Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

Units of Civic Progress

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In March, Mayor Bob Buckhorn dedicated the latest section of Tampa’s Riverwalk, which now stretches nearly two miles down a river and along a channel leading to Tampa Bay. As he cut the ribbon, Buckhorn said something that must have puzzled some in the audience: “This is a day that we have waited for, for decades.”

For decades? Actually, yes. You see, the Tampa Riverwalk was proposed in 1975 by then-Mayor Bill Poe . . . as a Bicentennial project. The Bicentennial was in 1976. The Riverwalk has, well, taken longer than expected.

By all accounts, the Riverwalk is spectacular. It loops under a bridge and over the Hillsborough River, giving strollers the sensation of walking on water. It ties together several parks and museums, a performing arts center, and the city’s convention center. It offers downtown Tampa a gathering place it has long needed, and it has already sparked development of new restaurants and nightclubs.

But why did it take 40 years to complete? The simple answer is that it was more or less forgotten for 30 years before another mayor, Pam Iorio, revived it and drove it to completion.

But the more interesting story is this is how many great civic projects proceed, in fits and starts. That is, they are launched with a bang, only to lose momentum and fall into a deep sleep until a new leader comes along and figures out how to revive them. It’s a little like Prince Charming. But instead of a kiss, the new leader applies strategy, persuasion, persistence—and an occasional kick in the pants.

This is just one of the surprising patterns I’ve found in the last four years from interviewing leaders of successful civic projects. Here’s another: The leaders learn almost exclusively on the job.

This is puzzling considering how important these projects are. Civic projects are a basic unit of progress and, really, the only way cities make purposeful changes. Think about your own city and its milestones. They might include things like creating a modern transit system, building a new art museum, overhauling the government’s structure, bringing in professional sports . . . or building a riverwalk. Each of these things was a civic project, with a beginning, middle, and end—and clearly defined results.

And, yet, most mayors, city managers, chamber of commerce executives, nonprofit directors, and foundation leaders come to their jobs knowing little about creating these basic units of progress. Why? Because no one teaches it. There are no graduate schools of civic project management, no seminars, no books, not even a website you can visit. And this, I’ve learned, is why many great projects begin with a long hibernation. Once the idea is formed, nobody knows what to do with it.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Civic projects are complex undertakings operating in difficult environments. They require a set of talents and skills that must be assembled: people who can think strategically, apply a jeweler’s eye to tasks and details, and muster the political skills to steer projects around obstacles. Every community has these people. What they don’t have is a template for putting these efforts together.

Want to do your city a favor? Find an organization willing to create just such a template (or set of templates) by interviewing the leaders of successful civic projects. Then make the templates widely available, so the next mayor with a great idea doesn’t have to wait 40 years to watch his city walk on water.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Matthew Paulson licensed under Creative Commons.

Leadership as “a Kind of Genius”

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Twenty-five years ago, as I was growing interested in how cities produce leaders and leaders shape cities, I heard a state business association president define leadership. A leader, he said, “is someone who helps people get where they want to go.”

He was speaking to a community leadership class, and I could sense the audience deflate. That’s it? Help people go somewhere? Like a bus driver? What about organizing constituencies, offering a vision, and persuading the public? What about standing up for people—or standing up to the powerful? What about holding office?

And, yet, I had to admit he was on to something. Organization and persuasion are skills. Visions can be supplied by others. Standing up to the powerful and holding office are roles. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that helping people get where they want to go (and, one hopes, need to go) isn’t a bad definition of what leaders do. It’s just . . . incomplete.

So allow me to complete the definition. A leader is someone who helps people get where they want to go . . . by seeing the opportunity for getting there.

Seeing the opportunity—the narrow, sometimes temporary passage through which change can happen—is the genius of leadership. And herding people through that passage is the practice of leadership. What the genius and the practice require is a sense of how things fit together, a tactical vision, a willingness to learn from experience, and a saintly patience with people—but a patience that’s bounded by the resolve to do something meaningful.

If this sounds abstract, trust me; there are examples all around you. Here in Atlanta, I’ve seen these traits in people who nurtured projects great and small, from the creation of the Beltline, a circle of parks and trails that’s transforming entire neighborhoods, to the building of a roundabout that fixed an impossible intersection at the gates of Emory University and breathed life into a small retail district.

