Map of community change

The Opportunity: The Door to Civic Progress

January 13, 2014 By Otis White

For two years, I’ve been interviewing civic leaders for a podcast. I look for two kinds of people to interview. Most are leaders who’ve accomplished something strikingly successful in their communities; a smaller number are people who, through their experiences, have learned a leadership skill that’s valuable for others to know.

The format is simple. I introduce the leaders. We talk for about 15 minutes about their successes or skills, and I close by asking them for advice: If someone from another community asked how to take on a difficult project or master this skill, what would they say?

In the 23 interviews I’ve done to date, I’ve learned a tremendous amount about what civic leaders do and how they think. I’ve learned that most of their work isn’t heroic or visionary. It’s more like project management, as they move from one meeting, planning session, or presentation to another.

I’ve learned something about the motivations of these people. They seem driven to accomplish something meaningful, and communities offer an ideal stage for these achievements because civic projects often end with things you can reach out and touch—buildings, roads, and parks—things that will endure for decades. This concreteness and sense of permanence appeals to civic leaders.

And finally I’ve learned that despite the long hours of unpaid labor, the tedium of public meetings, and stress of occasional conflict, many of these people consider civic work an escape from their regular jobs. One civic leader told me away from the microphone that his project, which had occupied him for a decade and a half, was, outside of his family life, “the most fun I’ve ever had.”

These are valuable things to know. It explains why cities are undergoing a renaissance these days. Somehow cities have learned to attract and harness the work of these leaders more effectively than in the past. And it assures me that this isn’t a phase. People will always seek meaning in their lives, and if cities continue offering a stage for these seekers, they’ll be successful.

Interesting as all this was to learn, though, it wasn’t why I started the podcast. I’ve actually been looking for something else: the structure of civic progress.

This is an old interest of mine. In fact, I started this blog four years ago so I could think out loud about civic progress, how it worked, and how we could make it work better. Along the way, I’ve made some stabs at a grand theory. A few years ago, I created a map of community change showing step by step how leaders moved from awareness of a need to a widely accepted solution.

Most of the map still seems right to me, but I’ve learned from the interviews that an important element was missing. You can’t, I’ve come to understand, view civic progress simply as a process. You have to see it as a system as well; one that, in the right circumstances, can be mobilized as a process. Leaders, then, have three responsibilities: Make sure the system is healthy, learn how the process of civic progress works, and know how to transform the system into a campaign for community improvement.

And what is the spark that mobilizes the system into a process? I call it “the opportunity.” It’s not the same as a need nor is it necessarily a solution. It’s more like a path to the solution. If civic progress were a sport, we’d call it an “opening” the hole in a line of scrimmage that a running back sees, the pass a point guard makes to set up a score, the moves a chess master sees that lead in five turns to checkmate.

If this sounds confusing, bear with me. It’s harder to understand the opportunity in theory than in practice, and the interviews offer plenty of examples. Maybe the best was in my interview with Cathy Woolard, the former Atlanta city council member (and, later, council president) who stumbled across a transformative project called the Beltline and saw, in an instant, how it could solve many of Atlanta’s transportation and land-use problems.

Here’s how she describes that moment of insight: “It was literally the right day, the perfect council member, the perfect district, for me to be able to look at (this idea) and know immediately what the benefit would be to the residents of my district in particular.” Because she saw the opportunity offered by the Beltline and figured a way through a maze of political and bureaucratic processes, Woolard was able to move this visionary project from grad-school planning thesis to urban reality. Today the Beltline, a circle of trails and parks around downtown Atlanta, is being built, and the sections that are open are wildly popular with cyclists, runners, and strollers.

You can see another opportunity in the interview with Scott Tigchelaar, a movie studio president who talked the small town of Senoia, Georgia into turning itself into a permanent film location. What triggered this, he said, was the sale of some land in downtown Senoia. Over the years Tigchelaar had used the town for movie locations (if you watched the 1991 movie “Fried Green Tomatoes,” you’ve seen Senoia). He feared a new owner would put up something that would ruin the town for movie shootings, so he approached the mayor and council with a deal: Create new design and zoning laws, allow us to buy the land and build some appropriate new buildings, and we’ll bring you a steady stream of movie productions, along with tourism opportunities. (It worked. Filming goes on year-round in Senoia, tourists flock there to see where their favorite TV shows are filmed, and the town has a host of new restaurants and shops.)

