans behind a bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics, they often talked about how the games would change the city for the better. Yes, it would be good for the economy and for Atlanta’s image, they said, but those were short-term benefits. Long term, they said, it would make Atlanta a more international city, leave behind a collection of athletic and community venues, and inspire a generation of local children. Did it do all these things? I’ll leave it for others to decide, but the point is that these weren’t descriptions of the solution (that is, the Olympic games). They were descriptions of how the solution would make the community better, and they pulled people toward supporting the Olympics bid.

The third tool in your persuasion toolkit (after the need and the vision) is the plan itself—how the project will unfold, who will be involved, when it will take place, how the money will be raised, and all the other details. You worked all these things out during the planning phase. In the decision phase, you present them to decision makers.

Two cautions about the details: Different leaders will be interested in different details. Elected officials will be drawn to the political details—who is involved, who was consulted, how different parts of the community will benefit, and so on. Bureaucrats will be drawn to the operational details—how much money is needed and when, who will run things, how it will affect existing organizations, etc. If you talked with these officials during the planning phase, you’ll have a good idea of the sorts of details they’re interested in—and these are the ones you should focus on in making presentations to them.

And here’s the second caution: Don’t bring up details they’re not interested in. If you do, the results are likely to be bad . . . or worse. Bad: They’ll lose sight of your winning argument amid the blizzard of detail. Worse: You’ll leave them so distracted or confused that they’ll just say no. Gene Bedell, a former CEO who writes about persuasion, has a simple rule: In trying to persuade, “talk to people in terms of their interests and needs, not in terms of your interests and needs.” And the only way to do that is to let them talk first, listen carefully to their concerns, and focus your persuasion there.

There are three other rules of persuasion to keep in mind.

First, seeing is believing. If it’s possible to see the change you’re proposing, take decision makers there. I’ve written about New York’s amazing High Line project. One of the lessons that its advocates learned early on was that it was hard to describe what the High Line could be in a meeting at city hall, but it was easy to show it while standing on the old freight line. “It was the only way for others to understand it,” Robert Hammond, one of the High Line’s leaders, wrote. ” . . . You brought them up, you showed it to them, and they would do anything for the High Line after that.”

If you can’t get decision makers to travel, then bring the project to them, with maps, models, or anything else that’s visual. And bring those who would benefit from it. There’s a reason politicians in Washington and in state capitals stand shoulder to shoulder on podiums during press conferences: It’s a visual reminder that their proposals have support. If you can bring a hundred people to a city hall meeting room, all wearing t-shirts or stickers in support of your project, you’ve sent a powerful message.

Second, anticipate inertia—and deal with it. Bedell says a lifetime of selling has convinced him that most people have a basic need for security and predictability, which explains why they resist change even when the status quo is not good. The need for security and predictability is “life’s glue,” he writes. “It causes us to stand pat, go slow, to embrace the tried and true.” Even some who are enthusiastic about change will, on second thought, hesitate. “They may talk pioneer,” he cautions, “but they act settler.”

The best way of dealing with inertia is to make it as easy as possible to say yes. Chip and Dan Heath, who’ve written several books about corporate change, call this “shaping the path.” A good analogy is Amazon’s “1-Click” button. To help customers who were new to online shopping, Amazon made ordering from its website as easy as, well, clicking one button.

In approaching decision makers, think of as many ways as possible to make it easier to say yes. How about arranging for matching funds, bringing in officials from other cities who’ve made the same decision, holding public rallies, and so on? Or you might consider an easy, low-cost first step that, if successful, would draw leaders toward larger changes.

Third, amplify your luck. In my first posting on the change process, I said that “every big idea that succeeds in a community requires some amount of luck.” And what is luck? It’s something outside your control that suddenly makes your efforts easier. You can’t command luck; it is, after all, outside your control. But you can amplify it by calling attention to events that confirm or add momentum to your project.

If your project is about childhood obesity, then, any national report about the health consequences of obesity should be worked into your narrative. If your cause is downtown development and tax assessments show property values are rising faster downtown than elsewhere, you can use that to argue for greater investments. If you’re trying to convince your community to invest in light rail, any spike in gasoline prices should be in your next op-ed article.