In both cases, the leader was someone who recognized the value of these projects, sized up the difficulties, figured out the path forward, and patiently guided others along it.

But how exactly did they do it? What are the steps in seeing and seizing opportunities? And how can you become one of these everyday geniuses?

You can find some of the answers in a book called “A Kind of Genius” by Sam Roberts, a New York Times reporter. It’s about a man who took on some of New York’s toughest problems in the 1960s and 1970s, figured out practical, even elegant solutions, and got them implemented. His name was Herb Sturz.

Herb who? Roberts’ point exactly. Sturz was an “unsung hero, shrewd social engineer and social entrepreneur” who had an impressive but largely unnoticed impact on New York, first by reforming New York’s bail bond system (and inspiring similar reforms around the country), then pioneering ways of dealing with substance abuse. His final challenge was the one most apparent to residents and visitors today, the cleanup of Times Square.

You’ll be impressed by these stories. But the real reason for reading Roberts’ book is to learn how Sturz worked: by listening carefully, studying systems, proposing small-scale experiments, quantifying the results, answering objections, and winning over even the most skeptical officeholders. You won’t be surprised to learn that, as a child, Sturz spent a long illness learning to play chess and could see six moves ahead in his mind.

Here’s how Roberts explains the Sturz approach: “He spotted things other people hadn’t seen, even things that had been staring them in the face every day. He would pose questions that they hadn’t asked, even when those questions seemed mundane. And by peppering participants at every level with even more questions, by meticulously dissecting the responses, by crafting hypothetical fixes and subjecting them to challenging testing and experimentation, he tried his hand at transforming illusions into practical answers.”

Herb Sturz was a remarkable leader, but I’ve seen similar traits in others who’ve accomplished big things in public life. They ask good questions. They listen intently. They experiment, observe, and quantify. They see how systems respond. They answer objections. They’re patient. But when an opportunity presents itself and the way forward opens, they are decisive and relentless.

At the end of the day, these leaders get people where they want to go, but often by a road no one else could have imagined. And that’s what makes them a kind of genius.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Steven Fettig licensed under Creative Commons.

Lesson Five: Vision and Demographics

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My aim in these postings is to help you, as a reporter or blogger, understand local government and avoid some of the problems I had as a city hall reporter. As I said in the introduction, I never truly “got” local government when I covered city hall. I kept looking for what I’d learned in college political science classes—that government decision making was about interests clashing over public policy. I was disappointed to find city councils focused instead on things that seemed smaller and less interesting: arbitrating zoning disputes, moving small amounts of money among city departments, listening to neighborhood complaints, voting on construction projects. Where were the interest groups, I wondered, the lobbyists, the committee hearings, the position papers, the public policies?

It wasn’t until much later that I understood local governments weren’t smaller versions of federal and state governments; they were focused on something different—not public policy but people and places, how these elements interact, and how they could be made to interact better. Land use, I learned, was the central concern of city and county governments, and it is local governments’ ability to place infrastructure and regulate land uses (not only on public streets and spaces but private property) that gives them power and importance.

A city council’s debate, then, about locating a civic center isn’t a boring discussion about another construction project—it’s a bet on where and how the city will grow. Guess right, and the area around it could be transformed. Guess wrong, and it could be a drain on government revenues and a huge missed opportunity.

And you can go down the list: Where transit stops are placed, sidewalks built, parks located, schools situated; whether to build a performing arts center, start a bike-sharing program, or help the local college expand; how to regulate food trucks and ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft; whether to give economic development incentives to businesses or help a small-business incubator get off the ground. These decisions don’t look like much close up, but collectively they add up to a vision of the city, with each a step toward that vision.

One of your most important jobs as city hall reporter, then, should be to figure out the vision. If your city has been through a full-scale planning process recently, this may be easy. Many will know the city’s intended destination and how it aims to get there. Your task is to put these things into words and explain what they mean, why they are important, and what alternative visions were considered.

If the city hasn’t been through a visioning process or comprehensive planning effort, the vision could be known only to a few. So your first task is to piece together the vision by interviewing those with a say in city decisions and comparing it with the decisions they’ve made and the plans that guide them. (Hint: Talk to the city planning director and the local chamber of commerce president before interviewing the mayor and council members.)