And then there’s John Turner, the businessman who helped restore a river through downtown Columbus, Georgia and, by doing so, turned a slow, muddy stream into roaring whitewater. Some had speculated as far back as the 1970s that Columbus might have world-class rapids beneath its downtown dams. But it wasn’t until Turner and others learned 20 years later that those dams were failing that he saw the opportunity to tear them down and create the longest urban whitewater attraction in America.

Opportunities arrive, then, when a long-felt need (to change land use and transportation in Atlanta, to preserve a small town’s unique economy, to do something about a neglected river) is connected with a sudden change in the environment (a visionary plan drops on a council member’s desk, tracts of land are offered for sale, old dams show signs of failing) and a way forward is seen (master the transportation planning process, get the city council to agree to design standards, gain government approval to remove the dams and alter the river).

And who connects these things and sees the way forward? Leaders do.

In fact, this is probably the most creative thing that leaders do in cities. Like great business innovators (think Steve Jobs) or talented politicians (think FDR or LBJ), great civic leaders see paths that are hidden to most of us and connect things others hadn’t put together. Not all civic leaders can do this because it takes a special mind to see an opening to success and a strong will to push an entire community through the opening.

If you’re not that kind of leader, don’t despair. There are other things civic leaders do that are critically important, such as tending the system and managing the process of civic progress. I’ll talk about these leadership roles in future posts.

For the time being, though, keep this image in mind: Civic progress is neither a system nor a process; it’s both. And the door between the two is the opportunity. Trust me on this. I had 23 great teachers who showed it to me.

Photo by lau.svensson licensed under Creative Commons.

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

Connecting the Phases: The Guiding Coalition

December 6, 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.

As we walk through the community change process, let’s pause and see if we can connect more closely the first two parts, the discussion phase and planning phase. Briefly, the discussion phase awakens the community to a need and pulls together a group of people to search through a number of possible answers for a workable solution. The planning phase takes the workable solution and turns it into a set of specific plans that speak to the public, decision makers, and funders. It may also involve organizational work and fundraising.

What connects these phases? Aside from you, as the primary leader, it’s the guiding coalition. This is the group that helps you, in the discussion phase, sift through possible solutions and come up with the one to take forward. In the planning phase, you still need a group—if anything, the tasks multiply and grow harder, so you need others to help carry the load. And the obvious people to begin with are those who were with you in the discussion phase. After all, by this point, it’s their project, too.

But who else is needed? As I mentioned in an earlier posting, a good way of thinking about guiding coalitions is to consider people with expertise, power, credibility, and the ability to get things done. How does this change in the planning phase? It doesn’t. It’s just that, as you work into the details, the problems and opportunities grow narrower and deeper, so you’ll need people who can help you not just with the broad outlines of community change but the crevasses as well.

To make this clearer, let’s return to the example I used in my planning phase posting, the building of New York’s High Line Park. Remember that this project began in 1999 when two neighborhood residents, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, learned that an abandoned elevated freight line running through their West Side neighborhood was to be torn down. They both had the idea that something, some kind of public space, could be made of this industrial relic and provide a much needed amenity. Thus began one of the most astonishing urban improvement projects of the past half-century, culminating in 2009 with the opening of a park in the sky, one of the country’s most innovative public spaces.

Who joined David and Hammond’s guiding coalition, and when did they join? As they write in their book, “High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky,” David and Hammond started out with little knowledge of parks, planning, politics, or charitable fundraising. So they began with what they had: friends who knew people. And, here, they were lucky. Hammond had gone to college with a man who had become a well-connected New York lawyer. He introduced David and Hammond to the first member of their guiding coalition, a developer and former political insider named Phil Aarons. Aarons had three of the four qualities a guiding coalition needs: expertise, credibility, and the ability to get things done. He was immediately won over by the idea of the High Line and invested untold hours in making introductions, attending meetings, and advising David and Hammond about politics and public opinion.

