Author: joebuckshon

Quality Jobs Tax Grant: Program Design Capstone

Public Policy

The Capstone Project has been a hallmark of the Fels Institute’s practical approach to public administration for many years. I was fortunate to have a mentor who had also gone through the program, and was able to guide me to an excellent candidate for a project. After a successful design process, the COVID-19 pandemic (appropriately) deprioritized the program’s funding in favor of a more immediate lifeline to small businesses. But in 2023, the City of Philadelphia officially launched the program.

Executive Summary

In general, tax incentives are expensive, poorly designed, and difficult if not impossible to
evaluate. At the same time, they are critical to the economic future of a city, state, or region
and their ability to attract or retain businesses. They are popular among politicians for their
ability to make a splash – creating jobs and scoring points with voters. The reality is there are
too many programs that don’t offer enough data on their performance. In Philadelphia alone
there are 21 separate programs that offer economic incentives – the most among major cities
included in a recent Pew Research center study. And yet, Philadelphia struggles with growing
the right kinds of jobs – those offering good wages, health insurance, and other benefits that
help families thrive. To make better use of funding dedicated to economic incentives,
Philadelphia and cities across the country must embrace transparency, evaluation, and
inclusive policies that maximize benefits for all residents. The Quality Jobs Tax Grant program
represents a design that incorporates these ideas and much more by relying on best practices,
high-quality research, and expert opinions. Improvements will be needed across the full
portfolio of economic incentives, but Quality Jobs can serve as the new standard for inclusive
growth incentives in Philadelphia.

My full capstone paper can be accessed here.

What do you do? A BEN Talk on Professional Identity

Uncategorized

This is an unused draft of a BEN Talk – UPENN’s equivalent of a TED Talk – that was started in 2018. In 2022, I uncovered it while looking for something else, and so I did my best to update and finish the draft based on my original premise.

“What do you do?”

You may have already been asked this question once or twice today. You’ve surely been asked it hundreds if not thousands of times in your life. But it’s such an odd phrase.

“What do you do?”

You breathe. You walk. You talk. You think. You collaborate with stakeholders to achieve synergistic innovations. Or you’re a lawyer. 

The last bit is obviously what people want to know when they ask – “what do you do?” They expect you to respond with your job title. And when you tell them the generic or arbitrary marker your manager has assigned to you – which does little to describe anything resembling an occupation – they’ll have even more questions. 

But the reason they have more questions is that they don’t really want to know what you do. They probably don’t really care if you’re in accounting or grant-writing or firefighting. They probably don’t want to know about the big project you’re working on or how much your clients value your talents. 

They want an answer to a question they can’t ask. They want to know “who are you?”

In our country, your value as a worker is often the first identity applied to you by others. People want to know if you’re a friend or foe, an equal or a superior. They need to approximate your value somehow in order to feel comfortable around you. And I’m here today to tell you something extremely important:

You are so much more than your job. 

Precisely none of you are impressed by this statement. You know that you are so much more than your job! 

I felt the exact same way in 2015 when I changed careers. Of course I wanted this new opportunity, but it wasn’t going to define me. I loved so many things, I had an amazing partner, and we made beautiful plans for our life together – how could this one part of my life become my entire being?

On the outside, at a cocktail party or in a coffee shop, I had an extremely cool job. People were fascinated by what I did and I was proud to tell them. When people asked, I talked about how great it was to work with Mike Solomonov. When a friend of my father’s wanted to have dinner with me in Philadelphia, I took him to a client’s restaurant where I knew we’d receive complimentary food to impress him. When my beloved Temple University Football team won their first conference championship, the coaching staff celebrated at a client’s bar and he called me down to meet the whole team – something I could only experience by working at this company. 

But when I told these stories, and talked about how great it was to have my job, I was lying to everyone in my life. I bounced between anxiety and depression on what seemed like an hourly basis. My relationships were suffering – outside of the “Band of Brothers” type bond we had developed in our office – and I had accumulated the kind of mental and emotional debt that can overwhelm even the strongest among us. 

In 2017, my now wife and I booked a week-long trip to Spain. We were desperate for something to look forward to and the timing worked out for both of us. Our flight home was landing pretty late, so we each had planned to take the next day off to relax before getting back to work. 

But relaxing was out of the question – I was a complete mess – terrified of what had gone wrong while I was away. The anxiety was so acute that my wife all but pushed me out the door to spend ninety minutes in a sensory deprivation tank.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this type of experience, sensory deprivation involves an hour or more spent floating in a pitch black tank, where the water has so much salt content that you effortlessly float. It has become popular with Navy Seals, Marines, and professional athletes to name a few. As a lowly account executive at a design agency, I even had imposter syndrome about using the therapy. 

When I returned home, I told my wife that I was going to quit my job without even finding a new one. I was done. We agreed that I would put in my two weeks notice that Friday. 

The next morning, Wednesday, I arrived early to the office and was surprised to not be the first one in the building as I almost always was. After a few minutes, our CEO called me into her office and told me it was my last day at the company. Things had gone wrong while I was away, and she felt that I was no longer performing well enough to stay in the job. I had a few tearful hugs with colleagues and I headed back home. I was stunned, but ultimately relieved. The fear about my future could wait – for now I was free. 

Getting fired was easy. If anyone is looking for tips, please see me afterwards. I can have you unemployed by the end of the day. And because I knew I wanted to quit, I actually didn’t feel bad about it. I was so happy to be removed from the situation that I naively thought everyone else around me would understand. That was absolutely not the case. 

My parents, who I thought would be concerned, were actually more embarrassed initially. They assured me they wouldn’t tell anyone at all. My friends were unsure how to react, which made me hesitant to tell most people in my life. To this day, I think there are still people, people who I am very close to, who do not know this story. 

