Rudy Giuliani

How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens

October 22, 2014 By Otis White

I like crises. Mind you, I don’t like being in them; I just like reading about them and thinking about how I might manage them. I don’t read Stephen King novels, but I suppose the effect is the same.

You, too, should think about crises because, knock on wood, you are likely to find yourself in one at some point in your public-leadership career if you haven’t already. And these things go better with a little forethought.

So, what is a crisis? You may have your own definition, but mine is that they are unexpected events that seem to defy the standard solutions and must be dealt with immediately. It’s the middle part that makes them so scary: For a time at least, the normal processes don’t work. You can imagine what fits this description: natural disasters, riots, system breakdowns (think back to this summer’s Toledo water crisis), economic disruptions (say, a major local employer shutting down), and scandals.

So what do you do when business as usual breaks down? You work hard to restore order, promise a full inquiry into what went wrong, and speak directly, clearly, and fully to three audiences: those dealing with the crisis, those most affected by it, and everyone else in your community.

This sounds simple but isn’t. That’s because, first, there’s no assurance what you do will work. You may have to try, fail, and try again. Second, you must speak to citizens and those working on the crisis without promising the unknowable (how and when the crisis will end). Finally, people around you will be demanding that you not say anything at all. After all, it’s a crisis. Why are you standing in front of TV microphones? Oh, and by the way, they’ll tell you, there are bound to be legal consequences, so it really is better to keep your mouth shut.

Ignore them. The difference between private management and public management is the public part. As a result, what you say to citizens about the crisis and your efforts to resolve it is every bit as important as what you do. In fact, I would argue that having someone in charge who is thinking about what he or she will say in public an hour later makes for better decision making.

So the first thing you can do to prepare for your first crisis is to think about how order might be restored in a range of calamities. The second thing is to think about how you would communicate these things to a frightened or angry public.

The third thing is to get to know those you’ll depend on in these situations—police, fire, public works, civil defense, key city hall staff (including communications staffers), disaster-relief organizations, and so on. If you’re in a position to do so, suggest mock disaster exercises. (One reason then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was so cool headed on Sept. 11 was that he, his staff, and the police had practiced for disasters.)

Finally, you can build relationships in areas where, if worse comes to worst, you may need help: minority communities, charitable organizations, faith communities, and so on. In almost any major crisis, you’ll need these groups’ support and assistance, but in a particular type of crisis their support will be critical. That’s when government itself is seen as the cause of the crisis (think Ferguson, Missouri or a city hall scandal). In these cases, you’ll need friends in a hurry. Do you have a list of community leaders who’ll stand behind you on a podium as you explain your actions? If not, it’s time to get busy.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Lieven Van Melckebeke licensed under Creative Commons.

Dealing with a Crisis

December 13, 2011 By Otis White

If there’s a gold standard for a mayor’s handling of a crisis, it is . . . well, you know what it is. It’s Rudolph Giuliani standing on a sidewalk on September 11, 2001 amid the wreckage of New York’s World Trade Center, reassuring citizens. And if there’s a lead standard for a mayor’s handling of a crisis, it may be Jean Quan’s performance this fall when her Oakland, California police department cleared an Occupy protest site.

Mayor Quan’s public handwringing and contradictory actions were well documented. She ordered police to push protesters out of their camp near city hall, then allowed them to set up the camp again the next day, all the while agonizing over which was the right thing to do. The raid on the camp and the protests that followed resulted in serious injuries to several protesters and television footage that made Oakland look like a war zone. Later, Mayor Quan tried to apologize to protesters and was booed off the speakers’ platform. The police were furious with her equivocations, and so were the protesters. Not surprisingly, a petition drive to recall Quan was launched almost as soon as the tear gas cleared.

We could make a long list of the things Mayor Quan did wrong in this crisis: indecision, incoherence, lack of vision, lack of follow-through—combined with an astonishing inability to read situations or understand how others viewed her. But a better question than what went wrong with Jean Quan is to ask its opposite: What do good leaders do differently in a crisis, people like Rudy Giuliani?

To answer that, we have to look at crises as a special kind of problem. Most leaders, including Mayor Quan, have some notion about solving problems under normal circumstances. What makes crises so different that leaders feel abandoned by their instincts?

Three things: First, they are unexpected. Whether it’s Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans or a scandal at city hall, crises seem to come out of nowhere. Second, they appear to threaten the usual ways of doing things. This is why leaders sometimes lose their bearings; they don’t know what—or whom—to trust. Finally, crises are urgent. They fill the news and the conversations of citizens, events move quickly, and leaders must deal with them NOW. The pressure can be enormous.

