Decision making

How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens

October 22, 2014 By Otis White

I like crises. Mind you, I don’t like being in them; I just like reading about them and thinking about how I might manage them. I don’t read Stephen King novels, but I suppose the effect is the same.

You, too, should think about crises because, knock on wood, you are likely to find yourself in one at some point in your public-leadership career if you haven’t already. And these things go better with a little forethought.

So, what is a crisis? You may have your own definition, but mine is that they are unexpected events that seem to defy the standard solutions and must be dealt with immediately. It’s the middle part that makes them so scary: For a time at least, the normal processes don’t work. You can imagine what fits this description: natural disasters, riots, system breakdowns (think back to this summer’s Toledo water crisis), economic disruptions (say, a major local employer shutting down), and scandals.

So what do you do when business as usual breaks down? You work hard to restore order, promise a full inquiry into what went wrong, and speak directly, clearly, and fully to three audiences: those dealing with the crisis, those most affected by it, and everyone else in your community.

This sounds simple but isn’t. That’s because, first, there’s no assurance what you do will work. You may have to try, fail, and try again. Second, you must speak to citizens and those working on the crisis without promising the unknowable (how and when the crisis will end). Finally, people around you will be demanding that you not say anything at all. After all, it’s a crisis. Why are you standing in front of TV microphones? Oh, and by the way, they’ll tell you, there are bound to be legal consequences, so it really is better to keep your mouth shut.

Ignore them. The difference between private management and public management is the public part. As a result, what you say to citizens about the crisis and your efforts to resolve it is every bit as important as what you do. In fact, I would argue that having someone in charge who is thinking about what he or she will say in public an hour later makes for better decision making.

So the first thing you can do to prepare for your first crisis is to think about how order might be restored in a range of calamities. The second thing is to think about how you would communicate these things to a frightened or angry public.

The third thing is to get to know those you’ll depend on in these situations—police, fire, public works, civil defense, key city hall staff (including communications staffers), disaster-relief organizations, and so on. If you’re in a position to do so, suggest mock disaster exercises. (One reason then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was so cool headed on Sept. 11 was that he, his staff, and the police had practiced for disasters.)

Finally, you can build relationships in areas where, if worse comes to worst, you may need help: minority communities, charitable organizations, faith communities, and so on. In almost any major crisis, you’ll need these groups’ support and assistance, but in a particular type of crisis their support will be critical. That’s when government itself is seen as the cause of the crisis (think Ferguson, Missouri or a city hall scandal). In these cases, you’ll need friends in a hurry. Do you have a list of community leaders who’ll stand behind you on a podium as you explain your actions? If not, it’s time to get busy.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Lieven Van Melckebeke licensed under Creative Commons.

The Magicians of Main Street

August 20, 2014 By Otis White

If you know nothing else about cities, know this: City governments don’t really run them. They police, regulate, and plan cities; they facilitate their growth and tend their needs; they supply some services. But run cities? No more than the National Park Service “runs” national parks. The parks run themselves. Park rangers make sure humans don’t do anything so bad that it interferes with nature’s order.

So who runs cities? Well, they run themselves. But their direction is set by a multitude of interests working together, from neighborhood groups and nonprofits to local businesses and foundations—with governments playing an important but not exclusive role. This has always been true, but as I’ve written, it is growing even more so today. Some of the interests that have a say in a city’s direction are relatively new, like neighborhood groups and business improvement districts, but others have been around a long, long time.

One that has endured is the local chamber of commerce. Chambers have been so central to civic leadership for so long, it’s amazing that a serious history of these organizations hasn’t been written. Until now.

Chris Mead, senior vice president of the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives, is the author of “The Magicians of Main Street: America and its Chambers of Commerce, 1768-1945.” I found the book fascinating—and you may too. (Full disclosure: Chris sent me an early draft, and I made some small suggestions. He was wise enough not to follow all of them.)

