Government – Page 6

Why You Should Learn to Think like a Politician

January 17, 2012 By Otis White

In his engrossing new biography of John F. Kennedy, Chris Matthews tells us that, in 1958, after he won re-election to the U.S. Senate and was preparing to run for president, Kennedy dropped by Congressman Tip O’Neill’s office. He wasn’t there to talk about public policy; he wanted to know from the congressman’s political aide, Tommy Mullen, precisely how neighborhoods in O’Neill’s Boston district had voted.

Together, Kennedy and Mullen went over the vote totals from Irish, Italian, and Jewish neighborhoods, precinct by precinct. Years later, O’Neill was still amazed by the sight of the future president and his own aide combing through the numbers. “I’d never seen anybody study the voting patterns of ethnic and religious groups in a systematic way before,” O’Neill told Matthews, “and I don’t think that most people realized then, or appreciate now, that Jack Kennedy was a very sophisticated student of politics.”

The key word is “student,” because Kennedy wasn’t a natural politician the way that, say, Bill Clinton was. Before running for office in 1946, Kennedy’s social world was pretty much confined to Harvard, Palm Beach, Hyannis Port, and London. He knew little of working class Boston and, surprisingly, not much about Irish Americans. He also knew next to nothing about how people got elected to office. So he set about learning by visiting local politicians and asking their advice.

Along the way, Kennedy wrote what he heard in a notebook. Here are some of the things he jotted down:

“In politics, you don’t have friends, you have confederates.”
“You can buy brains but you can’t buy loyalty.”
“One day they feed you honey, the next (you) will find fish caught in your throat.”
“The best politician is the man who does not think too much of the political consequences of his every act.”

Of all of the things that made John Kennedy a compelling figure, perhaps the least appreciated was his devotion to the craft of politics, something that became, in Matthews’ words, “an essential part of him.”

What does this have to do with cities and leadership? Just this: As we’ve grown in recent decades in our knowledge of urban economies, street-level planning, city design, the value of diversity, government finance and management, we’ve lost an essential leadership skill—the craft of city politics. Put another way, we now have a great storehouse of what ought to be done, but less and less knowledge of how to do it.

We’ve tried to fill in for that missing knowledge with citizen engagement, by asking citizens what they want, and how they’d like it delivered. (I know. I’ve been part of a number of citizen-engagement projects.) But while engaging citizens is helpful, it’s not enough. That’s because, at the end of the day, we still need someone—elected officials, mostly—to put together specific initiatives, explain these proposals to the public, sell the initiatives to other decision makers, work through the details with bureaucrats, make compromises, get the initiatives enacted, and oversee their implementation. You can use any term you want, but I’m pretty sure that JFK would have called this “politics.”

I’ll offer some ideas about dealing with our political knowledge deficit, but let me begin with two caveats. First, city government is not the same as a city. Cities are complex human environments made up of many dynamic parts, from economics and demographics to technology and culture. And cities are themselves nodes in much larger environments—regional, national, and global.

But if local government isn’t the sum of a city, it is surely the most influential part. That’s because only government has the mandate, platform, and most easily mobilized resources for addressing the issues facing a community. Think of government, then, as the rudder of the ship and some of the sails. And politics? That’s how we decide who gets to be helmsman . . . along with a good portion of the crew.

My second caveat is that politics is about two things. First, it’s about electoral politics, which is what brought Jack Kennedy to Tip O’Neill’s office in 1958. In other words, how people get elected. But second, politics is about legislation, which is how groups of elected officials, government regulators, and other decision makers come to consensus (or don’t) about what to do.

Everyone who wants to be a serious civic leader at the neighborhood, city, or regional levels needs to know both kinds of politics: How people get elected, and how government decisions are made. And not in a textbook way. You need to know how your current mayor ran for office, how she put together a winning coalition, and who was part of the coalition. And you need to know how your city’s most important ordinances were crafted, who was part of the discussions, and how the proposals changed as they moved through the process.

Why is this knowledge important? Because you need to be involved in picking the right helmsman to steer your city. And if you’re going to serve on the crew—along with people from government—you better know how they work so you can do your part.