Hammond had another college friend, Gifford Miller, who was by then a city council member (he would later be president of the council). Skeptical at first—Hammond says Miller called it a “stupid idea” when he first heard it—Miller changed his mind when Hammond took him atop the High Line and he saw its potential. Miller brought credibility and expertise to the group (he knew city government and especially the city council) and, of course, power.

Others joined the coalition soon after. There was a lawyer who understood transportation law and federal regulation, and helped guide them through the federal maze. Miller brought in the city council’s zoning and land use attorney. Aarons introduced David and Hammond to Amanda Burden, who was then a member of the city planning commission. In time, Burden would become the project’s most important champion and strategist. (In a stroke of luck, when Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor, he appointed Burden the city’s planning commission chair, which is a powerful position.)

Even more joined in time. One was a city government lobbyist who knew the nooks and crannies of city hall even better than Miller and Aarons. Another city council member, Christine Quinn, came aboard. An economic development expert, John Alschuler, was hired to study the project’s impact on property values and was so taken with the High Line, he stayed on as a volunteer and became part of the inner circle. There were others: One was a man who knew so much about the neighborhoods that the project crossed that he was known as the “mayor” of the lower West Side. He helped convince building owners and neighborhood groups to support the High Line. Finally, as the project moved into major fundraising, a partner at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm, joined the group to help them connect with the wealthiest families and corporate interests.

These people came as needed. Alschuler was brought into the inner circle after the workable solution had been identified and when more detailed plans were needed. The lobbyist and neighborhood “mayor” joined as the approval process, at city hall and in the neighborhood planning boards, approached. The Goldman Sachs partner arrived after the project had won its most critical approvals and its heaviest fundraising began.

Others were influential, but more as allies than members of the guiding coalition. One was Dan Doctoroff, the deputy mayor for economic development. Acting on Mayor Bloomberg behalf, he had major development plans for the northern end of the High Line, an area called the Far West Side. Doctroff’s support was crucial for the High Line but his own plans were controversial. So David, Hammond and the rest of the guiding coalition walked a fine line. They had to stay in Doctoroff’s good graces while not being too supportive—otherwise the neighborhoods would have turned against the High Line. Somehow they managed this well enough that when Doctoroff’s Far West Side plans fell apart, the High Line sailed ahead . . . with Doctoroff’s support.

There were other important supporters, including celebrities, business leaders, politicians, and society mavens, and they were frequently consulted. But they weren’t in the guiding coalition. Yes, they might be in the ribbon-cutting photographs or featured in videos and printed materials (that was a way of compensating them for helping out), but they didn’t map strategy or search for answers and allies. That was the work of the guiding coalition.

At a point, the High Line needed more than a loose coalition; it needed the structure of a full-blown nonprofit, which came to be called Friends of the High Line. Many of those who were in the informal guiding coalition became board members. Aarons was the first chair of the Friends of the High Line. The next was Alschuler, the economic development expert who started as a consultant and became an advocate.

The interesting dynamic about guiding coalitions is how members’ involvement waxes and wanes. That is, at a point, one person might be the key member because she has the critical expertise or credibility, but at a later point, she may not be as central to things. As long as it’s an informal coalition, these things are almost self-regulating. That is, as people feel they are needed, they step up. When they’re no longer needed as much, they drift away.

When a coalition becomes a nonprofit board, though, it takes greater management. Someone has to choose who stays on boards and who leaves. This is known as “board development,”and it is one of the most important strategic duties a nonprofit director and board chair make. And how do you choose good nonprofit board members? Well, expertise, power, credibility, and the ability to get things done are good places to start. But add one more: the ability—and willingness—to raise money.

Planning Phase: The Slog of Civic Projects, and Why It’s Critical

November 18, 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.