Among the things I learned from reading “The Magicians of Main Street”:

Where chambers of commerce came from and why they’re called chambers as opposed to, say, associations. Answer: The first chamber was organized in France in 1599, where it was called a chamber de commerce. The idea and name jumped the English Channel to Great Britain, then the Atlantic to North America, where chambers caught on almost immediately among the sociable, business-minded Americans.
How far back in American history they go, and how resilient they are. By the time of the American Revolution, there were fully functioning chambers in cities like New York and Charleston. Alas, these two chose the wrong side in the war, which caused them to fold after independence—only to be revived almost immediately, this time with business people in charge whose loyalty was unquestioned.
How the focus of chambers shifted in the mid-1800s. In the early years, chambers were focused on, well, commerce—specifically, international trade. But in time, they moved toward the things we associate with chambers today: improving and promoting their cities and regions.

And here’s where I found Chris’ book especially interesting: Turns out that nearly every important civic improvement of the 19th and early 20th centuries (canal-building, railroads, highway construction, air travel, industrial development, tourism, anti-corruption efforts, city planning) were either helped along by chambers or outright invented by them.

Along the way chambers did surprising things. Charles Lindbergh’s history-making flight across the Atlantic? St. Louis’ chamber of commerce raised money for it and got an early version of naming rights in return. (That’s why Lindbergh’s plane was called “The Spirit of St. Louis.”) Al Capone, the gangster who terrorized Chicago in the 1920s? The Chicago chamber played a role in putting him in prison. (That Eliot Ness guy got the credit, of course.) The Miss America Pageant? That was a chamber of commerce invention, along with a string of world’s fairs and college bowl games. Even Punxsutawney Phil, the star of Groundhog Day, was created by a chamber of commerce.

This is not to say chambers were always on the right side of history. Some were supportive of segregation and unconcerned about bigotry. Chris points these things out, too.

But there’s much to learn from studying these enduring civic organizations. One thing is how consistent they’ve been over the years. After the Civil War, chambers everywhere created a kind of civic agenda around transportation, education, good government (or, at least, a business person’s definition of good government), economic development, and community image. They’re still focused on these things.

Another is how effective they’ve been—sometimes spectacularly so. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was in the news not long ago for a bridge scandal. But all the attention made me wonder: Who thought up this government agency, which owns and operates airports, seaports, bridges, tunnels, and transit in the New York area, and then sold the idea to two governors, two state legislatures, and Congress? Chris’ book gave me the answer: A chamber did.

Finally, “The Magicians of Main Street” left me with an even deeper appreciation for civic volunteerism. You would think if there were a group that would be indifferent to civic work, it would be business owners and executives. After all, they celebrate competition and individual accomplishment, not collective action, and an executive’s time is so valuable, why should you expect her to give it away? But, it turns out, business people are among the easiest to organize in most cities, as chambers have shown us time and again.

I’m not sure why that is so, but it is. And, as I learned from reading “The Magicians of Main Street,” it has been this way since businessmen wore tricorne hats.

Footnote: You can buy the book on Amazon by going here.

Photo by Adam Fagen licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson Four: The Art of the Compromise

July 15, 2014 By Otis White

I’d like to persuade you to stop badmouthing the “c” word. The word I have in mind is “compromise.” Done right, a compromise is a way of opening the door to change by reducing the objections of interest groups. And it is the closest thing in politics to an art form.

That doesn’t mean all compromises are good, of course. Some satisfy interests but don’t create much change. In fact, some compromises are designed just to paper over problems. (In Washington, this is called “kicking the can down the road.”) Others appear at first to be ingenious solutions but come apart because they aren’t sustainable. And some look so ungainly that even participants call them “ugly babies.“

But just as you can admire the creative process while sometimes not liking the art, I encourage you to step back and look at how your city hall arrives at these deals. Yes, by all means write about the bad deals and car-wreck compromises. But also develop a little curiosity about why some compromises DO work. Look for patterns in the way they are arrived at in your city. Figure out who your city’s compromise artists are. And by all means, don’t denigrate the art form.