But how can you learn about the two kinds of politics in your city? First, you can learn it as JFK did, by visiting politicians and asking them. (You’ll be surprised by how candid they’ll be if they trust you.) Second, you can hope for more media attention to the craft of politics. This probably won’t come from the traditional media but it might from new media, such as civic websites, podcasts, or even some alternative weekly newspapers.

Finally, you can create your own discussions. I have some experience with this. For a number of years, I moderated a panel of mayors for the annual International Downtown Association conference called “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Politics But Were Afraid to Ask Your Mayor.” We got together three or four mayors from around the country and let downtown executives ask them difficult questions.

My favorite came from a woman in Iowa who said, “Our new mayor ran on a platform of putting our organization out of business. How should we deal with that?” I was amazed by how candid the mayors were, offering advice for dealing with politicians, advancing ideas, talking with the public, and a hundred other practical tips on politics. They were so candid that I worried a little about how it might affect their careers. (I’m happy to report that, of the 20 or so mayors who appeared on my panels over the years, two are now governors, one is a U.S. senator, and several are still mayors. To my knowledge, no one suffered from participating.)

Every civic organization could do something like this—put together panels that teach politics to people who don’t want to run for office but want to be effective in their communities. And let me make a distinction here. This is not the same as candidate forums at election time or issue forums at other times. These forums are more like seminars in practical politics, where three or four elected officials talk about how politics really works—and civic leaders learn how they can work better with their elected officials. (If your current political leaders are too cautious, invite some former politicians.)

And it’s not just civic leaders who need to know how politics work. So do people who work in city halls, many of whom are surprisingly uninformed about their mayor and city council. Every college planning department and government management school ought to have seminars with politicians who explain how they got elected and how they put together legislation. And every government professional organization (yes, I’m talking about you, American Planning Association) needs to offer refresher courses at its annual conferences.

Finally, it would be a good idea if politicians talked more about politics among themselves. The thing I noticed about the mayors on my panels was how attentive they were to each other’s stories and advice; it was as if they were taking notes. This kind of peer learning is important because, if we had better politicians, we’d have better cities. And it’s particularly needed on the legislative side of politics because it’s hard to get big things done in communities. Many well-intended politicians aim too high and fail—or too low and accomplish little. Get the politicians together, let them talk about what worked and what didn’t, and they’ll improve each other’s winning percentages—and that of their cities.

John Kennedy would have understood the value of peer learning. For all his eloquence and glamour, JFK was a cautious politician who left little to chance. If someone said he’d vote with Kennedy on a major bill, JFK wanted to be absolutely sure he could depend on it. Apparently, this was something he had learned early in his career from talking with Boston politicians. Something about being fed honey but winding up with a fish in your throat.

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

The Mayor as Manager

February 23, 2011 By Otis White

Mayors have three jobs, but most enjoy only one or two of them. The ones they like are creating public policy or building political support for those policies. Almost universally, the one they don’t is managing the city government.

This should come as no surprise. Most people who run for elected office are drawn to public policy (How do we reduce homelessness? How do we keep our young people? How do we connect land use and transportation?) or politics (How do we create a coalition of interests? How do we persuade the city council? How do we get our friends elected?). They don’t run because they want to manage employees. If they wanted to do that, they’d probably be a city manager.

And yet, local governments are complex and challenging organizations and, as we were reminded in the 2008-09 recession, sometimes poorly managed ones. And despite how a mayor feels about the grind of organizational management, it’s a job that cannot be ignored. To do so is to risk every smart policy initiative a good mayor can create and every shrewd political move she can make.

So what does a mayor—or, for that matter, any civic leader—need to know about managing a local government? Here are four of the basics:

During good times, prepare for the worst. The problem with a good economy is that it creates a false sense of security. If a city depends on development-related fees (such as impact fees) or sales taxes (which tend to spike in good times), beware: They can make leaders complacent. The best things to do with boom-time revenues are pay down debt and make capital investments. The worst things to do are hire more employees and hand out generous pay raises and pension increases.

When you make capital investments, ask how they’ll increase productivity. Productivity, of course, is doing more work with the same or fewer people, and corporations have made great gains in productivity in recent decades. Governments? Not so much. This has to change, and the place to do that is with capital investments.