And that is a tragedy. Just because my identity temporarily changed to unemployed (unintentional division) didn’t mean I was any different. I was still the same person! I was still just as smart (or not) as you might have thought before. One person’s decision to fire me suddenly became an albatross hanging from my neck. And I know this experience is not at all unique. More than 20 million Americans were fired in 2017 – so I had a pretty big support group. 

Maybe some of them were fired for “better” or “worse” reasons than me, but I highly doubt that the act of being fired made them different in a fundamental way. It’s a fact that losing a job is a transformational experience for many people, but it isn’t the firing that causes the change – it is the person’s reaction to getting fired that determines the long term change. Which brings me back to my point. Even when you get hired into another job or start your own business, you’ve still got the scarlet letter of being fired stuck to your chest.

What you do is not necessarily what your job is at this moment. Your job will change, and you will change too, sometimes one changes the other and vice versa. But nothing can change you without your participation. At the end of the day, you make choices about how to spend your time, and those choices add up to a life.

If I could leave you all with a piece of advice today it would be this: Make choices that are sustainable, that are healthy, and that bring you closer to your own goals. Jobs mostly don’t care that you want to read more often or start a family or host more dinner parties. They just want you to do your job as efficiently and as cost effectively as possible. In a system that is so focused on extracting your time and energy from your control, self-care is basically a revolutionary course of action. It is also the path to making those choices that add up to the life that you really want to live.

So when people as you what do you do? You can tell them you take care of yourself and your people. By any means necessary.


Consulting Project Management: Strategy & Tactics

Strategy

When I started my first professional job in Spring 2012, I had no idea that Project Management was an entire industry with certifications, academic literature, and week-long seminars. I was fortunate (or not so fortunate) to never receive this training, and instead developed an approach through trial and error, and lots of great advice and coaching from managers over the last eleven years. This is an attempt to write down what I’ve learned so far, mostly through the lens of a consulting organization.

