Leadership skills

A Mayor’s Test for Good Decisions

February 12, 2015 By Otis White

Decisions are what government executives, elected officials and civic leaders do. They may make them in groups or alone, in public or private, but they spend a great deal of time preparing for, making, and carrying out decisions. Which begs the question: How do we know if we’re making good decisions?

We certainly know what good decisions are supposed to do: Solve problems or fulfill opportunities without creating equal or greater problems. These unintended consequences often take time to develop, so it’s hard to judge decisions right away. As time passes, though, we can usually see the good and the bad more clearly. That’s why support for past decisions either grows or melts away.

This is good news for historians, but not so good for decision makers, who need something quicker: a real-time test they can apply hours before making a decision, something that tells them if they’re on firm ground or about to step into quicksand. Is there such a test?

I’ve searched for one for years by wading through books on decision making and asking people who make decisions. And I’ve found it: a checklist you can use to steer clear of most bad decisions and have confidence in good ones. Most impressively, it came not from a book . . . but from a mayor.

Before I share it with you, let me tell you what I’ve learned from the books. First, we are filled with hidden biases, and if you know the most common ones (“confirmation bias,” “sunk-cost fallacy,” “anchoring,” and so on), you’ll avoid traps and, in general, make better decisions. Any book by Dan Arierly will tell you about your biases. Second, there are disciplined ways of thinking that will lead to better decisions. You’ve almost certainly used some of them, such as SWOT analysis. Some you probably haven’t, like PEST analysis (Google it) and Peter Drucker’s Five Questions (Google it, too). Read up on these and other strategic planning techniques; they’ll help.

Still, this wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted a test you could apply the day before a big decision and sleep better that night. That’s why I sat up when a mayor offered hers.

The mayor was Teresa Tomlinson of Columbus, Georgia, and she described her test while I was interviewing her for a podcast about why she ran for office and what she had learned along the way. The test—she called it a “pep talk—was a checklist she had developed as a young lawyer before going to trial. (Click the media player at the top of this post to hear Mayor Tomlinson describe it in her own words.)

The mayor’s test is simple but demanding. It asks four questions:

Am I doing this for the right reasons so my motives are pure?
Have I done my homework so I know what I’m talking about?
Have I sought out, listened to, and respected others in coming to this decision?
Have I been reasonable in my approach?

If you have done these four things, as Mayor Tomlinson says, “then you are OK and you need to stay the course just as hard as you can.”

What Tomlinson’s test won’t tell you, of course, is how history will judge your decision. Nor will it tell you what might happen in the future—whether circumstances could change in a week’s time causing you to rethink things. But most decision makers understand that. What they need is a way of telling if, knowing what’s known at this time, this is the right decision to make. The mayor’s test, answered honestly, will do that.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Sasquatch 1 licensed under Creative Commons.

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.

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.) 2023 update: Ed Murray was, indeed, a talented mayor who was undone after three years in office by a sex scandal.

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. A book ghostwritten for Donald Trump called this “the art of the deal.” (There’s little evidence Trump was much of a dealmaker, but others in business are.) 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.

What Would FDR Do?

April 23, 2014 By Otis White

We usually think of politics in communities in two ways: as the “big-P” politics of campaigns and referendum—noisy, zero-sum contests that get lots of public attention—and the “small-P” politics of gaining approval for policies and projects. These are the nonzero-sum contests of compromise and tradeoffs that revolve around regulatory approvals, planning board and city council votes, and the occasional state law.

But there’s a third version, a kind of meta-politics that’s critical to progress but rarely gets noticed. It’s the politics of public opinion. How important is public opinion? Listen to Abraham Lincoln: “With public sentiment,” Lincoln said, “nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”

But how, exactly, do you mold public sentiment? And are most civic leaders good at it? The answer to the second question is no. The answer to the first can best be understood by turning to another president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, second only to Lincoln, was the greatest molder of public opinion ever to occupy the White House.

Roosevelt’s masterpiece was changing American attitudes about involvement in World War II. Yes, Pearl Harbor was the defining moment, but by December 1941 public opinion had already changed greatly, as Lynne Olson tells us in her recent book, “Those Angry Days.” And that was Roosevelt’s work.

He could not have faced a more daunting task. There was a strict “neutrality act” passed in the mid-1930s that banned arms sales to any nation at war. America’s own military was a shell. (Weapons were so scarce that only a third of U.S. soldiers and sailors had ever trained with them.) Congress was overwhelmingly opposed to intervention, and so were the American people.