In a time when many wonderful parks have been built, New York’s High Line may be the most wonderful of all. It’s a park that runs above the street and through buildings on Manhattan’s west side. If you climb the stairs and walk the portions that are completed (it will eventually be a mile and a half long), you’ll see something at once modest and spectacular. The modest part is the park itself, a narrow trail edged with plants and trees with resting areas along the way. The spectacular part is the setting: a park in the sky, wending its way through post-industrial New York. The reviews, as you can see in this video, have ranged from glowing to awestruck.

But my interest is not in the park itself. It’s in the project—the road the High Line traveled from a pair of neighbors looking up and seeing potential in an old elevated track until its opening in June 2009—and what that journey tells us about the second phase of our map of community change, the planning phase.

Background: In 1999 two men, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, attended a neighborhood planning meeting on the future of the abandoned rail line known as the High Line. Some landowners wanted it torn down to make way for new developments. David and Hammond, who did not know one another, came with another idea, that you could turn this elevated freight line into . . . something else, some kind of community asset.

Their ideas were vague. They thought about a park of some sort, but what kind of park could you build on a narrow set of elevated railroad tracks? And David and Hammond hardly seemed the type to turn vague civic ideas into reality. David was a writer who specialized in travel articles for glossy magazines. Hammond was a consultant to business startups. Neither had run a nonprofit, managed a park, or had any serious contact with government at any level. They came to the meeting with hopes of volunteering for a nonprofit—any nonprofit—that would make the High Line into a community asset. What they learned was there was no such nonprofit. So, pretty much on the spot, David and Hammond decided to do it themselves.

If you’re following this on the map of community change, we’re at the very start of the discussion phase, with the recognition of a need. Or, in this case, two needs. The first was David and Hammond’s belief that, in the crowded lower West Side of Manhattan, there wasn’t nearly enough open space. That part of New York takes in many old industrial areas (one neighborhood is still called the Meatpacking District). In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, New York didn’t build parks in places like that.

The other need was for quick action. If somebody didn’t act soon, they believed, the city would tear down the High Line and an opportunity for public space would be lost forever. (They were right. Less than two years later, the Giuliani Administration sided with the landowners and signed a demolition order for the High Line.)

A funny thing happened, though, once David and Hammond took up this project. It turned out—to their surprise and others’—that these two were uniquely equipped for a civic project of this magnitude and complexity. While they had no experience in leading an urban change effort, they had valuable and complementary skills. One could write well and knew some in New York’s social and philanthropic circles. The other was experienced in starting things, was at ease in asking people to do things (including giving money), and had a good sense of strategy. They were both quick learners, and each had an interest in art and design, which became important as the project moved forward.

It took three years of contacts, conversations, fundraising and strategic planning for David and Hammond to accomplish two things that ended the discussion phase and began the planning phase: First, they halted the demolition order with a lawsuit; second, they arrived at a workable solution for the High Line. You can view their workable solution online. It’s a 90-page document titled “Reclaiming the High Line,” researched by a nonprofit called the Design Trust for Public Space and written by David.

It’s an interesting document for three reasons. First, it’s beautifully designed. It had to be because it was aimed at multiple audiences: the political and planning communities that had such a big say in what would happen to the High Line; the community nearby, which at that time had barely any idea of the High Line’s potential; and possible donors who needed to understand the High Line’s vision.

Second, it’s modest in spelling out that vision. While it makes a strong case that the old freight line should not be torn down, used as a transit line, or turned into a commercial development (a long, skinny retail area, perhaps?), it doesn’t say it ought to be a park, either. It simply says its best use is as open space in a part of the city where there isn’t enough. In other words, the workable solution keeps its options open.

The third thing that’s interesting is who wrote the foreword: Michael Bloomberg, who by 2002 had succeeded Rudolph Giuliani as mayor. This gets to an important element in any change effort: luck. The High Line project was lucky in who got elected during its 10-year path from concept to ribbon-cutting, starting with the person in the mayor’s office.

Well, if a workable solution is at hand and a powerful new mayor wants it to succeed, that’s that, right? What else is there to do? The answer: The real work was just beginning. And this is my central message about the planning phase. Getting agreement on a workable solution is like getting everyone to agree on the design concept for a new house. Now comes the difficult, detailed work of hammering out costs and financing, drawing blueprints and mechanical plans, obtaining building permits, and bringing together a small army of independent contractors.

