Rules for Reformers

Why Blame Is the Death of Reform

July 22, 2014 By Otis White

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.

Dealing with the Cynics

July 10, 2013 By Otis White

Maybe the most dispiriting things a reformer faces, when she’s trying to fix a major community problem—or maybe turn around an entire city—are the twin evils of cynicism and finger pointing. And if you prefer your evils in threes, add another: apathy.

In my experience, every city has some version of these problems: big cities and small towns, places in long decline and even those on the rise. And they come from people in low places and high. I’ve known mayors who were hard-bitten cynics, chamber of commerce executives who blamed everyone else for what went wrong, and newspaper editorialists who described every new idea as the Titanic weighing anchor.

So what do you do when you’re faced with such a wall of civic doubt and negativism? I’ll get to the things you should do shortly, but let’s begin with the things you shouldn’t:

Don’t become part of the problem. Specifically, don’t point fingers at others, don’t blame the community for things that go wrong, and don’t give up.
And don’t do the opposite, which is to overpromise. Leaders who promise too much (“we can turn this around in 90 days”) end up digging the cynicism hole even deeper when they fail. If you need a slogan, try this one: “Let’s do what we can.”

And what are the things you can do? Start with attitude. You can be positive without being a Pollyanna. The secret is to be quietly confident. Jack McColl, who worked for many years in rural development in the Midwest, wrote a wise little book 20 years ago called “The Small Town Survival Guide.” In it, he described a group that he called the “coffee-break cynicism society” whose delight, he said, was in describing every civic improvement as certain failure. His advice: “Cultivate your ability to smile and say, ‘Let’s try.’ “

But ultimately the only thing that overcomes widespread cynicism is success. Doing something. Succeeding. Then doing something else, and succeeding there too.

Which begs the question: Where do you start? I’ll give you the advice I’ve heard from two highly successful mayors. One was Bill Frederick, the three-term mayor of Orlando in the 1980s.

Frederick’s advice was to pick the biggest, most visible thing that you knew with certainty you could accomplish, then bring every resource to bear on accomplishing it. It worked for Frederick, and it worked a decade later for Frank Martin, the late mayor of Columbus, Georgia, who worked mightily to change attitudes in his city. Martin used what he called his “man on the moon” strategy to complete a big civic project that had eluded one mayor after another, the building of a civic center in downtown Columbus. (Again: big, visible, doable, done.)

But here’s the key: One data point is not a trend, and a single success will not change a community’s cynicism. For that, you need repeated successes. Martin followed the civic center by building a stunning 22-mile river walk, a new set of recreational athletic fields downtown, and then, improbably enough, by staging in Columbus one of the events of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the women’s softball competition. (If you want the full story of what Martin did and how it laid the groundwork for Columbus’ eventual revival, you can read about it in my book, “The Great Project.“)

Most civic leaders aren’t mayors and aren’t called upon to turn around an entire city. But the same principles apply if you are trying to improve a neighborhood, change a lethargic government agency, resurrect a nonprofit, or deal with a crime problem. Be quietly confident and don’t overpromise. Focus on one big, visible project and move heaven and earth to get it done. (If it can be completed in ways that exceed expectations—on time, under budget, and with unexpected quality—all the better.) Then refocus and repeat. And then repeat again.

Keep in mind that you’ll always have rock-throwers, and some will always deny progress. But the more you accomplish, the less others will pay attention to them, and the quieter and quieter the coffee-break cynicism society will become.

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

Selling Change by the Slice

October 23, 2012 By Otis White

One of the hardest things to do in communities is to convince your fellow leaders or citizens to join you in a leap of faith. That is, to accept a major change that, while needed and logical, involves doing something most people are not used to. Look around cities today and you see leaders trying to talk people into taking these leaps: to build light-rail systems, accept greater density in their neighborhoods, turn over parts of busy streets to bike lanes, try new ways of recycling, change school attendance zones, and a hundred other things.

The problem isn’t just that the citizens and their leaders are personally unfamiliar with the change you’re advocating (that’s why it’s a leap of faith), but that often it’s “all or nothing” as well. That is, you can’t build part of a transit system or half of a high-rise condo, and then let people decide if they can live with it. Or can you?

Well, no, not literally. But an awful lot of bold community changes can be tried out before being fully implemented. And if you’re proposing a big change, that may be the smartest way you can offer it: as a test. Find a place in the city where you can demonstrate the change and its benefits so everyone can see it. If it’s as successful as you expect, you’ll dramatically lower the fear level, and by the time you ask citizens and their leaders to accept the rest (a built-out transit system, a mixed-use development in their neighborhood, a new kind of recycling), it’s less like a leap of faith and more like a hop.