  • Create a project plan – even if you never update it again.
    • Where can you see there will be disruptions? For example, if your project stretches over Thanksgiving and the December holidays, you already know you’ve lost three weeks (give or take) of time to work – make sure you distribute the work accordingly.Who will miss time from the project team? Vacations, parental leave, etc. Build it in.
    • Other deadlines in other projects you are not leading? Make sure to confirm them with that engagement manager / PM and plan around them, if possible.
  • Set your milestone dates in advance, if possible, and work backwards.
    • Where possible, ask Clients or MD / Director for any natural milestones to tie our work to – i.e., council meetings, election cycles, budget cycles, etc.
  • Insist on having an internal kick-off meeting
  • Make sure you have a kick-off meeting with the client, too
  • All tasks should have a deadline, all deadlines should assume one additional round of revision.
    • For example, we need to draft an outline for a final report on tax policy recommendations; this task needs 1) due date to the client (meeting scheduled already), 2) final version sent to client ahead of time (if applicable), 3) date to be sent to “reviewer” (I.e., Director, SME, etc.), and 4) internal meeting to discuss / brainstorm (if needed)
  • Learn to love your calendar. As an analyst, meetings are few and far between. As you’ll soon read in this guide, being a great PM will require a solid number of productive meetings. At many firms, you’ll still be expected to do significant analyst-type work – often up to and including your time as a senior leader. Use the points below as a guide to get started.
    • Schedule out as far as you can – when possible, set meetings to be recurring (bi-weekly, monthly, or even quarterly in some cases).Schedule your analyst tasks as meetings with yourself. If you need three hours to write a report or ninety minutes to QC someone’s analysis, put it on the calendar. If you need to stop for lunch (Author’s note: I do my best to schedule my lunch hour a month in advance), then make sure you have an hour booked mid-day.
      • IMPORTANT NOTE: Once you get consistent at booking this time, anyone viewing your calendar will have a more accurate understanding of how “busy” you are at any given time. (Author’s note: This is why more senior members of the team regularly look at my calendar and say it looks more packed than theirs. The truth is they probably have just as much to do, but I look “busier” because I’ve actually tried to account for all the hours I need to do the work!!) This is invaluable when it comes time to honestly communicate your capacity to meet a tight deadline or add another project midstream.
    • Adopt “Power Scheduling” principals. Like all good management systems, no one follows this 100% of the time, but in general, these guidelines help with productive work flows:
      • Know yourself! When do you do your best work? Make sure you are scheduling your most important tasks / meetings for those windows whenever possible. Getting ahead and staying ahead helps here, for sure.  As an example, I often start to drag around 2PM, so I will try to schedule low-value meetings during that time since I won’t be doing much work anyway.Know your team. Don’t be inflexible, and don’t say ‘I’m doing this to follow Power Scheduling!’ Just default to these choices and the rest will fall into place.Book yourself back-to-back, but not all day. Two one-hour meetings or three thirty-minute meetings is probably the outer limit of what can be productive if you are leading each one. Schedule a break in between, then go back-to-back again if possible.Monday / Friday: Internally focused days and nights. Try to schedule as many of your internal meetings on these days as possible. Reserve your evenings for time with family, friends, etc.Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday: Externally focused days. Schedule your client meetings and internal working meetings for these days. Reserve the 9AM, Noon, and 4PM hours for yourself (sending emails, having lunch, etc). These are the target days for any after work professional / networking type events or outings. These responsibilities are very infrequent early in the PM’s career, but increase over time.Saturday / Sunday: Can be used sparingly for work. In the official Power Scheduling system, Saturday morning is reserved for closing out any items that didn’t get attention during the week. I don’t personally find this valuable except when I’m really swamped, but obviously your mileage may vary.
      • FINAL NOTE ON POWER SCHEDULING: Again, it’s not an exact science. The keys are being mindful of the things you need to do each week, and making them as repeatable and as simple as possible. Once your calendar is pre-loaded with some of these “big rocks” you can fill in around them more easily.
  • As a general rule, assume no one will do anything related to your project unless you directly tell them it is their responsibility and that it is needed by a certain date / time; even then, be sure to follow-up if you do not hear back from this person in a reasonable timeframe (silence is almost never an affirmative answer).
  • Relatedly, if you are assigned to a project and no one else is obviously the project manager, consider yourself the project manager unless and until someone else tells you not to play that role.
    • This would apply to tasks like scheduling, note taking, meeting agendas and follow-ups, etc.
  • Goals, Roles, and Budget – the most important parts of every project.
    • Goals: from the client and MD / Director – what does success look like for this project? What specifically does the client need from us (i.e., capacity, guidance, a specific deliverable, etc.)?
    • Roles: who is the project lead (“Engagement Manager”)? Who needs to sign off on major documents / presentations / etc.? Who leads the regular meetings? Who is the project manager (“second chair”)? Who is the analyst?
      • Project Roles also apply to (and may differ from) roles related to specific documents and meetings, see more on this below
    • Budget: for a given organization, this may be more about time than money – so be sure to apply your leader’s approach to this element of PM.
      • Based on the scope of work, who is expected to do the majority of the work? Who else can be involved as an expert or support if needed for extra capacity? How much is the project worth – and by extension, are we comfortable going over budget for any particular reasons (i.e., opportunity for staff training, marketing purposes, helping to win future work, etc.)?
  • Ship something every two weeks. It will probably need to be in draft form in many cases – this is a good thing! It forces the PM to play more of a role in creating templates or very early drafts for internal work.
    • If this fits your project plan, great. If not, consider how you can have some “thing” (a topic, a draft document, a key question) to bring to each bi-weekly meeting.
    • Always try to deliver your major project deliverables at these bi-weekly meetings – it saves time on scheduling and keeps your client on a rhythm of focusing on this project.
  • As a result, meet with your client once every two weeks.
    • Depending on the project, this may not be entirely necessary; meeting frequency should be agreed upon by your team and the client as part of the kick-off meeting
  • Notes on scheduling any and all client meetings, including bi-weekly meetings:
    • Always provide at least three options for dates / times
    • Always clarify the length of the meeting – 30 minutes, 60 minutes, or longer, as needed (and only with Client / Engagement Manager approval).
    • Always provide times in the time zone of the client (or most senior person on the client team, if it differs)
    • Use calendar HOLDS when scheduling for someone with a tight calendar (I.e., most MDs and Directors); this means sending calendar invitations for each meeting window clearly labeled “HOLD – PROJECT X MEETING” and sending these BEFORE you send the email to the group you are scheduling
    • Once the meeting is scheduled, delete the HOLDs you no longer need
  • Meetings must have an agenda and clearly assigned roles – who will present what, who is preparing any documents to present, who is sharing their screen, etc. The level of preparation definitely scales according to the importance of the meeting, though it should always be clear
    • If no clear agenda, reach out to those attending to ask for topics or to cancel.
    • Meetings must have an assigned notetaker, and they MUST identify the next steps and who is responsible for each.
  • Documentation must be intentional and consistent. Ideally, every activity in a project will be captured by some sort of documentation. Without this documentation, you can easily get lost or forget a critical decision. (Author’s note: This recently happened to me with a project where roles were inconsistent, and I made the mistake of not assuming notetaking responsibility. The decision I did not capture was pretty important – the date selected to launch a survey).
    • Meeting notes: Every meeting should have notes taken and saved in a central location. If there were not noteworthy items in a meeting, it should not have happened in the first place!
    • Emails: As a general rule, I try to not have something in email only, because it is unreliable and less accessible than a shared drive. However, for internal items or basic information sharing, it is of course an acceptable document. If you write a great email with lots of information in it, consider printing it as a PDF and saving to the client drive.
  • Meetings must have a follow-up email, promptly (within 24-48 hours of meeting) with clear and direct next steps, assignments, and deadlines.
    • Use bullet points to separate out the next steps
    • If scheduling a meeting is a next step, consider whether to include it in this message or send a separate email to the relevant project team members
  • Internal meetings – as needed, but assume you need more than you do. Meet too much first.
    • Again, having an agenda is critical; roles can vary by what type of meeting – if you want to brainstorm something, prompt the team so they come prepared; if you want to present a draft of something, consider whether you need to send it ahead of time (not a requirement)
    • For managing specific analysts, consider a once-per-week check-in for 15 minutes, three question agenda
      • What did you work on last week?
      • What are you working on this week?
      • Are you stuck anywhere / on anything?
  • When in doubt, send an email.
    • How are we feeling?
    • What did you think of that meeting?
    • Where should we go next?
    • Should we ask an MD / Director / Senior Advisor what they think?
    • Does the timeline still feel right? Do we need to speed up / slow down / change something?

Effective Change Management in Equity Implementation

Public Policy

This white paper was a collaboration between myself and Matt Stitt, as primary writers and researchers, and Mike Nadol as editor. It was created as part of PFM’s work in the Bloomberg Results for America City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery program in 2021. Due to formatting limitations, footnotes have been excluded from this text-based version. The fully designed PDF, including all citations, can be viewed here.

Introduction

Changing practices to drive greater equity can be extremely intimidating for cities not yet substantively educated or exposed to the relevant concepts, and, for those within cities that perceive their status or authority as being threatened by the adoption of new principles. This is especially the case given today’s turbulent environment.

Creating a sense of urgency for change can be relatively easy as an executive, but significantly less so as a subordinate. Finding champions can seem impossible if cities are struggling to get stakeholders to even entertain a particular topic. Simultaneously, both proven and emerging change management practices can be deployed to help overcome these challenges and dramatically improve the probability of success.