Before we begin, though, a little perspective: If you’ve read the introduction to this series and the first three installments, then you can see some themes developing. Projects and policy ideas tend to flow into city hall from the outside. The city council is at or near the center of decision making, sometimes in the lead role, sometimes in the mayor’s shadow. And the central issues of cities have to do with land and how it is used by people.

This lesson is about the most important work that mayors and city councils (and sometimes others) do, which is creating compromises that allow projects and big policy ideas to move forward.

Now, please don’t charge out the door looking for these things. Major civic projects and big policy changes don’t come along every day. Most of what mayors and city councils do is routine: creating and amending budgets, approving small policy changes, making appointments or approving personnel changes, reviewing contracts, and acting as quasi-judges on zoning matters and development decisions.

But that’s why you should sit up when one of these difficult decisions does come along. That’s when talented politicians do their best work, bringing the interests together, finding hidden areas of agreement, plotting the way forward, and figuring out how to present the results in ways acceptable to other politicians and the public.

And they do this in one of two basic ways, by personality or process. That is, they personally hammer out a compromise, or they send the dispute through some sort of process that the combatants and larger community feel is fair.

Here are two examples of the personality-driven compromise. First, a small but telling compromise authored by Mayor Ed Murray of Seattle allowing ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft to operate in his city while offering taxi owners just enough to quieten their opposition. (Why is it “telling”? Because a mayor who can knock out a compromise like this in his first six months in office demands our attention.)

The second, more sweeping example is Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s 2012 plan for reforming his city’s schools, which required that he get state legislative approval and the governor’s support after reaching a series of compromises with local business interests, educators, reform advocates, and labor and ethnic leaders.

The personality-driven approach seems to be the way most compromises come about, and in cities with strong mayor forms of government that’s what you expect to find. (Story idea: If your city has a strong mayor system and there are big disputes not being resolved, why? Does the mayor not consider these things important, does he not consider fashioning compromises as part of his job, is he bad at this work, or is there some other reason? What do others in the city say?)

The other way of reaching compromises is with a process. San Diego’s “ugly baby” compromise on housing was a “locked-room” process. Basically, the city council president sent the interests to a room and told them to come back with something they could all support.

Other processes involve task forces, which involve broader community interests, and mediation. Mediation was how Minneapolis resolved a difficult dispute over a light-rail line. In this case, you see the importance of fairness in a process. The compromise was reached after the mediator proposed it, but it was pretty much the same set of ideas others had suggested. When it came this time from a neutral party, city officials took it to heart.

Finally, there are those compromises that are so complex they defy easy description. Detroit’s “grand bargain,” by which it will exit bankruptcy in the months ahead, is a web of compromises involving a federal bankruptcy judge, the governor, the city’s emergency manager, state legislative leaders, foundation leaders, the mayor, business executives, Wall Street interests, labor leaders, and a host of others. Which parts of the bargain were contributed by leaders and which came as a result of the bankruptcy process? Hard to say precisely, but the biggest elements (including the foundations stepping in to support the art museum) were clearly the work of creative leaders.

So, how can you report on compromises in your city in new ways? Well, you can start by reverse engineering them. That is, you can begin with the deal, which is almost always announced publicly, then ask who was involved at each step and how each element of the compromise fell into place. I promise you this will make a great narrative that will tell you and your readers much about how your city works.

Then you can ask not only how the compromise came about but why. People usually agree to things involving sacrifice only because they fear an alternative. So what were the alternatives? And how were they presented to the different interest groups? (This alone may be a fascinating story, as you may see that the alternatives presented to one side were the opposites of what was presented to the other.)

Finally, you can revisit some earlier compromises. Some likely will have failed. Why? Were they too ambitious, not ambitious enough—or were they designed (consciously or not) for failure? If they were designed for failure, what were the design flaws? For those compromises that succeeded, again . . . why? Did the interests find the alternatives so frightening that they stuck with the bargain through good times and bad? Did participants discover over time that there was hidden value in this new way of doing things? Or did the interests just move on to other issues?