As David and Hammond explain in their book, “High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky,” even with the new mayor on their side, there was still a gauntlet of approvals to be run, from community planning boards (basically, neighborhood organizations that review developments) to the owners of the High Line (CSX, the railroad company) and the federal agency that approves transfers of railroad rights of way. And they had opposition: from landowners who had expected to build where the High Line stood, but also from residents who couldn’t see how the dark, peeling, scary elevated railroad could ever be anything but an eyesore. Finally, they realized a truth about government: that, even in a strong-mayor government such as New York has, the mayor doesn’t call all the shots. As Hammond writes:

(By late 2002) the Bloomberg Administration fully supported the High Line, but if they’d only endorsed it and done nothing else, the project would have died. Everything about the High Line was complex, and it had to pass through so many different agencies and departments. City government is like the human body: the head, which is the mayor’s office, may want to do something, but the body has a number of different parts that want to go their own way.

Everything hinged on three tasks that occupied much of the High Line’s planning phase: Coming up with a design for the park that would please politicians and neighbors and excite donors; dealing with the landowners’ objections; and figuring out how to pay for the construction and maintain this most unusual park in years to come.

If this doesn’t sound like exciting work, it wasn’t. This is the slog of civic projects, but it’s also why the planning phase is so important. Managing these details determines the success or failure of projects. And there were hundreds of details, from mapping the decision points and how to approach each of them to knitting together a coalition of supporters and funders. There were competing interests that had to be satisfied and intense politics. Oh, and they had to design a park unlike any in the world, and figure out how to pay for it.

What this phase requires from leaders are three things: the ability to plan (that’s why it’s called the planning phase), a mastery of detail (in an earlier posting, I called this the realm of “small-p politics”), and a willingness to ask for things. Throughout its development, David and Hammond asked people to do things for the High Line. Early on, they asked for information and advice (who owns the High Line, and how should we approach them?). Soon after, they asked for support and permission. In time, they asked for money. They started by asking for a small sums for printing costs and filing the lawsuit against the demolition. Eventually, they asked philanthropists and politicians for millions to pay for the park’s construction and maintenance. And they got it, in ways that surprised even them.

This brings us to the three elements of the planning phase that are in the map of community change: champions, narrative and strategy. I put them in the map as reminders. We’ve talked about one, strategy—that’s about mapping the decision points and making plans for each decision. This is the “inside game” of civic change, the political and bureaucrat checklist of approvals.

But there is always an “outside game” as well, and that’s where the narrative becomes critical because it speaks to citizens and potential supporters and donors. A narrative, of course, tells a story. It explains the need, why the need exists, the opportunity for addressing the need, how the solution was arrived at, and the future benefits of the change. Sometimes, the narrative has to change how people think about their community and its potential, something I call “reframing the community’s mind.”

And finally, there are the “champions.” Obviously, David and Hammond are the central figures of the High Line project. Without them, the freight line would be a memory and a remarkable asset squandered. But they aren’t the champions I have in mind; they’re the leaders and strategists. The champions are those whom David and Hammond asked for support who brought others along. Some were political champions who used their influence to win approval and gain government funding—people like Mayor Bloomberg, two successive city council presidents, New York’s senators and congressional representatives, and a host of people inside the bureaucracy.

There were also business and philanthropic champions, like media tycoon Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg who lent their names, made major financial gifts themselves, and hosted fundraisers for the High Line. Finally, there were celebrity champions who helped raise money and call attention to the High Line. An early celebrity endorser was actor Kevin Bacon, whose father had been an urban planner. Another actor, Edward Norton, also had a family interest (his grandfather was the pioneering urban developer James Rouse). When he read about the High Line project in a magazine article, he tracked down David and Hammond and offered to help out. As you can see from this video about the High Line, made before its opening, what Norton brought was public attention, which is what stars do.