You may know what I’m talking about as a “pilot” or “demonstration” project. But I like to think of it as selling change by the slice, because your job isn’t to prove a point but to get people to buy the entire change. You’re simply starting with a single slice.

How do you create successful pilot projects? There are two things to keep in mind. First, you have to find a place willing to accept the slice. Second, you have to make sure its success is so apparent that opponents are, grudgingly, won over.

Let’s start with the second challenge. The important thing is to be sure that all the elements of the big change are at work in the pilot project. Let’s imagine that you’re trying to show that a bike-rental program would work in your city, and you’re going to start with a single location. What makes a bike-rental program successful? Marketing, management, maintenance, an information system to handle tracking and payments . . . and a dozen other things. All those elements have to be in place for the pilot to succeed and, therefore, convince citizens and leaders to expand it citywide. So approach the pilot with as much planning and design as you would a citywide program. Don’t think you can place a bunch of bikes around a neighborhood and expect it to convince skeptics.

Another thing about successful pilots is that they have to . . . well, succeed. That means testing in a place where success is most likely. In fact, that’s how most city bike-rental programs have proceeded. They’ve started in neighborhoods where the young and hip live and work, because these are the early adopters of urban cycling. Once people in other parts of the city see so many people on rental bikes (riding safely and with no loss in dignity), they’re open to trying it themselves. Think of it as the “iPhone strategy”: If the cool kids like it, others will come around.

And that brings me back to the first challenge: How do you convince a portion of the city to accept that first slice of change? Well, as I’ve indicated, it’s best to start among the persuadable, the neighborhoods that are most open to this particular change. It’s critical, too, that you go to the neighborhood early on and talk with its leaders. Make them your collaborators in designing the project.

Finally, if you can, you may want to present the pilot project as a competition. Have several neighborhoods in mind and let it be known that the one that does something concrete—raises money, finds land, creates a viable plan—will be the winner.

I know this sounds implausible. Change usually creates resistance. Why would neighborhoods compete to do things other places oppose? Because of a quirk of human nature. Present us with a situation that appears to require sacrifice, and we fight it. But present us with a situation that feels like a competition and ends with something that looks like a reward, and we fight for it.

Actually, you know how this works. Think back to that book you read as a child. The one that started out with a boy who got others to paint a fence and pay him for the privilege. Tom Sawyer did it by offering the work as an honor to be won. Surprisingly, change can sometimes be made like that as well.

Photo by Mag3737 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.

The Realistic But Hopeful Place

October 10, 2012 By Otis White

There are times when cities and organizations face a kind of abyss, when things they had counted on suddenly don’t work anymore. For a city, it might be when a major local industry shuts down. For an organization, it could be when its primary service is no longer valued. What usually follows (after a period of anger, recrimination, and denial) is an avalanche of ideas and advice about setting things right.

You can imagine how these ideas fly in from all directions: Let’s be a tourism city, or a high-tech center, or a retirement community—or all three. If it’s an organization, let’s try our old mission in a new way, let’s try an entirely new mission, or let’s try a bunch of missions and see which works out.

One thing seems clear in moments like these: You must focus your efforts. But on what? How do you decide which path to take when the past is no longer a reliable guide?

My advice is to search for a “realistic but hopeful place,” a place where ambition, success, and demand overlap. You find these places in the answers to three questions:

What do we want to do?
What are we good at?
What does the world want or need?

If answered honestly, these simple questions will take you into a deep analysis of your community or organization and a focused look at the world. Be careful, though, to ask them in the right order.

The first question, “what do we want to do?” requires that you talk to as many people as possible who know and care about the city or organization. You can do this in person or in groups. (I advise both; start with in-person interviews with a cross section of respected leaders, then convene groups. The interviews will give you some starting points for the group discussions.) What you’re searching for is not so much strategic advice (that is, exactly what we should do) as insight into what motivates people. A good way of getting to it is to ask: “Given that we’re going to make major changes, what is the best that that our organization (or city) can be?” Consider it a quick form of visioning.

The second question brings some specificity to the vision by forcing leaders to look for current successes, however modest they may seem. Some research will help. If you’re concerned about a city’s economy, look for local employment sectors that are growing, especially among businesses that export goods and services (that is, that sell things to people elsewhere). If you’re concerned about an organization, comb through the financial statements and talk with employees: Are there things your organization is doing, perhaps as a sideline, that people are demanding more of?