What about the personalities and processes behind these compromises? What makes some leaders good at crafting deals? Do they use a standard way (some leaders use anger and threats, others tend toward calmness and reason) or does each situation demand a different approach? If they sent the dispute through a process, what was the process? Why did it work? Why did people accept it as a legitimate way of deciding these things?

This is the heart of civic decision making as it plays out inside city halls. And it’s what makes talented politicians so valuable. Perhaps the best comparison is to business leaders who see markets others can’t and ways of reaching those markets that don’t exist yet. Donald Trump once called this “the art of the deal.” In politics, the compromise that allows progress while sustaining itself is the work of art.

Footnote: So why do reporters denigrate compromises? I’ll let others do the full analysis, but let me offer one theory. It has to do with nonzero-sum contests.

Huh? Most city hall reporters also report on political campaigns, and elections are zero-sum contests. (Google the term.) That is, every vote I get is a vote you have to overcome and exceed in order to win. There aren’t that many zero-sum contests in our lives. Sports, conventional land wars, card games, a few others.

Most of our lives is spent in a nonzero-sum world, where both sides can gain from a transaction and, sometimes as a result of cooperating, the pie grows. I hope your newsroom is a nonzero-sum environment, along with your family life, your relationships with friends, even your dealings with merchants. (If you’re happy with the car you bought and the dealer is pleased with the money, then voila. Nonzero sum.)

The problem for some reporters and politicians is that they have trouble making the transition from the artificial world of zero-sum elections to the more common world of nonzero-sum government. Put another way, they can’t believe that a compromise where no one walks away with a clear win isn’t . . . well, fishy.

If that is so, then every successful marriage, enduring business, and long-term friendship is fishy. Because like good compromises at city hall, they too live in a nonzero-sum world.

This is one of a series of postings about better ways of understanding local government and writing about local politics. To read the introduction, please click here.

Photo by Cabinet Office licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson Two: The Switching Yard of Change

June 3, 2014 By Otis White

If you accept that the central issue for cities—and their governments—is people and places, how they interact, and how they can be made to interact better, then there are two obvious questions:

How can people and places be made to interact better?
How will those changes come about?

Let’s deal with the first question. If you read Lesson One, you know my answer is that cities must find ways of using land more intelligently and creatively. What does that mean for your city? Answering this is your job as reporter or blogger. I gave you some starting points. Now go forth, observe, question, and write.

Now, about that second question: How will changes in land use (or, really, anything important to a city) come about? In other words, setting aside the changes themselves, how does change come to a city?

This is a big subject and one I’ve spent years writing about. This blog is filled with entries about how communities change, who is involved in the process, what aids change, what hinders it. I’ve written a multimedia book about a civic project that changed a city. If that’s not enough, you can consult my podcasts, which are interviews with people who’ve changed something big in their cities, focusing on how they did it.

I got interested in this subject in 1990 as I watched the greatest civic long shot I’ve ever seen take shape: the campaign to bring the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta. I was editor and publisher of a business magazine at the time, which gave me a perfect position from which to watch this crazy idea and its nearly anonymous father (a mid-level lawyer named Billy Payne) work their way methodically through a city’s complex decision-making process and eventually through the even more Byzantine processes of the International Olympic Committee on the way to a stunning result. Honestly, the games themselves were not so exciting.

One of the things I’ve learned since is that this crazy process wasn’t all that uncommon and maybe not even all that crazy. To explain, it helps to divide change processes into three parts. First, where do big civic ideas come from? Who comes up with innovations and big civic projects (say, to pursue a streetcar line, create a major new park, or bring the Olympics to a city)? Second, what happens to these ideas as they move toward resolution? Who gets a voice along the way and how do they exercise it? And, finally, what determines whether ideas are ultimately accepted or rejected?

I’ll give you a few ideas here about these three parts. If you want more, click on “Archives” at the top of this blog, then try searching through some of the tags to find exactly what you’re looking for.