If an individual seeking to make change lacks a traditional leadership position, active supporters for their cause, or simply does not know where to begin, this guide can help them model an approach to lead from where they sit, and effect sustainable, enduring organizational change.

As part of our ongoing work with the cohort of cities looking to make transformative change through the Bloomberg Philanthropies/What Works Cities/Results for America City

Budgeting for Equity and Recovery (CBER) Initiative, the following represents a combination of lessons learned and promising change management practices that have emerged over the duration of the Initiative.

What is Change Management?

Fundamentally, change management speaks to the process that ultimately drives a city’s culture (and, to quote the renowned Peter Drucker, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”). We are more specifically speaking to the process that drives a city’s new program, initiative, or strategic focus to gain additional, necessary buy-in from stakeholders across the entire government. This can take place at any level within the organization – from one’s mind to one’s team, and from one-on-one relationships with global institutions – and many of the critical factors will remain very similar. Some of the standard best practices include

  • Creating a sense of urgency; action must be taken quickly.
  • Finding champions to help spread the word, implement changes, and eliminate barriers.
  • Establishing working groups, committees, or task force teams (composed of champions and subject matter experts) to lead change effort(s) across government.
  • Focusing on short-term wins to build momentum on the way to long-term success.
  • Reinforcing the established change at a systems level.
  • Creating continual, evaluation and feedback loops to better inform future refinements.

While these are tried and true tactics that can support your city’s /team’s leading efforts to improve upon the existing culture, and to achieve the brighter future your city envisions, it must be acknowledged that aligning a large organization can be challenging, particularly in the public sector. To tackle this specific type of change management challenge related to equity, PFM has curated a series of promising practices from across the U.S. that can be applied to your unique opportunity to refine your department’s operations, municipal operating budget, or capital improvement plan.

Promising Practices in Change Management for Equitable Principles

Traditional change management best practices assume a certain level of power for decision-making and political capital committed by the initiative’s champion, a certain level of responsibility vested in the person or team charged with leading the change, and a general level of awareness that the existing culture must be altered or disrupted to achieve desired outcomes. The practices that follow not only recognize these dynamics, but also seek to foster and leverage them for impact.

Conduct a brief, informal environmental scan

The goal for this is to make certain you have a general understanding of how equity work has been conducted in the past and to what extent it was successful. This can include a consideration of peer organizations – however, their relative success or lack thereof is not necessarily predictive of your own experience. Keep cultural, political, and demographic realities in mind when making comparisons and avoid digging too deeply into quantitative data at this stage.

In a recent project with the City of Chula Vista, CA, the project team spoke with several departments that had previously published equity-centric documentation to ask about their process and goals. The team was able to collect equity definitions and other data points to bolster their own work. This also led them to uncover additional equity champions that could be aligned to their specific project goals.

Identify the key players, both champions and detractors

If you cannot make the final decision, who can? Who else has influence over the decision, or the ultimate implementation of the decision? Is there a way to turn our detractors into champions? If so, how should we pursue the best path to securing that buy-in?

Start by creating a rough power map as it relates to your city’s goal. A simple format to consider is an “x” and “y” axis showing more or less influence in one dimension and more or less support for your position in the other. Understanding these change management power dynamics and how they impact decision-making authority and workflows, will help you plot the most efficient course of action.

Establish a working group, steering committee, or task force comprised of champions to lead change

Establishing working groups, committees, or task forces can further support communication, coordination, and collaboration efforts across the government. If existing, effective groups are already up and running for cross-cutting initiatives or priorities, joining those committees might be an effective way to make progress and find others that support your cause. The larger and more complex the government entity, the greater the need to join or establish a formal working group or committee to lead these efforts. These teams should also include “A-Team” members, to ensure that the change remains a substantive and visible priority. Diversity of department and positions is crucial as was outlined in a recent ICMA study of the City of Evanston (IL). In this example, Evanston intentionally built their equity committees through diversity of positions, departments, and supervisory responsibilities.

When defining equity in your jurisdiction, focus on metrics, not just language

While a baseline understanding of the definition of equity (for example, how it is different from equality) is typically helpful in regards to getting your team thinking similarly, the conversation will inevitably move to “how do we measure this abstract concept?” In many places, governments are adopting place-based, third-party definitions that are often set by and monitored through federal agencies, such as the Center for Disease Control’s Social Vulnerability Index or HUD’s Qualified Census Tracts (QCT). Focusing on these types of metrics, initially, helps to alleviate pressure on any individual that may be seen as “defining equity” for an entire community (that person should be, but may not be, engaged in this process). It also generally aligns with federal and state funding streams, which can be a useful leverage point when discussing the fiscal implications of this type of focus (e.g.., if we use HUD’s definition, it is highly likely we can apply for grants that support impactful programming on this metric).

In Harris County, TX, City officials have started to use the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index more consistently across multiple areas of their operating and capital budget processes, including flood plain project prioritization and small business relief. Using the same metric across both programs allows for a comparison of outcomes, and consistent reporting across departments.

Be aware of existing leadership priorities, as well as timing of electoral cycles

When pursuing equitable change, it is critical to understand where leadership stands in relation to your own vision of equity. If appropriate, consider ways to elevate this work to the executive themselves, or, more likely to their deputies and key support staff. If the elected official can take things a step further by issuing a jurisdiction-wide mandate, or even an executive order, it will likely  set the tone for equity work across the organization, and can also further the push for more alignment with larger organizational goals, as well.

