Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

Civic Work and the Importance of Relationships

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In early 2008, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made an all-out effort to deal with his city’s traffic problems by proposing that the city charge drivers who entered the most congested areas. Mayors don’t have that kind of authority, so he asked the New York State Legislature to give it to him. Over a week’s time, Bloomberg turned on the charm, with dinners for legislators at the mayor’s residence, a team of lobbyists working in Albany, and elaborate presentations showing lawmakers how their districts would be affected by the changes.

Didn’t work. Legislators barely considered Bloomberg’s proposal, and some seemed to enjoy snubbing the mayor. Why? One reason was the hurry-up nature of Bloomberg request; legislators thought the mayor was being disrespectful by asking for a quick vote. But another reason was Bloomberg himself. As one legislator, generally considered a friend of the mayor’s, told the New York Times, “All politics is relationships, and if he hasn’t built the relationships over time, he can’t suddenly create those relationships with 48 hours to go in the process. It just shows that six and a half years into his term, the mayor just does not know how to approach the legislature.”

Ouch. And, yet, unquestionably true—both about Bloomberg, who clearly isn’t comfortable rubbing elbows with politicians, and politics in general. All politics are relationships, but then again so are most human endeavors. And nowhere is that more true than in civic work, as I’ll explain shortly.

But, first, a word about relationships in general. It goes almost without saying that we need other people to have productive and meaningful lives, but we sometimes don’t appreciate how much. Here’s a hint: Academics who’ve studied natural disasters, like hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, earthquakes in Italy, and tsunamis in Asia, have found that the people most likely to survive and later restore their lives are those with the greatest number of relationships. Partly it’s because they have support systems that others don’t, and in times of great trauma, being surrounded by those who care about you makes you want to go on. But it’s not just psychological, researchers have learned; the well-connected have access to a storehouse of knowledge about getting things done. One researcher who had studied a tsunami’s aftermath in India explained it this way: “Those individuals who had been more involved in local festivals, funerals, and weddings, those were the individuals who were tied into the community. They knew who to go to, they knew how to find someone who could help them get aid.”

And it’s not just during disasters. Researchers who’ve studied corporate CEOs have consistently found that those promoted from within companies do better, on average, than those hired from outside. This isn’t true in every case, of course, but it’s true in the aggregate: Those hired from within last longer in their jobs than those recruited from other companies. There are many explanations for this, but one that researchers point to again and again is that home-grown executives know from day one how the company really works—what academics call “private knowledge” (unlike information you could get about the company from looking at its financial statements and organizational charts or looking things up on Google). And private knowledge—about how decisions are made, who is reliable, where and why initiatives have failed in the past—can be decisive in a CEO’s career.

Or in a civic leader’s career. Why is it so important to have a big and diverse network in civic work? Two reasons:

  • Power and resources are diffuse in cities. You can’t make major changes in cities by having one or two people, or even a small group, say yes; you have to get large groups to agree. The only way to do that is by knowing the decision makers well enough to win their commitments at the right time. And that takes long-established relationships. (Are you listening, Mayor Bloomberg?)
  • Communities are incredibly diverse: economically, politically, religiously, ethnically, in educational attainment, in years spent in the community, and on and on. As a result, you have to work harder at building relationships in communities than in companies or most other human activities, for the simple reason that the people whose help you’ll need won’t always run in your circles. The first task of community relationship building, then, is to consciously seek out people who aren’t like you.

But on the other side of these obstacles is a big reward for those who overcome them: Because communities are so diverse and power so diffuse, there’s a great deal of private knowledge in cities—basically, information about getting things done that isn’t widely known. The result is that the person with the best relationships—deep in trust and broad in diversity—is the one best positioned to accomplish things. If a project is stalled, she’ll know how to get it back on track. If a crisis blows up, she’ll know the critical constituencies who’ll need to be reassured and how to do it. If there’s financing problem in an important project, she’ll know those most likely to step in with resources.

This leads us to the next big question: If relationships are so important to civic work and the benefits so great, how do you form them? How do you meet people and turn acquaintances into friends? And once you’ve deepened your relationships, how do you use them to benefit your civic work and the city?