So what did FDR do? He bided his time (to the despair of the increasingly desperate British) as he set in motion several forces that changed public opinion. The most important: He quietly encouraged nonpartisan citizens’ groups to begin campaigning for American support for the Allies. Then Roosevelt (to all appearances) gradually acceded to their demands, first in asking for changes in the neutrality act, then in offering more generous aid to the British, then in lobbying for a buildup of the military, and finally in asking Congress for a peacetime draft. It was a step-by-step process that took two years’ time, with Roosevelt never more than a half-step in front of the public.

Today we would call this “leading from behind”: letting others be the point people for change as you remain in the background. It requires a secure person to lead this way. Secure in two ways: First, emotionally secure enough to let others occupy the spotlight. Second, secure in the messiness but ultimate utility of public debate.

And this brings me to the single most serious mistake public officials make in trying to advance policies and change public opinion: They spring surprises. They announce sweeping policy proposals long before the public has accepted there’s even a problem. When they do it this way, they’re often shocked by the backlash

It is much better to do policy the FDR way: First, air the problem and its consequences. Then step aside and let others debate its seriousness and possible solutions. As the demand for action rises, step back into the discussion with a reasonable way forward. (And, yes, along the way you can do things to encourage the debate.)

Does this diminish your reputation by making you look indecisive? Well, Roosevelt was accused of that in 1940 and 1941. But reach in your pocket and pull out a dime. Which leader’s face do you find? Roosevelt’s or one of his critics’?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by UNC Greensboro Special Collections and University Archives licensed under Creative Commons.

The Art of the Ask

February 3, 2014 By Otis White

There are probably many reasons to be fascinated by John F. Kennedy’s life and brief time in the White House. Here’s mine: I’ve long wondered how this one-time high-society party boy ever got to be such a good politician.

Chris Matthews, the TV commentator, may have finally answered my question. In his book, “Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” Matthews said World War II changed Kennedy by placing him in charge of men not at all like him, mechanics and farmers, factory workers and truck drivers, Southerners and Midwesterners. That taught him empathy, which is a key to leadership. And somewhere along the line, Kennedy picked up a second skill: He learned how to ask people to do things.

This came in handy when Kennedy ran for office, and, Matthews writes, “realized that the key to forging loyalty within his (campaign) organization was the invitation itself. The mere act of asking someone to become a Kennedy person was the step that mattered.”

You may never run for public office, and if you do you may not need the political skills of John F. Kennedy. But asking people to do things—and getting them to do them—is a skill every civic leader and government manager needs to master, now more than ever.

Why? Because big urban problems can’t be solved by organizations acting alone; they can only be solved by collaborations. And collaborations—which are, after all, joint efforts by interests not compelled to work together—don’t come about on their own. They exist because someone brought the participants together. Simply stated, somebody made “the ask” and did so successfully.

So what’s an effective ask? It has three parts. First is finding the right person to ask. Second is asking the right way, so the person accepts the task. And third is asking again—the “second ask.”

If there’s an art to asking, it’s in that first part. That’s because finding the right person is a mixture of strategy, knowledge, and judgment. You have to know the objective (the task the collaboration will undertake), the organizations or interests that can best contribute to the objective, and the right person to work with inside those organizations and interests. (Hint: It may not be the person whose name is first on the letterhead.)

Then there’s the ask itself. Here again, it’s a mixture, usually including an appeal to altruism (imagine the good we can do) and self-interest (here’s what’s in it for you and your organization). But it has to go beyond artful phrasing because few will say yes to likely failure. So you have to show that you have a roadmap to success. That might mean facilitating meetings and offering other resources; at the very least it means deciding the number of meetings and what each will address.

And that brings us to the final part, the second ask, and back to JFK. Kennedy didn’t ask people to do things once. He asked them again and again. That’s how he built the intense loyalty that characterized his campaigns and his presidency.

There’s a bit of psychology here: When people say yes to an ask, no matter how little you’ve asked of them, they’ve investing in you. If the task is successful, your value rises in their eyes. By asking a second (or third or fourth) time, you are deepening your value . . . and building support. There’s also a bit of economics: You’ll spend much less time finding and asking people to join you a second or third time, so there is what economists might call a marginal efficiency in the second ask.

These benefits accumulate over time. But the first step, as JFK might remind us, is to ask—and ask well.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Andreas Klinke Johannsen licensed under Creative Commons.

« Previous Page

A Mayor’s Test for Good Decisions

How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens

Lesson Four: The Art of the Compromise

What Would FDR Do?

The Art of the Ask

About Otis White

The Great Project

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