For example, one city in the City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery cohort that is working to increase equity in its capital budget discovered that a key driver to completing more equitable work is the amount of available discretionary capital funding each year. If the Mayor, City Manager, and other city leadership can articulate the need and scale of deferred maintenance, and can make a collective, unified push for additional funding from other entities (e.g., philanthropic and state and federal government), it would be a more powerful push than coming from the budget office alone, and, should increase the chances of securing additional funding for all proposed capital projects.

If your city’s administration and leadership are coming up on the end of their term(s), consider how this kind of work may be impacted (positively or negatively) by the result of a primary or general election. While there should be urgency around equity in all cases, the timing of when to pursue certain conversations, policy or process changes – and potential presentations or reports  – must follow a logical cadence that considers the practical and feasible focus of the administration(s) at any given moment.

Understand the perspective of your key detractor(s)…

If your internal detractors are substantively reliant on key data for their work, this factor should inform how you formulate a persuasive argument, and strategically approach the conversation or meeting with these stakeholders. For example, if your city’s team is attempting to change public works’ policies, your team may need to dive deeper in regards to where the more granular data stems from, how often projects are similarly (or identically) rated, and what level of subjective prioritization comes into play at more senior levels of the organization – to offer a more relevant context or perspective.

 In San Diego, CA, street projects are prioritized based on street condition, proximity to one another, etc. This can be considered an asset quality-centric approach to budget allocation. In Oakland, CA, a similar process is used, however, Oakland also incorporates equitable factors in their prioritization criteria. For instance, individual complaints are not included as rationale for paving a particular street, and geographies considered “underserved” by the City’s definition receive preference in project funding. This additional layer of consideration can potentially counteract persistent underfunding of some community priorities.

…And, where possible, use these conversations to create champions

To further the capital budget example, perhaps your equity team meetings with this department team reveal a lack of sustainable, discretionary funding for projects that are not tied to grants, nor state or federal aid. One potential solution is to use your team’s equitable push as a starting point to request increased funding for all capital projects, and, in particular, those aligned with equitable principles. In Oakland, CA, when the city was revamping its capital improvement plan, working groups focused on getting feedback and input at multiple points along the way to ensure buy-in, and to create champions for the plan. This type of broad engagement approach allows you to aggregate feedback and frame your goals in a shared, inclusive context that can be supported by all involved.

In all cases, advocate for low-effort reporting and transparency initiatives

For example, if your  team would like to change the decision-making process for funding new programs in the local  government’s jurisdiction, that may take significant staff time

and effort to design ahead of upcoming budget cycle(s). However, if your internal  team could introduce a new variable in a shorter timeframe for reporting on budget figures, it may be possible to clearly demonstrate a need for new decision-making criteria when faced with data on the growing disparities among various communities.

In Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott has made a significant push towards transparency and open data on many city services, including those related to COVID-19 recovery. This includes real- time, public dashboards that show spending trends for the City and its agencies. Recall the prior recommendation on initially using metrics as definition(s) of equity – by simply including a report of spending by the CDC or HUD geographical variable, any city could display potential opportunities to increase equitable spending.

The Three Cs of Change Management

When in doubt, focus on the Three Cs: Coordination, Communication, and Collaboration

As the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, an increasingly unpredictable future requires new ways of thinking about government operations. When the critical moment is upon you, it is too late to plan for what you might do. Preparing for these scenarios is ideal – however, if your organization is facing a new challenge, the “three Cs” should be your default methodology for quickly establishing alignment, effectively sharing information, and working across silos to deliver critical services and save precious time and resources along the way.

  • Racial Equity and Reconciliation Initiative Team, City of Long Beach (CA) – In June 2020, City Council members in Long Beach, CA, unanimously approved a resolution to review historical inequities related to Race and other demographic factors. This cross- departmental team was responsible for engaging residents on how best to eliminate systemic racis
  • Stimulus Task Force, City of New Orleans (LA) Following the announcement of $375 million in federal funding, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell convened a 28-member task force with five sub-committees representing priorities for the City. This group was tasked to identify the best opportunities for spending, as well as explore potential funding available through subsequent rounds of ARPA guidance.13 The City adopted this strategy based on multiple prior experiences with federal relief funding, in the wake of hurricanes and associated flooding. Ultimately, this team delivered a comprehensive report and recommendations for enhancing racial equity in the City.

Conclusion

With increased federal funding to support economic recovery in the wake of COVID-19, cities are being handed the keys to allocate CARES, ARPA, and any future federal dollars toward more equitable programs and services. Resistance to equity may show up in an organization as skepticism around these funds and their purposes – however, the guidance for CARES Act, ARP Act, and (likely), any eventual Infrastructure Bill all incentivize investment in previously neglected communities. Sharing plans for this spending alongside the annual operating budget can further demonstrate a comprehensive response to constituent needs and goals, regardless of the funding source. As these federal programs pave the way, one’s change management muscles must be well-developed to take on budgeting for equity, and other equitable initiatives in additional contexts.

Ultimately, change management is about shifting the existing culture – preserving the great things about an organization while restructuring and updating its activities and service delivery to better align with its core values and priorities moving forward. In an ideal world, this might happen with the flip of a switch – however, even the best plans cannot be
developed nor successfully implemented in the real world without a receptive and supportive culture.

Equity in Capital Improvement Planning Processes

Public Policy, Strategy

This white paper was a collaboration between myself, as primary writer and researcher, and Matt Stitt and Mike Nadol as editors and contributors. It was created as part of PFM’s work in the Bloomberg Results for America City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery program in 2021. The fully designed PDF can be viewed here.

Why This Matters?

Capital budgets and improvement plans present exceptional opportunities for governments to drive equitable outcomes in municipalities, particularly when budgeting for recovery. The significant spending power authorized through capital budgets – multiple billions for some jurisdictions – can allow for increased, targeted spending on geographies that historically lacked investment from the public and private sectors. In addition, the job creation necessary to complete these projects offer workforce and economic development opportunities for residents and businesses. Because the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) typically requires a multi-year plan and planning process, it provides a framework that can be adapted to equitable purposes rather than created from scratch. When taken together with the scale of funding available, the CIP presents a ready-made strategy for planning, implementing, and evaluating projects that achieve enduring equitable outcomes.