When you put these things together—surprises that challenge the status quo and demand immediate action—you see how crises can paralyze leaders like Mayor Quan. But they don’t have to; they can just as easily make you a hero. Rudy Giuliani started the day on September 11 as a deeply unpopular mayor whose pettiness and bullying ways had worn out his welcome with New Yorkers. He ended it as “America’s mayor,” as many news articles called him, and the change in his image was solely the result of how he handled a major crisis while the whole world was watching.

Let’s take the elements of a crisis, then, and see if we can find a formula for success . . . or, at least, survival.

Crises are surprises. This means they aren’t on your agenda, and, therefore, can’t be planned for. Nobody runs for mayor to deal with a hurricane, a terrorist attack, or protesters camping out at city hall. (For that matter, nobody wants to be city manager so she can deal with a bridge collapse or a nonprofit executive so he can manage a financial scandal.) But if you can’t plan for crises, you can at least prepare for them.

What’s the difference? Planning is about steps (I’ll do this, then this, then that . . . over a known time period). Preparation is about contingencies (if this happens, I’ll do that . . . if I ever need to). There’s an element of planning in thinking about crises, but planning takes you only so far because these events are . . . well, unexpected, urgent happenings that appear to scramble the usual ways of doing things.

What you can do in preparing for a crisis is think through a few steps and then concentrate on roles and responsibilities. For instance, if a natural disaster were to strike, what would be the most important tasks the city government would have to undertake? What decisions would have to be made? Who would be needed to make these decisions and execute those tasks? How should these people work together, and where should they be? What resources would they need?

You can construct scenarios for all kinds of crises—public safety emergencies, human disasters (say, a gas-main explosion or contaminated water supply), even political crises (a scandal, for instance). You can’t be very specific—not all hurricanes, gas-main explosions, or scandals are alike—but you can at least know where everyone in the decision team should meet and have a checklist of general things they should do (get the facts, assemble background information, brief other leaders, contact the news media, etc.). And you can prepare yourself and your emergency team for the what-ifs.

This was why Rudy Giuliani was so calm on September 11. He had already been there . . . in his mind. As he writes in his 2002 memoir, “Leadership”: “Throughout my time as mayor, we conducted tabletop exercises designed to rehearse our response to a wide variety of contingencies. We’d blueprint what each person in each agency would do if the city faced, say, a chemical attack or a biomedical attack.” This wasn’t just for the police and fire departments, he adds; it was for him and his staff as well. “The goal was to build a rational construct for myself, and for the people around me. I wanted them ready to make decisions when they couldn’t check with me. The more planning we did, the more we could be ready for surprises.”

Again, this isn’t planning in the conventional sense. It’s more like role playing, so everyone involved will know his role if the worst happens and, therefore, not be paralyzed.

Crises challenge the status quo. Take a deep breath. Crises rarely change things at a fundamental level, especially in environments as complex as cities. But they often appear to. A riot, for instance, can suggest to people that public order and the old ways of decision making have broken down and cannot be restored. And doubt can feed on itself. After Katrina, some believed New Orleans would never recover, which slowed the city’s recovery. The same thing with New York after September 11.

Because crises often create periods of doubt and genuine uncertainty, leaders must do two things immediately. First, they must do everything in their power to restore public order. Second, they should promise an open-minded look at how the crisis came about and what it means for the future. This is important. Good leaders don’t promise that everything will return to the way it was. (There’s always at least a possibility that things really can’t be as they were.) But leaders can promise to examine carefully whether mistakes were made that caused or exacerbated the crisis and, if so, fix them.

Think of it as dealing with a car wreck. First you take the victims to the emergency room to stop the bleeding and set bones. Then you do the accident inquiry. Chances are, once the crisis has passed, you’ll find that major changes aren’t needed. But in the heat of the moment, people don’t want to hear that everything is fine because things don’t look fine. They want assurances that someone will take a long and fair look at why happened and why.

Consider how differently things would have turned out for Mayor Quan if she had followed this path in Oakland. First, she could have spelled out before the police action and after why the city had to clear the camp (for health, public safety, economic reasons, etc.). She could have been resolute about not allowing the conditions to be repeated (that is to say, no future camps). Then she could have promised an open-minded examination of how peaceful protests could be accommodated in the days ahead that would achieve what the Occupy activists wanted without repeating the problems the city was concerned about. Firmness in the short term . . . with an open mind for the long.