The final box in the planning phase is “the plan,” but that’s a little too simple. In all likelihood, it’s not a single plan but a host of plans: one describing the project’s feasibility in great detail for decision makers, one speaking to the public about its benefits, one setting out the financing (for decision makers and funders), and one describing the design (if it’s a physical project). There will likely be internal documents that serve as a kind of project flow chart, laying out the approval process and decision points, and what each approval will require, so you can marshal the right supporters. Finally, your project may need interim funding, to print materials, commission studies and seek expert advice. You’ll need a plan for getting that funding along the way.

As I said earlier, this isn’t glamorous work; it’s a slog. The amount of detailed work and its complexity will test civic leaders’ commitment and attention spans. There will be victories along the way, and it’s important to broadcast them to keep your supporters’ spirits high. “One of the keys to the High Line’s success,” Hammond writes, “was in always showing progress, even if it was a really small step.” And sometimes there are big steps, like the day in late 2004 when Josh David opened an envelope and found a check for $1 million inside, from a donor he and Hammond had courted.

But make no mistake: This is the period when obstacles are met and overcome—or not. Do the planning phase right, and the next one, the decision phase, will be a triumph. Do it poorly and your chances of success are about as good as winning the lottery: theoretically possible . . . but practically impossible.

Photo of the High Line by Katy Silberger licensed under Creative Commons.

Discussion Phase: How Need, Relationships, and Ideas Begin the Change Process

October 21, 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.

Let’s start at the top of the map, with the discussion phase. This is where change begins, with a leader recognizing a need and using her relationships, a set of ideas and a series of discussions to find a workable solution. But don’t let the casual-sounding name fool you. The discussion phase isn’t chit-chat; it’s a structured process involving different types of conversations with different groups, each a critical step in the change process. This phase ends with a decision about the solution to take forward.

You begin with the need—the community problem or opportunity that’s the reason for the change process. This sounds so commonsensical that I’d hesitate to mention it were it not for the fact that most community change efforts (and virtually all failed ones) begin with something else: a solution.

Look at the ideas floating around your city. If it’s anything like mine, you’ll find proposals for streetcars, parks, bike trails, changes in taxes, water conservation, redevelopment finance, road improvements, zoning regulations, and on and on. What do most of these ideas have in common? They’re solutions without context. Their proponents serve them up without first establishing the problem they’re intended to solve. As a result, they create a ripple of interest . . . before sinking out of sight.

Business consultant William Bridges knows why this doesn’t work. As he warns corporate executives:

Most managers and leaders put 10 percent of their energy into selling the problem and 90 percent into selling the solution to the problem. People aren’t in the market for solutions to problems they don’t see, acknowledge, and understand. They might even come up with a better solution than yours, and then you won’t have to sell it—it will be theirs.

Right on both points: If people don’t believe a problem exists, they’re not going to buy its solution. And when they do accept the need, they’ll often come up with good solutions on their own—which ends not with your leading people but marching with them. And that’s exactly where you want to be.

The keys to introducing a successful change process, then, are to convince citizens and decision makers of the need for change and, in time, facilitate a group of people who’ll arrive at a solution. Let’s take these in turn.

Begin with the need. It can be a problem (vacant properties in a neighborhood, say, or a declining local economy) or an opportunity (a local university that could have closer ties to the community). It can be a short-term problem (say, a spike in crime) or a long-term problem (domestic violence). You might start out with a solution in mind. Let’s say you’re concerned about obesity, and it seems to you that more sidewalks and playgrounds could go a long way toward solving it. If so, put aside your solution and concentrate on the problem.

This is harder than it seems. We were all rewarded in school for having the right answers, but in leading a change process it’s better to be the quiet kid in the back of the room than the one in the front row with his hand up. Why? Because many people eye change suspiciously. You may think you’re offering helpful ideas when you volunteer solutions, but some will see a hidden agenda. It’s better to say you don’t know the answer yet—and politely ask people for their thoughts.

And then there’s what William Bridges said: If you’re successful at getting people to accept the problem and think about it, they may come up with better solutions than you had anyway. So for both reasons—it lessens resistance and opens the door to other, perhaps more creative, ideas—it’s far better to sell the problem at first than to push a solution.