Introduction

Infrastructure is the fabric that enables community connection, economic opportunity, and civic life in the United States. Eighty percent of public spending on these vital projects (from roads and bridges to parks and recreation centers) is provided by state and local governments. Yet despite its importance to everything from commerce to public health, the national total deferred maintenance on infrastructure assets could be as high as $1 trillion.[1]

Additionally, most cities have no structured mechanisms to incorporate equity considerations into their capital investment planning. Equity-based approaches to funding, project selection, and community input are still evolving and imperfect at best – but such approaches are now developing rapidly for operating budget allocations. To next integrate equity into longer-term financial strategies, Finance Directors, City Managers, and senior Elected Officials must all double-down on their efforts, sharpening their focus on capital investment planning. While there is no single solution that works for most cities – when it comes to matters of equitable impact, the best option is one that is place-based and reflective of the needs of a specific community. Ultimately, the process for equitable capital budgeting must be developed collaboratively and implemented through a thoughtful change management strategy.

This resource outlines a few strategies and case examples (related to equity in capital planning), from across the country, that can be adapted to the local context.

Using Capital Improvement Planning (CIP) Process to Drive Equitable Outcomes

To approach the CIP process in a manner that creates consistent, measurable, equity-focused results, PFM recommends first mapping the current process being used (including a timeline for key milestones) and bucketing the tasks into phases. Each of the following examples can be considered as a potential improvement to one key phase (i.e., swapping a current practice for a new tactic) or as part of a more comprehensive effort across the full process. Depending on local readiness, needs, and priorities, government staff can choose an approach that is politically feasible while building toward maximized impact.

Prioritize Projects that Align with Long-Term Strategic Goals

The Government Finance Officers Association identifies “identifying, tracking, and communicating” performance measures in budgeting, including the capital budget, to be a financial best practice.[2] To make such performance measures most impactful, city staff must align these metrics to the overall goals set by city leadership. In the City of Seattle, WA, for example, equity goals have been set by the Seattle 2035 comprehensive plan – and the City’s scorecard for capital investments uses detailed, quantifiable criteria to rank projects in terms of alignment with these goals.[3] Projects that score high on these measures (and, thus, are highly aligned to the plan) receive higher priority for funding than those with relatively lower scores.

Develop a More Impactful Community Benefit Agreement Structure

If well-designed, Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) centered on equity issues can be extremely impactful for cities. In Sacramento, CA, for example, a recent CBA developed for a multi-billion-dollar mixed use development generated $50 million in funding for affordable housing, anti-displacement investment, prioritized hiring for residents, and improved public transit infrastructure. These benefits were developed, prioritized, and supported by direct resident input. The evaluation firm highlighted dialogue with community members (versus presentations) – designing projects that not only increase revenues, but also deliver non-monetary benefits to residents and businesses. The firm also recommended reevaluating success measures (i.e., rethinking straight, or traditional, financial return-on-investment).[4]  

Formalize “% for X” Investment Goals in Major Capital Projects

The strength of the capital budget and plan as a tool to promote equity is that its spending power, especially when viewed over a multi-year time horizon, can dwarf the operating budget of a municipality. With this scale in mind, cities should consider a formal set-aside of X% in major capital projects (e.g., all projects with budgets over $2 million) – for the sole purpose of funding an equitable priority project. As an example, the City of Austin, TX, recently dedicated $300 million of a +$7 billion transit expansion program to affordable housing and anti-displacement programs for near neighbors.[5] Not only does this provide funding for an equitable priority, but also enhances the value of the transit assets themselves through potential increases in ridership.

Connect Capital Budgets and Workforce Development

All cities seek a robust, skilled workforce and a strong local economy – however, oftentimes workforce development funding is tied to imminent or even pre-existing job opportunities. By taking advantage of capital investments to drive small business growth and the development of local supply chains, municipalities that design creative programs (or partnerships) can generate a positive feedback loop of a stronger labor market, growing local firms, and increased quality and efficiency of capital projects. For example, one city in the current Bloomberg Philanthropies/What Works Cities City Budgeting for Equity and Recovery cohort is working to design a sidewalk maintenance program that would include a set amount of work conducted each year by apprentices and workers seeking employment. This helps to improve walkability and economic activity, while also training residents to work in trades that offer family-sustaining wages and add value to businesses in the City.

Seek Strategies for Co-Investment

State and federal funding can be a source of “fuel” for capital project development. Enterprising city staff can apply for grants that award funding for not-as-obvious capital investments that expand program capacity, and, in the best-case scenario, generate a return to both the city and its residents. The Philadelphia Energy Authority’s Solar Savings Grant Program, for example, leverages funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for green energy projects to offset the cost of installing solar panels on low- and moderate-income households’ roofs.[6] The grants lower the overall costs of the program, residents save money on their electric bills each month, and the city decreases its overall carbon footprint. 

Set a Future-Focused Investment Strategy

An additional way to better leverage capital budget dollars is to invest in growing service areas based on demographic trends, and strategies that can reallocate funding to more equitable priorities. For example, there are mobile crisis teams operating in at least 25 cities across the country, and many more around the world. In Eugene, OR, the CAHOOTS program, a pioneer in this space, cost approximately $2 million to operate (in 2019), and is estimated to have saved approximately $23 million in public safety and public health costs.[7] While models for service delivery vary depending on the local context, cities that choose to develop this capacity internally can leverage capital investment to establish facilities, and potentially to procure first-response vehicles and other durable goods, that contribute to the treatment process. With such support, mobile crisis programs have the ability to lower the needed capacity in public safety (e.g., police and/or EMS/EMT first responders) and public health (e.g., hospital beds and social worker FTEs) over time. Investments like these also create an equitable outcome of clinically appropriate care delivered to residents in need (i.e., instead of holding residents in prison or police custody without timely treatment) while diverting from corrections populations and overburdened emergency rooms.