To begin, where do big civic proposals come from? Usually not from city hall. That is to say, big (and especially disruptive) innovations typically don’t come from mayors, city managers, or city council members. They come from broad based civic organizations such as chambers of commerce or more narrowly focused groups like downtown associations, parks conservancies, and transit affinity groups. And sometimes they come from preternaturally determined individuals like Billy Payne—a group I’ve taken to calling “visionistas.“

This is not what I thought when I was a city hall reporter. If you had asked me then for an analogy that explained the public-policy process, I would have hemmed and hawed and said . . . “it’s like a factory.” That is, somebody (the mayor, the city manager, a council member) comes up with an idea or improvement, then runs it through the bureaucracy and city council . . . you know, like an assembly line.

I know now that’s not way it works with most truly big ideas. Turns out, city hall isn’t as much a factory as a switching yard, where political leaders wave a few proposals through, rearrange the cars on others as they load them up with additional freight, and send still others off to the sidetracks.

That’s not to say that politicians don’t have important roles; they do. It’s just that they aren’t (and we shouldn’t expect them to be) the originators of ideas. At their best, they are the recognizers of needed civic innovations and, at the right time, their champions and facilitators. (For a paper about how three acclaimed mayors created change in their cities, please go here.)

So where do the ideas that steer your city in one direction or another come from? That’s for you to find out in your reporting. And here’s a way to get started: Take a look at the three biggest proposals that city hall has considered in the last five years. (If you’re not confident in your ability to do this, poll city council members. Ask them whether they favored them or not to list the biggest proposals that have come before them in recent years.)

Then do some reverse engineering. Where did these ideas come from? Who were part of the early discussions? How did they attract enough support to move forward? Were these borrowed ideas (in the sense that they were things other cities had tried first)? If so, how did they come to the attention of civic leaders? (If your city does “intercity trips,” where groups of political and business leaders visit other places, this could be the source.)

Then move along the timeline. How were these proposals modified over time? Who was consulted? Who had to say yes? Did anyone say no at first, only to change his mind later on? Why? At some point, the cost of the proposal had to be considered. When was this done and who were part of those discussions? (If your local government has a city manager, he or she was almost surely in the room . . . probably with the dominant voice.)

In a democracy as tight as a city’s, public reaction had to be considered. When did supporters think about how to explain their ideas to the citizens? Who were part of those discussions? Did the messages change over time?

Finally, the proposals had to be resolved. Who had to say yes to them formally (that is, at an official meeting) or informally (such as among interest groups)? Did a state or federal agency have to approve it? Was there a referendum? And who managed the approval process? Was the same group involved at every step or did its composition change?

This is a big piece of reporting, but it will change the way you cover city hall because you’ll understand that what happens at city council meetings is only the most visible part of processes that stretch across the city and originate months and maybe years before. Not to diminish public decision making, but a city council meeting in some ways is like a performance. This reporting will take you backstage to where decisions are made, the cast recruited, and roles assigned.

What you’ll learn along the way is that your city has political fault lines, interests that, depending on the issue, must be consulted before decisions are made. You’ll find out who these interests are, how they are consulted, and what they want for their support.

And something else: You’ll learn the joy of writing a political narrative. Most of what city hall reporters write about are events, with an occasional issue backgrounder, investigative article, or profile. They rarely get a chance to tell a real story with a beginning, a middle (filled with complications and near-misses), and an end. Writing about how your city makes big decisions by tracing several of them will give you that opportunity. You might like it.

One thing is certain. Once you get a peek backstage, you’ll never look at your city or its government the same way. Nor will your readers.

A postscript: When I was a city hall reporter, there was a flurry of “power structure” studies, where a newspaper would name the “10 most powerful people in . . . (fill in the name of your city).” Most reporters didn’t know this, but the power-structure idea went back to a book written by sociologist Floyd Hunter about Atlanta in the 1950s called “Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers.”