This gets to the second part of decision making, the intuitive side. Faced with hard decisions, many people look around for some kind of confirmation. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, who has written a book about how people change their minds, calls this “resonance.” Sometimes the resonance is personal. You go along with a change because you feel a connection with the person presenting it. (This is why champions are so important.) But it can be environmental as well. If leaders look around and see events pointing in your direction, it can convince them that your project is inevitable. Don’t miss the opportunity to connect these dots.

Final notes: The end game is about having your changes adopted and implemented. And in all likelihood, that will happen only if you can persuade three constituencies: the public, elected officials, and appointed officials. As I said above, politicians and bureaucrats have different concerns and will be interested in different details in your plan. But so will the citizens, who will be very interested in hearing about the benefits and sacrifices.

Make no mistake, though. You can’t win by fudging the truth, by promising one group that no taxpayer money will be needed while telling another that you’ll need an appropriation. Someone will spot the lie, and you’ll read about it on Twitter and Facebook by day’s end. But while remaining consistent on the need, the vision, and the general plan, you can be sensitive to what people want to know and direct your communications appropriately.

This is a lot of work. Is it worth it? That depends on the change you have in mind . . . and on you. But as the great social psychologist Kurt Lewin once said, you can’t really understand something until you try to change it. By changing your community, you’ll understand the place you live as never before.

Flickr photo by Matt Picio licensed under Creative Commons

Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

June 16, 2011 By Otis White

Bear with me as I tell you the story of a place far away, but one whose story will sound familiar. Maybe all too familiar. It’s Toowoomba, a city of 120,000 in Australia’s interior. The funniest thing about Toowoomba is its name (it’s an Aboriginal word that means, more or less, swamp). Toowoomba isn’t actually in a swamp; it sits atop a range of low mountains and is known as a pretty place where people take pride in their gardens, their local university and their schools.

But as Charles Fishman describes in his new book, “The Big Thirst,” Toowoomba has a terrible problem, which it shares with the rest of Australia. It is running out of water. Australia is 10 years into a drought that has become such a part of Australian life that it is called simply “the Big Dry.” Toowoomba’s particular problem is that, because of its location, it suffers a little more than other places, as water runs quickly off its slopes.

By 2005, with the drought in its fifth year, Toowoomba had done the usual things, forbidding outdoor watering, hiring officers to look for scofflaws, and holding community religious services for residents to pray for rain. No luck. The city’s reservoirs were down to 34 percent of capacity, and political leaders were desperately looking for solutions, any solutions.

You can imagine, then, the excitement that Mayor Dianne Thorley felt when, in May 2005, she addressed a local women’s club with news of a breakthrough: For six months, she told the members, she and city water engineers had been studying water systems around the world and had a plan to recycle waste water as crystal-clear drinking water—extending the city reservoirs’ capacity and, possibly, saving the city.

The reaction? “Dumbfounded,” one who was at the meeting, Rosemary Morley, said. The city wanted to run water from the toilet to the tap? “I came home from that meeting,” she told Fishman, “and my reaction was, “˜How can you go forward with a project like that without running it by people?’ I thought, “˜This is such a sneaky thing. There must be something about it that’s funny.’ “

Even so, it took a while for opposition to build. In the meantime, the city council approved the plan unanimously. The governor of Queensland, where Toowoomba is located, endorsed it. So did the member of parliament from the city. And the national government offered to pay two-thirds of the cost of the advanced treatment facility needed for recycling water.

By then, though, a citizens’ rebellion had begun in earnest. A former mayor weighed in, calling it the work of “sewer sippers.” If it came to pass, he thundered, Toowoomba would be known as “Poowoomba.” A group called CADS, Citizens Against Drinking Sewage, organized. And the federal government, seeing the furor, changed its mind, saying it would participate only if the voters of Toowoomba agreed to it in a referendum.

You can imagine how this unfolded. On the one side, the mayor and water officials offered reason, science, detailed technical information and the experiences of far-off places (in the U.S., Fairfax County, Virginia, and Orange County, California recycle water) to assure voters that it was safe to drink thoroughly treated waste water. On the other side, opponents used slogans, scare tactics and pseudo-science. (Opponents brought in an out-of-town plumber who said he had been studying recycled water and learned it contained tiny amounts of hormones from drugs flushed down toilets. Drinking the water, he said, would cause men to grow breasts and lose their testicles. Keep in mind, this was scientific analysis . . . from a plumber.)