Callout Features – Case Studies

Redefining Return on Investment (ROI) through an Equity Lens

Moving towards equitable formulas for funding CIPs will naturally raise questions regarding ROI (i.e., will projects generate a financial return). Evaluation is a critical component of all capital investments, and these examples provide a clear guide.

  • In Harris County, TX, officials recently moved away from the historical practice of using traditional ROI based on the financial value of property protected by its flood projects (which tilted investment heavily towards high-income neighborhoods) to using a social-vulnerability index created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which moves more funding to areas with the most at-risk populations.[8]
  • In Raleigh, NC, the city explicitly measures environmental and social, as well as economic, outcomes of projects (the “triple bottom-line”) in its 2030 Comprehensive Plan.[9]

Use Change Management Best Practices to Build Support

Our most successful clients take a strategic approach to engaging internal and external stakeholders who are considered potential champions or detractors to implementation.

  • For example, traditionally information is presented to community groups for comment and approval, but a fully equitable approach would be to engage the community up-front in a true dialogue to understand priorities, concerns, and opportunities for both sides while the program is still under design.
  • Tools to consider include using steps from Dr. John Kotter’s Model[10], adapted and customized for more effective “place-based” or local use.

Conclusion: Importance of Investments in a More Equitable Future

Many municipalities currently face a myriad of deferred maintenance and equity imperatives – all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The path to reversing severe long-term under- and disinvestment must include large-scale, strategic capital program initiatives. Through engaging their communities, cities can address both historical disparities and identify investments that can build towards a more equitable future.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.”

A common theme across the strategies documented here is the importance of change management to creating sustainable change. Whether starting from a top-down directive (e.g. executive order) or a bottom-up approach (e.g. employee-led, department level change), understanding the stakeholders involved and the relevant processes is critical to designing a more equitable approach. Another factor embedded in each of these strategies is the availability and monitoring of disaggregated data to ensure that all residents benefit from the changes implemented.

As equitable considerations take hold and begin to shift the balance of capital investment dollars to the previously neglected corners of the local map, municipalities should become better places to live, work, and enjoy for all residents. When combined with strong community engagement, data-driven project criteria, and thorough measurement and evaluation, funds that seemed too limited will deliver results above and beyond their scale. With the first American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds arriving to cities, states, and counties in the last month, and recent, additional infrastructure spending discussed at the federal level – now is the time to prepare stakeholders to rise and meet the moment.

[1] Zhao, Jerry Zhirong, et al. The Volcker Alliance, 2019, pp. 1–40, America’s Trillion-Dollar Repair Bill.

[2] Performance Measures, http://www.gfoa.org/materials/performance-measures.

[3] City of Seattle, Office of Planning & Community Development. Community Planning: Practice + Prioritization, pp. 4–32.

[4] Hackler, Darrene. Smart Incentives, 2021, pp. 1–5, Community Benefit Agreements: An Equitable Tool for Innovation District Development.

[5] Young, Harrison. “Austin Transit Partnership OKs Anti-Displacement Funding.” Austin Monitor, 18 Mar. 2021, http://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2021/03/austin-transit-partnership-oks-anti-displacement-funding/.

[6] Philadelphia Energy Authority, “Solar Savings Grant Program.” https://solarizephilly.org/solar-savings-grant-program/

[7] Reach out Response Network, November 2020, pp. 1-91. Final Report on Alternative Crisis Response Models for Toronto.

[8] Wallace, Don. “A Climate Plan in Texas Focuses on Minorities. Not Everyone Likes It.” The New York Times, 24 July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/climate/houston-flooding-race.html.

[9] City of Raleigh, Office of City Planning. 2030 Comprehensive Plan – Update, pp. 123-124.

[10] “The 8-Step Process for Leading Change: Dr. John Kotter.” Kotter, 7 May 2021, http://www.kotterinc.com/8-steps-process-for-leading-change/.

How to change behavior in advocacy campaigns

Strategy

This post is a summary of work and ideas developed for a foundation in Southeastern Pennsylvania while I was employed at Message Agency in 2019. Part of my role was to conduct secondary research on models of behavior change to use in our strategy for engaging the local community.

How does behavior change happen?

One of the most considered questions of philosophy is that of free will. Do you choose how you move through your day? Or is it all predetermined? Or, are others determining things for you? With the amount of external influence on you through media, the internet, and your peers there are endless stimuli able to nudge you in a new direction.

“I’m convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does. This isn’t just a metaphor, in other words. I’m talking about a very literal analogy. . . . Ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is.”

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

Research shows that the information that sticks with us most does not simply hang in the air like a virus. Instead, it is very deliberately passed to us by those we interact with on a regular basis and those we hold in high esteem. In this post I’ll attempt to provide an overview of some evidence-based models related to behavior change and how they can be operationalized in campaigns.

Dr. Damon Centola’s Models for Behavior Change

In his latest book, How Behavior Spreads, Dr. Centola uses a combination of research and narrative to help the reader understand the means by which information leads to behavior change. To illustrate the basic premise of his research Dr. Centola uses the example of Korea in the early 1960s when they were attempting to increase adoption of contraceptives among rural populations. Instead of buying billboards and radio ads, the Korean campaign provided a menu of contraceptive options to each village in the nation. At the local level, Koreans were able to select the methods that they were most comfortable using – not the one pushed on them by a spokesperson. Peer-to-peer discussion of the options led to further adoption by those with overlapping social ties. Eventually Korea surpassed all of its policy goals for the initiative, and the theory of social influence was born. Instead of a network effect of loose ties leading to a “viral diffusion,” it was instead spatial interactions that emerged as the most successful pathways.