Think back to the Econ 101 class you took in college. Remember the three “factors of production,” the resources that create goods and services? As Adam Smith explained two centuries ago, the factors are land, labor and equipment (which Smith called “capital”). Labor and equipment have a special relationship in that you can substitute one for the other; that is, you can buy labor-saving equipment to . . . well, save labor. And that’s exactly what governments should do. Every time a local government wants to build a building, buy a new computer system or purchase a sanitation truck, elected officials should ask how many hours of labor it will save. If the answer is zero, don’t buy it. If the answer is that it’ll require more employees, run away as fast as possible.

Don’t just ask about productivity—measure it, set goals for it and hold managers responsible for achieving the goals. Let’s not beat around the bush here: The objective is to reduce the city’s workforce while delivering better services to the citizens. It’s simple math really: 70 to 90 percent of local governments’ operating budgets are salaries and benefits. If you can improve the productivity of workers through labor-saving equipment, good training, better work flow and smarter management, you can reduce your headcount, please the citizens, pay higher salaries and hold taxes in check. It is, as economists like to say, “the only free lunch in town.” It’s also the surest route to re-election.

But change never comes easily even when it promises great benefits. Employees don’t like being told to work differently—say, moving from paper forms to electronic—and neither do their managers. So offering better ways of doing things is just the start; you have to ensure the better ways are implemented. And here is where it is critical to have reliable measurements of productivity (number of potholes filled per worker, number of business licenses processed per hour, etc.). It’s the only way to be sure you’re actually doing more work with fewer people.

The good news is that there has been a revolution in measuring productivity in city governments in the last 15 years. For a glimpse of what’s possible, visit New York’s elaborate NYCStat performance-reporting system. You’ll be amazed at the detail with which New York’s services are tracked. They should be tracked just as diligently in your city too.

Stop feeding long-term liabilities. You know what I’m talking about here: pensions and other benefits. We didn’t create our country’s $1 trillion public pension problems overnight. Oakland, California’s city government hasn’t made a full payment on its pension obligations in a decade and a half, which explains why Oakland owes more in unfunded pension liabilities than its entire $400 million annual city budget.

Neither Oakland nor any other local government is going to solve its pension problems overnight, but we can make a start. This means, at a minimum, moving new public employees to defined-contribution retirement plans (like the 401(k) accounts private workers have), ending health insurance benefits for employees retiring early—and never, ever adding to these crippling liabilities again.

You’ve probably figured out by now that these are related. Productivity gains will help governments dig out of their financial holes. Budget discipline, particularly in good times, will keep us from digging future holes. Capital investments are a key strategy for boosting productivity—especially when married to measurements, goals and accountability. And all of it depends on mayors facing up to their least-favorite job: managing the city government as if it were a serious organization. Which, come to think of it, it is.

Photo by Indiana Public Media licensed under Creative Commons.

How a City Creates Citizens

January 14, 2011 By Otis White

A while back, I tried my hand at defining a purpose for cities: Cities exist, I suggested, to create citizens. And who are citizens? They are people who take responsibility for their communities. If a city can do this, it’s as close to a silver bullet as you can find because:

Cities get much better as they create more citizens. Just about every problem in a city is easier to manage if citizens will step forward to help, from social ills and unresponsive government to a struggling local economy. So, just as businesses must focus first on creating customers in order to achieve their other goals, cities should focus first on creating citizens if they want to make progress in any other area.

But how do cities do this? How can they help passive residents become connected, committed citizens—people eager to run for office, volunteer for citizen boards, vote in elections, serve as neighborhood watch captains, tutor schoolchildren and report problems? To answer that, let’s look at a place that does a good job of creating just such citizens and try to figure out how it does it.

The city is Decatur, a close-in suburb of Atlanta. I’ve known Decatur for years and even had an office there once. But I really got to know it last year when I helped with a visioning project that was part of a larger strategic planning process called Where to Next? There are a number of ways of doing visioning, which involves convening groups of citizens to think about their community’s future. The one we used in Decatur asked citizens to attend three separate sessions lasting two hours each, with each session focused on a different set of topics.

A good rule of thumb for visioning projects is to aim for getting at least 1 percent of residents to participate, depending on population. (It’s easier to get a higher percentage in a small town than in a big city. In New York, for instance, 1 percent would be 90,000 people.) Decatur has fewer than 20,000 residents, so the goal should have been to get 200 participants. In fact, organizers got 740, three-quarters of whom attended all three sessions.