It’s possible, of course, that there is no broadly shared vision, that the city council is feeling its way through important decisions. But trust me on this: Having no direction doesn’t mean the city isn’t going somewhere. It just isn’t going there by design. In these cases, your job is to see where the drift is taking the city, tell your readers what that place is likely to be, and ask leaders if they’re comfortable with the destination.

All of this brings up some questions: What does a vision look like? How would you know if your city is achieving it? And if the city is just drifting along, how can you see where it’s headed?

Actually, it’s pretty simple. Look at the demographics.

Go back to the central issue for cities: People and places, how they interact, and how they can be made to interact better. The tools that a city has are the “places” part of that statement—how it develops public places, regulates private ones, and serves all with infrastructure. The results are the people and what they do with those places. Remember the famous Watergate adage, “follow the money”? If you want to know where your city is headed, follow the demographics.

A vision, then, is an effort to picture who will live in, work in, and visit your city in the future, what they will do for entertainment, how they will relate to one another and the city’s physical assets, how they will move around, and what impressions newcomers will form. And behind the vision should be a plan: In order to make this ideal future become a reality, here are the things we must do.

Describing the vision is important, but you need to know more. Is the vision obtainable? Can the city truly attract those it wants and needs in order to be successful? To answer this, you’ll have to take a deep dive into demographics, starting with where the city is today and how it is changing.

Here are some questions to begin with: Who lives in your city by age, income, educational attainment, and ethnicity? How are these numbers changing over, say, the last 10 years? How do these changes compare with cities of similar size and type? How do they compare with nearby jurisdictions, such as suburbs? (You can find these things from U.S. Census data but call your regional planning agency. It may have additional data and even projections.)

Now drill down a bit: Where in your city are the greatest changes taking place today? If the city is investing in some areas or services (such as transit), how is that affecting the demographics in those neighborhoods? (Again, look not just at population numbers in those tracts but age, income, and education.)

All of this will give you some idea of how realistic your city’s vision is. If the city is aging rapidly and wants to attract more young people and you can’t find a single neighborhood where young people are replacing older families, it’ll be a tough slog—and you can say so. If, though, there are several neighborhoods that millennials are moving to, then there’s your lede. Interview the newcomers, explain the neighborhood’s attraction, and give readers a glimpse of the future.

As you’re getting used to demographics, don’t forget that cities serve more than residents. They’re also centers for work, entertainment, and tourism. Employee demographics aren’t as easily obtained as residential demographics, but governments do track the types of jobs being created as well as the number. I suggest starting with a federal database called County Business Patterns. Be patient: You’ll have to immerse yourself in things like NAICS codes and learn some basic spreadsheet techniques, but pretty soon you’ll be able to figure out how employment is changing in your city. And the same guidelines apply: If your city wants to be a center of technology and can’t show any growth in that area, then you can be properly skeptical.

Tourism and entertainment statistics will be harder still to come by; they’re kept locally and some are sketchy. But it’s worth the effort to learn who comes to your city and for what purposes. You may, for instance, be able to track restaurant sales figures over time, which will tell you whether city efforts to build an entertainment economy are working. If your city has invested in a convention center, the statistics on its use should be revealing.

Armed with a little curiosity and a few spreadsheet skills, then, you’ll quickly master the changing demographics of your city and turn out some great stories. But remember: You’re a city hall reporter, so your aim isn’t just to report what’s happening but to compare the government’s intentions and actions to the results. If there’s a vision, is it obtainable? If the city is drifting, where is it headed? If the city is making investments, are they working? Demographics will give you the answers.

Three cautions about fairness. First, be aware of the lag effect. Depending on economic conditions, a city can wait years after opening a transit station before developers start building transit-oriented buildings, and even more time before it’s reflected in the population changes. Ask independent experts, like academics and consultants, how long the lag should be.

Be aware too that government census reports are backward looking. They can tell you what happened but not what’s happening right now or what is yet to come. That was a big reason so many were surprised by the great urban turnaround of the 1990s. It had been underway for years before the 2000 Census awoke us to it. So if the demographics don’t reflect what you’re seeing in the neighborhoods, it may be because no one has collected the statistics or run the numbers yet.