Sociologists who’ve studied the connections between people say there are four things that strengthen relationships: the time people spend together, their sense of identification with one another, the trust that’s formed between the two (especially how free they feel in sharing confidences), and how they reciprocate, which is an academic’s way of saying trading favors.

When you look at this list, you can see how things work pretty much in that order: First, people spend time together, then they see things in the other person they identify with (even if, on the surface, the other person seems different), they begin confiding in one another, and finally they help each other out. By the time you get to that final stage, trading favors, you have a deep relationship.

As a side note, don’t let the term “trading favors” turn you off. It’s one of the oldest and most beneficial human instincts. If someone helped you move from a dorm room to an apartment in college, and you later helped him move, you’ve traded favors. If you swapped turns driving the carpool to soccer practice, you’ve traded favors. If a civic leader helped you raise money for your project and you did the same for hers, you’ve traded favors. Trading favors becomes a bad thing only when it involves trading things you don’t actually own, such as government resources.

Still, I haven’t actually answered the question. It’s important to understand the stages of relationships, but knowing them doesn’t explain how to move through them. Here’s where civic work becomes the answer to its own problem: You do it through volunteering. It’s the best way—maybe the only sure way—of meeting large numbers of people and working alongside them. Want to know who’s reliable? Work on a Habitat for Humanity project. Want to know who’s wise? Serve on a nonprofit board. Want to know who truly knows their parts of the community? Raise money with them.

And this brings us, finally, to the reasons for the relationships. For friendship, sure. To be a more civically engaged and culturally aware person, of course. But the reason you set out to build those civic relationships was to get things done in your community. And for that you have to ask people to do things: to serve on a committee, donate money, or turn out their friends for an important event.

I understand why some are reluctant to ask; they fear it makes them seem pushy. In fact, just the opposite. It makes you look like a leader. Rather than thinking less of you, people will think more of you when you ask for their help. And when they agree, they’ve invested in your success. And that may be the ultimate stage of a relationship.

Chris Matthews, the television commentator, wrote not long ago that this was something John F. Kennedy learned early in his political career: You have to ask. Matthews says it’s what has been missing from President Obama’s administration. Yes, he raised enormous hopes (and donations) among his followers in 2008. But once in office Obama didn’t ask them to do anything other than cheer for him. (Unlike, say, the Tea Party, which has continuously asked its followers to do things in opposition to President Obama.) “There are certain basics to becoming a leader,” Matthews wrote in an essay for Time magazine. “The first is asking people to follow you. Kennedy asked. Obama used people to get elected.” Matthews supports Obama, but, he adds, “He needs to start asking.”

So do you. If you want to create loyalty, which is the deepest level of relationship you can have in public or private life, you need to ask people to do things for you. But first, be prepared to spend time with people who aren’t much like you. And be quick to help them with their projects.

Photo by United Way of Greater St. Louis licensed under Creative Commons.

Why Patience Is a Virtue in Civic Work

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The Grand Coulee Dam in eastern Washington State is a marvel of engineering and one of the world’s most successful public projects. It is the single largest producer of electricity in the country and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. It was begun in the depths of the Great Depression as a New Deal project and began producing hydroelectric power—and lots of it—just months before Pearl Harbor. Because it produced so much power so cheaply (it cranks out enough today to electrify the Seattle area twice over), many give it some credit for winning World War II since Seattle needed a huge power source during the war years for airplane production. And get this: It was actually designed and built under budget. In 1933, when the project started, the estimated cost of the dam was $168 million. It was completed for $163 million.

So, if you are looking for a well-conceived, well-designed, well-managed government project, you need go no further than the Grand Coulee Dam. It’s a little surprising, then, to learn that the idea of the Grand Coulee Dam took shape in . . . 1918. It was then that a group of leaders in eastern Washington found the exact spot for a major hydroelectric dam and conceived its purpose and benefits (cheap power and irrigation for the parched countryside) 15 years before construction started and 22 years before it began producing power.