But it wasn’t the numbers that convinced me that Decatur had cracked the code on citizenship. It was what participants said in those sessions. One theme I heard repeatedly was the feeling of connectedness and community ownership people felt there. As one person put it, Decatur was the kind of place where residents expected “a hello on the street, pride in the community, (the) ability to be involved and contribute.” Another added, “There are 66 homes in my neighborhood; I know 55 of those families.”

Even more striking, these citizens wanted more opportunities for involvement. There were lots of ideas about how the city government could help with this, from “volunteer expo” fairs to booths at festivals and neighborhood block parties where people could sign up for community activities. One group suggested a “sister streets” program, somewhat like “sister cities,” so neighborhood leaders in one part of the city could get to know leaders in another part—and trade ideas and assistance.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m accustomed to hearing participants in visioning projects say they want greater connectedness with their community. But I’m not used to them saying they already feel fully connected—and want even more involvement. So how did Decatur get to this enviable place?

Well, it has some advantages. Decatur is a small, densely developed city. It’s only 4.2 square miles in size and was built mostly before World War II, when houses were closer to one another. It’s easier to be neighborly when you are physically close to your neighbors. Decatur is also a well-educated place, a city where 62 percent of adults have four-year college degrees or higher (nationally, only 28 percent have bachelor’s degrees). As a rule, the higher the education, the greater the level of civic involvement.

But these things simply mean Decatur started with some advantages; they don’t explain how the city capitalized on them. And for that, the local government deserves a good deal of credit. Here are five things Decatur’s government has done to create citizens:

It has a great citizen-education program called Decatur 101. Classes are free, held in morning and evening sessions, and there’s usually a waiting list of people who’d like to participate. Offered since 2000, Decatur 101 has seeded the community with people who know how city government works, what the city’s history and most important goals are, and who holds elected and appointed office. Not surprisingly, graduates of this program are among those most likely to serve on citizen boards and run for office.
It has a surprising number of community events, two of which are its acclaimed annual book festival and beer festival. (Thankfully, these are separate events.) But they’re just the beginning. By my count, there are more than 40 festivals, concerts, events and parties sponsored by the city or non-profits, many of which are supported by businesses. There’s a serious side to this fun: Public events connect citizens to their community and each other—and open up numerous volunteer opportunities. These are keys to building citizenship.
It has a town square, where most of these events are held. I don’t think having a town square, main street, courthouse, central park or clearly defined downtown is essential to creating citizens, but it helps. That’s because community citizenship requires a larger sense of loyalty—to the city as well as a neighborhood, ethnic group, religious faith, political faction or workplace. And having a place where everyone in a city comes to celebrate—“neutral ground” that belongs to the entire community, not a neighborhood or private interest —helps build that larger loyalty.
Decatur has a full-time volunteer coordinator in city hall whose job is to match community volunteers with volunteer opportunities. Many of these jobs are helping with the city’s festivals and events, but others are ongoing responsibilities such as crisis-line volunteers, pre-school tutors and nursing home visitors. In the last 10 years, the city’s volunteer coordinator has built a database of 2,000 volunteers—10 percent of Decatur’s population—and helped move a generation of residents from wanting to serve to actually doing so.
It does a good job of communicating with citizens. Decatur doesn’t have its own daily or weekly newspaper. Its main news vehicle is a newsy, smartly designed newsletter published by the city and supported by local businesses. Called Decatur Focus, the newsletter is mailed 10 times a year to local households and keeps citizens aware of community events and what the government and their fellow citizens are doing.

Interestingly, though, communications was an area citizens thought could be improved. They wanted more frequent communications, delivered in new ways, mostly electronically. But they also wanted new types of information: about how to get involved, which problems to keep an eye on, what neighborhoods were doing to improve themselves, what could be recycled, how to take advantage of recreation opportunities and farmers’ markets to be more fit and healthy—and on and on. This is important because it shows that Decatur’s citizens viewed city government as more than a service provider; they saw it as a potential information resource —with innovative communications pushing out that information to citizens every day.

This may, in fact, be the highest level of citizenship a city can aspire to: where citizens tell the government, give us the information we need to make this a better place, help out where you can, and we’ll take it the rest of the way. Decatur is on the verge of reaching that level. Other cities should join it.