But what about those instances where a crisis exposes a situation where things can’t remain the same? A riot, for instance, like the one Detroit experienced in 1967 that came as the city was experiencing a major demographic transition (and which hastened the transition)? Or, say, the closing of a major economic institution at a time when the city’s entire economy is shaky? In these instances, it’s even more important to deal with the crisis on a short-term, long-term basis: short term to restore order, obtain temporary aid, and so on; long term to find lasting answers, which might include a whole new way of doing things.

Crises are urgent. In some crises, leaders don’t have a week to seek advice from others. They may not even have a day. On September 11, Rudy Giuliani had minutes to size up the situation and act. But the smartest leaders always ask first about the timeline. If they have a day, then they take the entire day to make decisions. If they have an hour, they take the full hour.

Why? Because decisions are almost always improved by more information and different viewpoints. This isn’t indecisiveness. It’s intelligent decision making. It’s based on the belief that better answers emerge as informed people debate the right course in constructive ways.

The best example and one of the most studied presidential decisions of all time was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The stakes could not have been higher. Almost everyone involved saw that the crisis might end in war, perhaps nuclear war. And yet the only options presented to President Kennedy at first were to do nothing or launch a secret, preemptive air strike that would have almost required the Soviet Union to retaliate in some way.

President Kennedy insisted that his advisors take the few days they had to look for other answers and debate the alternatives among themselves. And it was from this debate that a third alternative came about: a “quarantine” around Cuba (they didn’t want to call it a blockade for fear of provoking the Soviets). As you know, this unexpected third way worked, and the crisis ended better than anyone could have imagined (missiles were gone, war was averted, and relations with the Soviet Union even took a turn for the better). And it came about because Kennedy knew exactly how much time he had to decide and used that time wisely.

But know this: When the time expires, you must act. If you do so intelligently (like Kennedy) and calmly and decisively (like Giuliani), a crisis can be your finest hour. But wilt under pressure, equivocate, and blame others, and it will be your worst nightmare. Just ask Mayor Quan.

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.

How to See Community Problems in Context

August 16, 2011 By Otis White

If you’ve been involved in communities for long, you’ve probably run into something like this. A problem arises—say, a spike in crime—and officials do the things they’ve always done to tamp it down. Only this time it doesn’t work. Why?

Or maybe it happens like this. Your city has a big decision to make, but no one is worried. Your city has a long history of making difficult, even controversial decisions successfully. Yet nothing in the decision-making process works as it normally does. Instead of coming together, public opinion splinters, bloggers have a field day, and politicians who’ve been allies turn on each other. What happened?

The answer may be that the context of the problem has changed, turning what were once simple issues into complicated or complex ones. And according to a important article in the Harvard Business Review, as the context of problems changes, your decision-making process must change with it.

Actually, we’re seeing a lot of context shifting going on these days. The places where it’s most obvious are in the suburbs, which have changed dramatically in the past two decades. What were once white, middle-class residential havens have become major business locations with residents from an astonishing array of ethnic groups and income levels.

As a result, nearly everything about the suburbs is changing: economics, politics, housing patterns, transportation needs, human relations, lifestyles, social issues, public safety. And they’re changing not only in scale (greater traffic congestion, for instance, or more crime) but in kind (a different attitude about transit, a different relationship between police and residents). Suddenly, what worked 20 years ago doesn’t work anymore. Multiply that across all the things that communities care about—education, quality of life, community appearance and pride, and on and on—and you get a sense of how, yes, chaotic things seem in some suburban areas.

And chaotic is not always the wrong word, say the Harvard Business Review authors. Writing about business decisions (but with direct application to communities), they say that problems tend to fall within four contexts: simple, complicated, complex and chaotic. And the context of the problem, they continue, should determine the elements and sequence of decision making.

What distinguishes a simple problem from a complicated, complex or chaotic one is “the nature of the relationship between cause and effect,” David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone write. If one thing happens (let’s say, an increase in children in a community) and another thing happens as a direct result (a greater demand for public classroom space), that’s a simple problem. The cause and effect are direct, proportional and apparent. But as communities grow more complicated, the causes and effects become harder to trace. To understand why, it helps to know a little about the field of complexity science.

Complexity science is based on the idea that all systems (ecosystems, economic systems, organizations or human communities) are made up of elements that interact. Simple and relatively uniform systems behave in fairly predictable ways. But as you add more and different kinds of elements (plants and animals, commercial trade, specialized workers or ethnic groups), the interactions can become more and more erratic.