Just by answering these two questions, you can usually see some possibilities. Let’s say your city has traditionally been an auto manufacturing center. When you talk with people, their hearts are still in making things. (“We’re still a great manufacturing town, and we ought to be the best one in the state.”) As you look around, though, you don’t see many big companies that are growing, only a handful of small ones, a few of which make high-quality bicycles. Could that be a growth industry for your city?

It works the same way for organizations. Let’s say you’re on the board of a human-services nonprofit that, because of a change in reimbursements, is threatened. The first thing you want to know is, do others (board members, staff, and those the organization has worked with over the years) want it to continue in this field? Or is there something else they’d rather the organization do? Second: Are you already doing something, perhaps in a small way, for which demand is growing?

The third question then takes a hard look at the bright spots. Will the world want or need high-quality bicycles in the future? Will your organization’s sideline services be valued in the years ahead? Be careful not to focus too much on present demand. If people in your city spent generations making cars, bicycles will seem inconsequential. If the organization provided health-care services with reimbursements in the millions, then providing services for thousands of dollars will seem like small potatoes. The thing to focus on is growth, not current demand.

And let’s be realistic. If you are fighting for your city’s or your organization’s life, the choices are bound to be difficult. Whatever you do (including doing nothing) will involve wrenching changes. The question is, at the end of those changes, will you be in a realistic but hopeful place . . . or still in crisis?

Asking what you want to do, what you’re already good at, and what the world wants will help point out that place.

Footnote: Knowing the direction and reaching the destination are, obviously, different things. Discovering the hopeful place is an important first step, but that’s when the real work begins. How does a city help a small but promising industry to grow faster? How do you turn an organization’s sideline into its primary service? What do you do with all the infrastructure and processes that have grown up around the things that are ending? These are the hard choices of strategic planning. But it starts with hope and a dose of reality.

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

Like/Unlike

September 18, 2012 By Otis White

Thinking is hard work, and if we had to think our way through every thing we did, we couldn’t keep up. That’s why we use mental shortcuts, which come in two forms: Framing for making sense of things and models that give us strategies for action.

Most of the time, these things work so well that we hardly notice them. We see something new (merchants complain about teenagers loitering near their stores), we frame it (public safety threat) and know what to do (send in the cops to warn the teens and, if that doesn’t work, write tickets). But what if the usual models don’t work or if the thing that pops up doesn’t appear to fit any previous frames? That’s when it’s time for something I call “Like/Unlike.”

To understand why this is helpful, you have to know how the shortcuts work together. The key step is the framing, which is a fancy way of saying we’ve put something into a category (teens loitering = public safety threat). The point of putting things into categories is to limit our options for response. There’s nothing wrong with that—it gives us a manageable list of actions to take—and as long as we put things in the right categories, these actions should work. Mind the caution: As long as we put things in the right categories.

If you look around, you can see this framing process at work in cities. One of my favorites is the dilemma posed by food trucks for city regulators and health inspectors. Are food trucks more like restaurants or hot dog carts? If you put them in the hot dog cart frame, then you should regulate where they operate but not worry too much about health inspections. If you put them in the restaurant frame, then you shouldn’t say much about where they operate but you should be diligent about health inspections. (My suggestion: Consider them a third category with their own set of regulations.)

The key is to pause before applying the frame. And Like/Unlike will help with that. It’s a simple way of checking your assumptions. You can do it through a quick mental checklist or you can pull together a group and do it more formally.

Either way, it involves listing attributes and categories, then asking whether the attributes fall into any of the categories. In the food truck example, food trucks are like hot dog carts in that they do business on public rights of way (which raises concerns about location) but like restaurants in that they prepare food in non-standard ways (which raises concerns about public health).

If you have enough attributes and categories, you can make a grid and do check marks. When you’ve finished, you should be able to stand back and see if the evidence points toward an obvious category (and resulting set of actions) or if you should approach the problem as something entirely new. (Don’t be too surprised if you find that you need more information. After all, why are those teenagers standing on that corner?)

Again, the key is the pause. The best leaders are those who are thoughtful, who don’t rush to judgment, who see dimensions to problems that others don’t. The thoughtfulness doesn’t paralyze good leaders. They understand full well the need for action, but they want to be sure the analysis that drives the actions is as accurate as possible.

And what makes it accurate is putting things in the right categories from the start. Like/Unlike will help.

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

Why Blame Is the Death of Reform

Dealing with the Cynics

Selling Change by the Slice

The Realistic But Hopeful Place

Like/Unlike

About Otis White

The Great Project

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