Proponents produced a 40-page book, Fishman writes, “with graphics of molecules and filter barriers, pages of text explaining the technology, photos of water in every possible mood, and many pictures of children.” Opponents issued an eight-page newspaper whose front page had a photo of brown sewage. Underneath, it asked, “Is this our city’s future?”

Well. You won’t be surprised that on July 29, 2006, the voters of Toowoomba said no to the water recycling idea by a thumping 62 percent majority. The only surprise is that it wasn’t unanimous.

As discouraging as Toowoomba’s experience was, it raises a good question: How can you deal with fear and demagoguery? This isn’t something that happens only in the Australian Outback or with proposals for recycling water. It happens every day in America, where complicated issues are put before voters promising an important benefit, but only if voters will pay a little more in taxes, change a familiar habit (such as commuting to work by train rather than car), or overcome their squeamishness. These ideas are sitting ducks for opponents whose only chore to come up with a slogan clever enough to play on citizens’ fears and doubts. When they do, the game is over.

What, then, can leaders do to lessen the inevitable resistance to new ideas and, maybe, win over skeptical citizens? The first thing is to do what Mayor Thorley (known in Toowoomba as Mayor Di) and her city hall allies never did: Recognize how much resistance there would be to such an unexpected and unconventional solution. Here’s how Fishman frames the mayor’s blindness:

What Mayor Di didn’t appreciate that day in May 2005 was that she was introducing a whole new way of thinking about water. She wasn’t being “sneaky”—to use Morley’s word—in the least. But Mayor Di didn’t seem to grasp that people might have different attitudes about water, and about what kind of water is wholesome.

What Mayor Thorley lacked was one of the essential ingredients of leadership: empathy, the ability to see the world from the others’ perspectives. She had been quickly converted to the idea of recycling water. She saw no reason others should take their time. When opposition mounted, she dug in her heels, insisting that the decision had been made, and critics should just get over it. “No consultation, no debate,” Rosemary Morley said. “That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

But realistically, had she been more empathetic, what could Mayor Thorley have done? She could have taken six months to let the public work through the conversion process that she had made in days. When she spoke to the women’s club, her announcement should have been that she was forming a large task force (made up of friends, critics and respected leaders) to look at solutions to the water crisis and involve the community in learning about the options. Recycling water could have been one of the options, but only one.

Knowing how squeamish this option would make people, she could have suggested video conferences between task force members and people in Orange County and Fairfax County. She could have suggested a partial solution: Build an advanced treatment facility but use the water only for non-drinking uses, such as for industrial processes or in city fountains. Then she could have put goldfish in the fountains and invited everyone to watch the fish. (One resident of Toowoomba actually suggested this idea. It would have been persuasive.) After people saw the fish thrive (with no harm to the males), she could have suggested finishing the project.

The secret to defeating fear is a lengthy, open but certain decision-making process, one that allows not just those involved in the decision but everyone an opportunity to learn about controversial ideas without being hurried, to explore alternatives, and discuss and reconcile their feelings. In the end, of course, you have to make a decision. But in most cases, you don’t have to do it at the snap of your fingers. And you don’t persuade others by telling them just to get over it.

So what happened to Toowoomba after the referendum? An advanced treatment plant was built in Toowoomba but only to supply water to a coal mine operator. (The facility doesn’t bring the water up to drinking standards.) Eventually, Toowoomba signed an agreement with another water system to pump drinking water up the mountain. The pipeline and pumping stations will cost about twice what the recycled water system would have and have much higher operating costs that will grow as the price of energy increases. Fear, it turns out, has a price. Toowoomba’s water users will be paying for their fears for many years to come.

And now, the final irony: The water system that’s supplying the water to Toowoomba is building . . . you guessed it, recycled water facilities. So while the citizens of Toowoomba won’t be drinking water that has passed through their own toilets, they’ll be drinking the water from others’.

Photo of Toowoomba City Hall by Tim Swinson licensed under Creative Commons.

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A Formula for Change

The Leader as Strategist and Persuader

Why Patience Is a Virtue in Civic Work

Decision Phase: Focused Persuasion

Dealing with Fear and Demagoguery

About Otis White

The Great Project

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