Second, luck and circumstance play bigger roles in cities than we sometimes acknowledge. Local governments can do all the right things and yet see little return. Or they can do only a little and see huge changes. Williston, North Dakota, for example, was a sleepy little prairie town for most of its history. Then oil was discovered, its population doubled, and rents soared to levels approaching those in Manhattan. How much credit does the city government deserve for Williston’s growth? Probably not much. In the opposite way, we ought to give some credit to cities like Cleveland that have worked mightily to make themselves more appealing. Despite progress (it was named the site of the 2016 Republican National Convention and some of its neighborhoods are reviving) Cleveland hasn’t stemmed its population losses yet. Is it fair, then, to compare Cleveland to fast-growing cities like Miami or Houston—or would it be fairer to compare it to other cities trying to reverse a growth spiral? I think the latter is fairer.

Third, be smart as well as fair with demographics on ethnicity and income. These are politically sensitive subjects—for good reason. All cities that are successful over the long haul are diverse ones. So don’t let your reporting be an excuse for excluding some, as the city seeks others.

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 Corey Templeton licensed under Creative Commons.

Why Blame Is the Death of Reform

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If you want to see what can go wrong with government reform, look at this editorial cartoon.

Notice first the cartoonist’s point of view: that it is condescending and counterproductive for “drive-by” experts to criticize hard-working government employees (in this case, teachers) for their performance.

Then see the teacher’s point of view: She cannot be held responsible if she has to deal with children who are homeless, watching TV around the clock, provided no discipline, pregnant, living in single-family homes, and on and on. In other words, while drive-by experts blame her for education’s shortcomings, she blames the students.

When reform efforts get to this point—all sides dug in, minds shut tight, blame hurled in all directions—you can close up shop. Reform isn’t going to happen.

Is there another way? There is, but it has to be done right from the start. In fact, before the word “reform” is ever uttered. Here are three first steps.

First, you must promise never to blame employees for poor performance. This is critical because you cannot change an organization without the support of those who work in it. In this sense, the cartoonist was right: It is counterproductive to blame the employees.

Second, employees must stop blaming others. Just as it’s a mistake for education reformers to blame teachers, it is wrong for teachers to blame their students for poor performance—or government workers at any level to blame citizens when things don’t work right.

Third, once the blame game has ceased, everyone must work side by side to understand where the organization is falling short, why, and what can be done to turn things around.

This sounds so simple, there must be a catch, right? Yes, and it’s a big one. You have to work against political culture, which is to point the finger at others. Reporters, city councils, and legislative oversight committees will want to know who was responsible when mistakes were made or deadlines missed. If you genuinely want things to work better, there’s only one response: I am responsible. Blame me.

This takes courage in a political environment, but it’s the only way you can move to the second step, where you persuade employees to stop blaming others. If you have their backs, you can say, they must have the citizens’ backs. Always.

And once you reach that understanding and the blame wars have quieted, you can move to step three, where you work as partners. But even then, you must keep working on trust.

One of the earliest trust issues will be about measurements. If you’re going to fix a broken system, you have to agree on ways of measuring brokenness and gauging progress. But once you start measuring things, you’ll raise again the fear of blame. So you have to make another pact: The measurements will be used only for pinpointing problems and measuring progress, not for punishments or rewards.

This requires that you work against instinct, which is to reward your best performers and punish the slackers. But if you go down that road, it will encourage the slackers to resume the blame wars and, in no time, you’ll be back to . . . well, what you see in the cartoon.

In addition to courage, this approach requires faith that the vast majority of people want to do good work and only a small minority do not. If you can enlist the majority in changes that will bring them pride and accomplishment, the organization will make great strides. And, over time, you can weed out the minority.

But nothing will happen until you stop the blame.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Illustration by E Theroit licensed under Creative Commons.

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

Lesson Two: The Switching Yard of Change

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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 the podcasts I did with the Georgia Municipal Association, which were 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.)

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.

About Otis White

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm for local governments and civic organizations. He has written about cities and their leaders for more than 30 years. For more information about Otis and his work, please visit www.civic-strategies.com.

The Great Project

Otis White's multimedia book, "The Great Project," is available on Apple iTunes for reading on an iPad. The book is about how a single civic project changed a city and offers important lessons for civic leaders considering their own "great projects" . . . and for students in college planning and political science programs.

For more information about the book, please visit the iTunes Great Project page.

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You can find Otis White’s urban issues updates by searching on the Mastodon social media site for @otiswhite@urbanists.social.