Hunter’s premise was that the same 40 people were involved in decision after decision and that these 40 Atlantans made up a “power structure.” (Hunter used pseudonyms for the 40, but it has long been a sport in Atlanta to figure out who they were.) Hunter’s thesis has its passionate defenders and its passionate critics. Yale political scientist Robert Dahl wrote an entire book, “Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City,” disputing Hunter’s premise, nearly line by line.

So is there a cohesive power structure in your city? Or is power far more free-floating, as Dahl argued, with some people involved in some decisions, others in other issues, with little overlap? That’s for you to determine. But I’d urge you to go into your reporting with as open a mind as possible. Otherwise, you’ll discover only what you believe as you start out.

This is one of a series of postings about better ways of understanding local government and writing about local politics. To read the introduction, please click here.

Photo by Sookie licensed under Creative Commons.

What’s New in Cities . . . and What’s Truly New

October 17, 2013 By Otis White

Cities have been around for thousands of years, and most of their biggest issues are nearly as old: safety, sanitation, transportation, education, commercial development, regulation, and so on. We think of new and better ways of doing things, but for the most part we are, as technology critics so often put it, “paving the cow paths.” That is, we are merely making the old more efficient.

Every now and then, though, something truly new comes along. And if we apply old ways of thinking to truly new issues, we are going to make a mess. For the past three years, I’ve been trying to see what’s truly new in cities, and I’ve done it with some 19th century technology: a filing system. Every time I run across a newspaper article, nonprofit report, or academic study that describes something that seems new, I place it in the file. (I do it on my computer, but you could do it with paper if you’re so inclined.)

I decided recently to take a look at the file, starting with its first year, March 2011 to March 2012. (A little distance helps in spotting the new.) There were 77 items in the first year’s file. The vast majority, 62, were the result of changes in technology, four were economic changes, and 11 reflected some new way of thinking or living.

It didn’t surprise me that technology took up more than 80 percent of the new. We’ve long known that technology is a major driver of change. And, sure enough, some were of the “paving the cow paths” variety—the rise of public-safety cameras, apps that help people report service problems, the growth of electronic tolling. If you’re not a toll-taker, these aren’t technologies that will radically change your life. They just make old systems work better.

But some of the technological changes in the file will have a much deeper impact. There are apps, for instance, that make it easy for small groups to map every public asset in a neighborhood, dramatically shifting accountability. There is a whole new category of “sharing” activities made possible by smartphones, from bike sharing and car sharing to apartment sharing and even parking-space sharing. And then there are e-books.

The biggest mistake governments make is when they think of these things as business as usual. E-books are not just paper books in a new form. They will dramatically change the nature of libraries. And the “sharing” technologies will demand that local governments think in new ways about transportation and regulation.

But maybe the most intriguing items in my file were changes in beliefs, practices, and lifestyles. One was the rapid rise in people living alone in cities (that is, with no spouse or roommate). Is this just a very small family, or will solo living cause new demands on cities? I’d bet on the latter. One prediction: It will fuel the demand for safe public spaces.

There were others: Philanthropy’s rise in urban leadership, as well as new understandings about childhood development that may take us far beyond pre-K programs, back to the first two years of life. And, of course, there were the food trucks.

Worth repeating: Some of these new technologies and changes in lifestyle and belief will require governments to think anew. If you try to regulate food trucks as bricks-and-mortar restaurants, you’ll soon be in tears. It won’t work. You have to treat food trucks as a whole new category.

You won’t do that, though, if you haven’t developed the habit of seeing what’s new. I recommend a file. Just toss in everything that seems new to you and, after some time has elapsed, go through it and ask: Is this truly new, or is it just more asphalt on the cow path? If it’s truly new, then ask: How do we think about this new thing?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Alan Stanton licensed under Creative Commons.

« Previous Page

How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens

The Magicians of Main Street

Lesson Four: The Art of the Compromise

Lesson Two: The Switching Yard of Change

What’s New in Cities . . . and What’s Truly New

About Otis White

The Great Project

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