Why? For the reasons any experienced civic leader knows: Great ideas don’t sell themselves; the barriers to change—any change—are high; and sometimes it takes a crisis to motivate decision makers. And, yet, when the right moment comes along, bold ideas seem almost to leap off the shelf. Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933. Immediately, he and his advisers scoured the country for big public-works projects that could be started in a hurry. One of the first they found—and by far the largest—was the Grand Coulee Dam.

This time lag between concept and acceptance (often followed by frenetic action) is so common that economist Milton Friedman once offered some advice to those who despaired about change, especially his fellow conservatives:

There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

And it’s not just at the federal level that this lag occurs. Many people know that New York revolutionized police work in the mid-1990s by adopting the “broken windows” theory of social disorder. (Briefly, the theory holds that by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes such as littering, graffiti, turnstile jumping, public urination, and so on, you will head off major crimes. The name comes from the idea that, if a building has one window that’s not repaired, vandals will soon break all the windows.) Here’s the surprise: The theory was published in 1982 and thoroughly discussed at the time. It took 15 years for “broken windows” to get its high-profile test.

In Washington, D.C., there’s a mixed-use development going up on the site of the old Washington Convention Center at New York Avenue and 14th Street. It’s a big project: condos, apartments, offices, shops, and restaurants, packed into 10 acres. Sounds great until you learn that the city has been working on getting something at that site for almost two decades. Most of that time, officials knew they wanted a mixed-use facility—they even chose the developer in 2003—but one delay after another postponed it.

Given this sometimes long and frustrating delay between idea and execution, what should civic leaders do? Five things:

  • Don’t get frustrated. Ideas are often formed in a burst of energy and creativity and then . . . nothing. But simply knowing that the road ahead is likely to be long may help you keep spirits up. If an idea is a great one—if the benefits to the community are obvious—then it will find its moment. Be patient.
  • Keep talking about the idea and refining it. Use this fallow period to prepare your idea and prepare others for your idea by coming up with new ways of illustrating its benefits. If it’s a new museum or a streetcar, how many ways can you help people see the museum and its collection or experience the sensation of moving on rail?
  • Build a committed group of advocates. This is the other thing you can do during the fallow period. The social media allow nearly unlimited ways of keeping the converted in conversation—and converting new people. Use them.
  • Watch for changing circumstances that may allow the “politically impossible” to become the “politically inevitable,” to use Milton Friedman’s words. It could be a crisis, a change of leadership in a key agency or government—or both. And when it happens, bring your new idea and your growing list of supporters to the new leaders’ attention immediately. If FDR had learned about the Grand Coulee Dam idea in 1934 instead of 1933, chances are it would never have been built.
  • Search for a work-around.

The last point bears a little explanation. Sometimes bold new ideas can be presented as, well, not so bold. In fact, even the biggest changes in cities can be offered up as small and safe—if they are presented as experiments. This is how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has remade huge parts of New York, building bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, allowing “pop-up” restaurants on city sidewalks, and so on. If he had presented any of these as bold new city policies (which they eventually became), opponents would have killed them.

So how did he do it? He offered them as “pilot projects,” experiments in a small area for the purpose of observation. In part he did this because it allowed the city to do things without going through the cumbersome and delay-prone public review process. But Bloomberg is also an astute observer of human (and political) nature. Had he proposed narrowing hundreds of New York streets for bike lanes, the howls of protest would have drowned out the idea, all of them predicting economic and physical gridlock. But by doing just a few blocks at first, then a few more, then a few more, then a lot more, the mayor and his staff proved that even the busiest New York streets could accommodate cyclists, motorists, and truck drivers—and be more humane for it.

Bloomberg has done this repeatedly over his three terms in office, quietly making small changes that paved the way for big ones. Often, by the time the larger ones are made, controversial changes aren’t controversial any longer. One of his critics, looking at the mayor’s use of pilots to pave the way for change, told the New York Times, “It’s masterful.”

You may be able to offer your change as bite-size pieces, or maybe not. It’s hard, for instance, to build just part of the Grand Coulee Dam and use it as a demonstration project. But whether you offer your great idea as a series of small steps or one long stride, the same advice applies: Be patient.

Photo by Jeff Hanway licensed under Creative Commons.

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

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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 19th and early 20th 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.

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.