Seven Ways Community Decisions Are Different

September 1, 2010 By Otis White

I am sometimes asked if community decision making is different from other forms of decision making—say, the kinds used in companies or nonprofits. And my short answer is yes.

But I’d like to offer a longer answer, which is that community decision making is different not in one or two ways, but in a number. And because it’s different, it means we need different kinds of leadership in communities, leadership that is far more patient, collaborative and comfortable with ambiguity than we expect in CEOs or executive directors. I think you’ll see why as we move down the list of differences.

One: In most communities, legitimacy for big decisions comes from the bottom up (citizens), not the top down (CEO or board of directors). As a result, everyone expects a voice in community decisions.

In most ways, this is the sign of a healthy community, but it can lead to problems if citizens are asked to make decisions they’re not in a good position to judge. Take, for example, a proposal to start a streetcar system. To know if this is a good idea, you might want to visit Portland, Oregon or other places that have streetcars and see their impact, but not many citizens can do this. They depend, then, on others to visit, ask questions and report back to them—people like newspaper reporters and community leaders. And that would be fine, except for the next way community decision-making is different . . .

Two: There is little deference or ceding of expertise in communities. Many business employees and nonprofit workers are discouraged and cynical. But even corporate cynics will concede that, in some instances, top executives know more than they do and perhaps have good reasons for trying something new. But that’s not the case in many communities, where citizens do not presume that community leaders know better than they do —or even more than they do.

Three: It is much easier to slow or stop things in communities and much harder to get them started. That’s by design. In America, responsibility and power is dispersed among levels of government (local, state, federal) and types of governments (cities, counties, government authorities) and then fought over by independently elected officials (mayor, city council, and maybe a half-dozen others). And all of these parties are governed by legal requirements that serve to make the time line of decision making much longer in communities than in organizations. The result is that even the best decisions move slowly—and sometimes get stopped cold.

Four: It isn’t just the legal responsibility that’s dispersed. Resources are as well. Take almost any big community problem —from improving public safety and maintaining neighborhood parks to creating a more walkable downtown—and you quickly realize that these aren’t government problems alone; they involve multiple interests, from neighborhood associations and youth athletic associations to private property owners, businesses and special interests. All of these interests have resources they could contribute to the solution—if, that is, they agreed with it. As a result, the community decisions must be made collaboratively if they’re going to be effective.

Five: News media coverage of communities is far more extensive than of organizations. Again, this is a healthy thing—except that it exposes the “sloppiness” of decision making far more than in corporations and nonprofits. Don’t get me wrong: Decision making in big companies is sloppy too, with loud debates, false steps and corporate intrigue. But with few exceptions (think about BP’s repeated failed attempts to plug the 2010 Gulf oil spill and its clumsy public relations efforts), the sloppiness isn’t apparent to outsiders. Not so in communities. Fumble a big community decision—by going down one decision-making path and then abruptly changing course—and you’ll read about it in the newspaper and probably lose public support.

Six: Leadership is not as easily defined in communities as in organizations. That’s because community initiatives can come from many places—local governments, business organizations, neighborhood associations, nonprofits or individuals. (As an example, Kansas City is building a light-rail system because a single person got enough signatures on petitions to place the idea on the ballot and the voters passed it—over loud warnings by government and business leaders that light rail wasn’t feasible.) Companies may make poor decisions, but we know who makes them. That’s not always the case in communities.

Seven: In organizations, the measurements of success are clear: profits for corporations and results for nonprofits (the hungry are fed, trees are planted, museum attendance is up, etc.). There are no easy measurements of success in communities. This makes it harder to know whether past decisions succeeded and opens every new decision to long debates about outcomes and benefits.

I don’t mean to suggest that decision making is easy in corporations. I’ve spent enough time around large companies to know how gut-wrenching it is to deal with markets that suddenly collapse, competitors that emerge overnight or technologies that turn your industry upside down. Decision making in companies is fast because it has to be. CEOs would love to have the long time horizons of mayors and county commissions. But they would hate the ambiguity and loath the painstaking process of consensus building.

So when you hear someone say that your city should be run like a business, just say two words: Not possible.

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Why You Should Learn to Think like a Politician

Decision Phase: Focused Persuasion

The Mayor as Manager

How a City Creates Citizens

Seven Ways Community Decisions Are Different

About Otis White

The Great Project

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