You can see it most clearly in our wildly gyrating economy today. What worked in one era to stimulate growth (public works projects or tax cuts, for example) doesn’t work nearly as well in another. The reason may have to do with our deepening global connections, which make it harder to know where the U.S. economy ends and the global one begins. So a debt crisis in Greece (Greece!) ricochets around the world and upends the U.S. bond market.

On a smaller scale, it’s what’s happening in America’s increasingly complicated communities. What look like small changes in one area set off big reactions in another, for reasons that aren’t apparent. And, not to state the obvious, it’s important to know the relationship between cause and effect because . . . well, it’s hard to solve a problem if you don’t know what’s causing it.

So what’s a local leader to do? Snowden and Boone offer two thoughts that may help. The first is that the causes of problems aren’t unknowable; they’re just unknown at this time. Later on, you may know exactly what caused the issue. In the meantime, all you know is that the traditional responses failed.

Their second thought is that, as you try to figure out what’s going on, there are things you as a leader can do—if you understand the problem’s context. I urge you to read the entire article (you can download it from Harvard Business Review for a price by going here), but here’s a thumbnail version of Snowden and Boone’s description of problem contexts—and how leaders should proceed in each.

Simple context: The cause of the problem is direct and apparent, and responsible officials know how to deal with these problems—or should. An example might be a water main break, something any competent water authority can handle. This sort of problem, Snowden and Boone says, is in “the domain of best practice.” In this context, the leader’s job is to sense the problem, categorize it correctly, and respond appropriately.

Complicated context: For problems in this area, the relationship between cause and effect are direct but . . . well, complicated, and not everyone can see it. For that reason, you’ll probably need to consult experts in order to proceed. Instead of a water-main break, imagine a water authority dealing with a sustained water shortage. Conservation measures might be the solution or new sources of water or even a system of recycling water—or all three. But before proceeding, leaders should consult people with deep and wide experience in water-availability issues. (Caution: Experts sometimes disagree, so consulting them doesn’t relieve leaders of making decisions. Also, most important decisions have costs and other consequences, and these must be managed, too.) Snowden and Boone characterize problems in the complicated context as the “domain of experts.” The leader’s job here is to sense the problem, analyze it (with the help of experts), and respond appropriately, usually choosing among alternatives that experts have suggested.

Complex context: Here the relationships between cause and effect are not clear at all—and may not be clear for a while. These problems are usually caused by a change in some fundamental condition (say, a major shift in the local economy or demographics), with the result that the usual solutions don’t work. Again, it’s not that the causes of these problems are unknowable but, as Snowden and Boone write, “we can understand why things happen only in retrospect.” This is what they call the “domain of emergence,” meaning that we can’t be sure what will work, so we must try things and see what emerges as a solution. Leaders in a complex context should probe for possible solutions, sense good and bad results from these solutions, and respond by investing in the good results.

Chaotic context: This is a leader’s worst nightmare: a riot, natural disaster or catastrophe similar to the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. There are multiple things going wrong at the same time, and it may be impossible ever to know their causes and effects. Besides that, you don’t have time to probe or analyze: the key is to restore order immediately. This context, then, is the “domain of rapid response.” The right decision-making process in these crises is to act to restore order, sense where stability emerges, and respond by supporting the stable areas. Your aim isn’t to solve problems but to move them from chaos toward a complex context, where they are manageable.

There are three big lessons that civic leaders can take from Snowden and Boone’s groundbreaking analysis:

When dealing with a problem, focus on cause and effect. How clear is the relationship between the problem you’re dealing with and its causes? If it’s clear, direct and proportionate, congratulations. You have a simple problem; look for the best practices and apply them. If the causes aren’t clear and proportionate, consider the problem’s context—and the decision-making process that best addresses what you’re facing.
Don’t apply the decision-making process that works in one context to another. Turning to the water authority during a water shortage and saying, “just fix it,” won’t work. Likewise, responding to every complex problem by acting like it’s in chaos won’t work either.
The greatest peril for leaders comes during a shift in context. Snowden and Boone use the example of Rudy Giuliani, who won great praise as mayor of New York for his cool-headed response to the Sept. 11 attacks. But he quickly lost favor when he tried to use the same command-and-control style to argue that his term in office (which ended the following January) should be extended. What followed the attacks were complex problems, the citizens knew, but they weren’t chaotic. And they didn’t need Giuliani—and only Giuliani—to solve them.