But how do you sell a problem effectively? I’ll write more about this in the future, but in general leaders must do four things to move people from awareness to action. They have to convince them that:

The problem is a community problem; it’s not just a personal issue.
It’s an important need, one that affects the community’s future.
It is urgent; things will grow worse with delay.
It’s possible do something about it; the community has the ability to solve the problem or significantly reduce it. It’s not hopeless or beyond reach.

When you convince people—decision makers and citizens—of these four things, something wonderful happens: People and resources are drawn to you. If offering solutions builds resistance, convincing people of needs does the opposite: It smooths the path of acceptance. Again, the trick is to build confidence that a solution can be found while not offering up a specific one.

The next step is to gather a group of people to talk about the need, discuss a range of possible solutions and agree on one to take forward. Who should be in this group? If you’ve done a good job of talking about the need—in small meetings with decision makers, in larger forums with citizens, perhaps through the news media and social media—then you know some who should be included. These are people who’ve responded to your call for action with support and resources. If you’ve spent time building relationships in the community (see “What Glengarry Glen Ross Teaches Us about Change“), you’ll know others who should be involved.

But you should also be strategic. You are assembling what John Kotter, the Harvard business professor and expert on corporate change, calls the “guiding coalition” for the change process. The coalition will change somewhat as you move through the planning and decision phases, but basically it is the group that will be the brains and muscle behind your initiative, the strategists and doers.

And who makes up a strong guiding coalition? Kotter suggests four types (which I’ve modified slightly for community change projects):

People with expertise in the issue.
Those with power in this area.
People with credibility in the community.
Leaders who’ve shown they can get things done.

For a change effort about obesity, then, the experts might be public health officials and perhaps those who run youth sports programs. Those with power might include school system officials, city parks officials and public-works officials. The other two types are harder to suggest, but you almost certainly know those in your community with a track record of getting things done and those whose judgment is respected. For the latter type, you might want to consider leaders in your city’s ethnic communities: If there are special problems with obesity among African-American or Latino youths, who can speak credibly for, and to, these families?

When you bring the coalition together, the initial goal to arrive at a workable solution (see “What Makes a Solution Workable?“). How do you manage such a thing? Well, there’s a great deal to learn about group facilitation—far more than I can cover in this posting—but three guidelines will serve you well:

Be patient. You will almost certainly introduce people to one another, so allow time for members to talk and listen. Good decisions require trust and candor. You won’t get them in a single meeting or probably in several sessions . . . but you can in time.
Start with the need and return to it frequently. The best way to begin a group’s work is with the need: a thorough discussion of what makes the problem a community concern, why it’s important and urgent, and why members believe it can be solved. As the group gets bogged down debating solutions, bring it back to the need. It will remind members of the importance of their work and encourage them to stick with it.
Keep an eye on group dynamics. One dynamic to watch for is a rush to judgment by the experts or those with power. This shouldn’t be surprising. These are people who’ve been thinking about this problem for years. They may even have solutions they’ve promoted in the past that they’d like the group to endorse. You’ll need the others—those with credibility and leadership ability—to slow things down by asking questions, gently challenging assumptions and pushing for new answers. This is an important role but one that some are uncomfortable playing. So before the first meeting, you may want to ask one or two of the most confident leaders to be the questioners of assumptions.

One way to improve the group’s work is with some “market tests” along the way. With the group’s permission, take its tentative ideas and assumptions to decision makers and citizens, through private meetings, op-ed articles and forums. This has an obvious benefit: Before committing to a solution, the group needs to know what decision makers think, how citizens respond, and where the likely obstacles lay. Yes, it will slow the process, but that’s not necessarily bad. It will prevent a rush to judgment and allow members time to know each other better.

And, who knows? Someone you talk with might offer a better solution than the ones the group was considering.

Photo by Jason Diceman licensed under Creative Commons.

The Opportunity: The Door to Civic Progress

Decision Phase: Focused Persuasion

Connecting the Phases: The Guiding Coalition

Planning Phase: The Slog of Civic Projects, and Why It’s Critical

Discussion Phase: How Need, Relationships, and Ideas Begin the Change Process

About Otis White

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