As Snowden and Boone write: “. . . A specific danger for leaders following a crisis is that some of them become less successful when the context shifts because they are not able to switch styles to match it.” I would argue that the same happens when problems that have been simple suddenly become complicated or complex. Very quickly, we learn that we can’t use simple decision-making processes to solve complex problems.

Where Do Transformational Ideas Come From?

November 4, 2010 By Otis White

When George Gascon became police chief of San Francisco last year, he brought with him an idea that, if successful, could change how his department operates. He wants to use civilians instead of officers to investigate most nonviolent crimes like break-ins, car thefts and vandalism. These civilian employees would photograph crime scenes, dust for fingerprints, write reports, testify in court and counsel victims on how to prevent future crimes. “This is really about re-engineering policing,” Gascon told the San Francisco Chronicle last summer. “It’s a program that I believe will increasingly become the model around the country.”

Perhaps, but in the meantime, it’ll certainly change how the police work in his city, how crime victims interact with his department—and possibly save millions in salaries and training.

And it raises an important question for all community leaders: Where do transformational ideas like this come from? Where do you find ideas and practices that could yield important community benefits but, by definition, aren’t in common use? And that question, in turn, begs two other questions:

When do you introduce transformational ideas? That is, how do you know when the time is right for transformation?
How do you introduce a transformational idea so it has a good chance of overcoming opposition and being accepted?

All important questions. Today I’ll take on the one about where transformation ideas come from. In future postings, I’ll look at the others. (See our series on mapping community change.) Caution, though: No leader should introduce a transformational idea until she can answer all three questions. (Where did this idea come from? When should we introduce it? How do we introduce it so it succeeds?). Leaders don’t just throw big, half-baked ideas on the table and expect others to react; that’s what gadflies do.

In Gascon’s case, he found his transformational idea in Great Britain, where civilian investigators are fairly common. After reworking it to fit American police practices, he tried it in his previous job as police chief of suburban Mesa, Arizona. (The verdict from top law enforcement officials and regular cops there: It works.) Now he’s trying it on a much larger stage in San Francisco.

In short, he found his idea the way most good leaders find ideas: He kept his eyes open, asked the right question (in Gascon’s case, how can we deliver police services better and cheaper?), and looked in places you might not expect (another country). This is part of a skill set you might not associate with community leaders but should: the leader as learner.

Two other examples of how leaders learn:

Bill Clinton and Renaissance Weekend. After Clinton was elected president in 1992, reporters were surprised to discover that he participated in an annual retreat called Renaissance Weekend. It sounded strange and even a little ominous at the time, but it was how Clinton formed relationships with people from many backgrounds and, more importantly, learned about ideas he couldn’t have found at the state capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Rudy Giuliani and the Manhattan Institute. When Giuliani ran for mayor of New York in 1989 and lost, he didn’t have many good ideas outside of public safety for changing city government. (He was a longtime prosecutor.) But before he ran and won in 1993, Giuliani went to school by attending seminars at a conservative New York think tank called the Manhattan Institute. What he learned there formed many of his administration’s quality of life initiatives and government improvement efforts, ideas that were pioneered far from New York and brought to him by the Manhattan Institute.

Point is, as a leader you have to develop your own sources of ideas. You can find many good ones in your own community, but they will be mostly incremental ideas—improvements to things your city is already doing. If you want to find transformational ideas, ones that can take the city or its government in completely new directions, you’ll almost certainly have to look elsewhere.

There are several ways of doing this. You can read widely (books, magazines, blogs and national newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal). You can attend state or national conferences. (If you do so, attend the breakout sessions, talk with speakers—and get their business cards!) Or you can go on your own. I’m notorious for wandering away from family vacations to inspect downtowns, check in on neighborhood revitalization efforts and walk through new municipal projects. (And yes, I always talk to people and get their cards.)

Finally, there are intercity visits. These days nearly every city gathers a group of leaders and takes them on an overnight visit to study how another place does things. If you’re on the list, it can be a great way of learning about transformational ideas.

Go with some questions in mind, though, and make them big ones, like how can cities get more citizens involved in civic work, how can they create more distinctive downtowns, how can they deliver services better and cheaper—and then look for answers in the host city. When you hear about a bold new initiative, ask where the idea came from, how it was introduced, why it was eventually adopted and how it changed things.

And don’t forget: Ask for business cards!

How to Manage a Crisis Before It Happens

Dealing with a Crisis

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

How to See Community Problems in Context

Where Do Transformational Ideas Come From?

About Otis White

The Great Project

Follow Us on Twitter and Facebook