While the viral model suggests that radiating networks
of weak ties would lead to successful dissemination, it was instead
overlapping patterns of spatial interaction that were the key to widespread adoption.

Dr. Damon Centola, How Behavior Spreads

Another line of Dr. Centola’s research involves “tipping points” for adoption of behaviors and ideas. Using online chatrooms, Dr. Centola and his team were able to measure how much of a group needed to agree with a non-mainstream idea before more and more of the participants flipped to embrace it. They found that once about 25% of a group have adopted the more extreme view, adoption accelerates among the rest of the group until it reaches a saturation point.

What does this mean for your campaign to change behaviors? It helps to give you a more realistic goal. Imagine a County in your state and how the residents might feel about a certain policy. You might estimate that 20% are strongly in favor, 20% are strongly against, and the other 60% undecided. If you are leading a campaign to get the policy passed in the legislature, you need to increase your number of residents in favor. But by how much? In order to get and keep the momentum, you can target 25% of the undecided population. Once your polling indicates you’ve moved roughly that many residents towards your side, you can be more confident that the tide is truly turning.

How can I leverage spatial patterns in my campaign?

In the case of our campaign in Southeastern Pennsylvania, we relied on what we called an “opportunity map” to help guide our decisions. We used the free Google MyMaps software to build our initial map. Many jurisdictions with Open Data platforms offer file types that are easy to upload directly, which saves time. If you are building your data set manually, it is very easy to add new locations, but cant take quite a bit of time to add everything you’d like to track. This map should include several layers depending on your goals – some we included were non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, public housing developments, and schools, libraries, and recreation centers.

Once your map is built, you should immediately begin to notice patterns in where the points fall in relation to one another. Remember, space is the key here, so if you see certain points “out on an island”, do some research or engage your community in that area to find out what you might be missing. The goal is to find the clusters of organizations and individuals who might or might not talk to one another because of proximity, and get them to be on the same page and engaged in your work. For example, the librarian and the fire chief might be next door to one another, but not have much need to speak on a regular basis. However, if the county receives a grant that could fund joint public safety work by both groups, you’d find it very valuable that they could be easily brought together in a physical location.

The map can also be used as both a communication and organizing tool. You can share access easily among your peer group, and encourage them to add points to the map they think would be relevant to your goals. It can also be used in organizing to divide responsibility for certain areas of a larger county or city. For example, the Census (in addition to tracts at the micro level) often uses larger divisions to break down counties in the US. These can be valuable in identifying demographic trends, deputizing others to lead outreach efforts, and help limit travel over longer distances for meetings or other activity.

Conclusion

Behavior change doesn’t just happen by having a celebrity record a PSA. The most effective models for change involve social influence, and are driven by overlapping spatial relationships. The “tipping point” means you can more effectively target ambivalent people in your geography. You can use GIS and mapping tools to create a clear picture of your target geography and the assets available to you. Use the map to guide your strategic interventions and gain adoption of your campaign messages.

Strategies for Engaging Governments

Public Policy, Strategy

This post was inspired by Mr. Timothy Richards, who I had the pleasure of studying under while attending the University of Pennsylvania. His graduate-level course, “Strategic Engagement with Governments,” was among my favorite I’ve taken at any academic level.

Government is good

I don’t think Gordon Gecko would ever say it, but even he would have to admit that government and business are inseparable. There are myriad ways that the two intersect, interact, and interject in one another’s day-t0-day operations. Sometimes the relationships are pleasant partnerships meant to solve problems for people in their jurisdictions. Sometimes they are bitter battles between powerful groups who want very different – even opposite – things.

Given that government is a requirement in modern society, one would assume that businesses are investing heavily in the areas where they come in direct contact with these important stakeholders. Reader, they do not. For several years, McKinsey conducted an annual survey among executives to measure how important government involvement was to their business and industry and how well those executives feel their firms perform. What they found was fairly shocking given the conventional wisdom around this topic.

The value of engaging government

In 2013, McKinsey estimated that the value at stake from government intervention for most industries was 30% of earnings, except in banking which could be as much as 50%. This is an enormous figure – in some cases adding up to tens of millions of dollars per employee working in the government relations function. And yet fewer than 30% of executives reported that they had the government relations talent and organizational setup to succeed. Only 20% felt they were successful in influencing government policy that was critical to their business.

In the 2010 study, executives were asked to estimate how government activity in their industry would change over the next few years. Overwhelmingly they reported it would increase or at least stay the same (86%), and 52% felt government would be the stakeholder with the greatest economic impact on the firm. The story was similar as it relates to operating income – executives were mostly in agreement that there would be a change (72%), but split on the whether that would be an increase or decrease. Selected data is shown in the charts below.

Via McKinsey
Via McKinsey

While this study is from 2010, the many experienced, senior government relations officials we heard from in class confirmed it is still the case a decade later. In short, there is a gulf between where business knows it must be and where it currently sits as it relates to government relations work.

Improving government relations

Despite the data being a few years old, it would seem one doesn’t need to say much to convince leadership of the impact of government intervention. But how does one go about improving the function so that this value is not lost? Or ideally, leveraged into growth opportunity for your firm?

Start by understanding the current and likely future states of government intervention

You must map the current ways in which government impacts your business. This can be across several dimensions: government as partner, as customer, as regulator, or as policy maker. Once you understand the relationships, you can begin to evaluate the various touch points using your internal goals, metrics, and strategies.

For example, in class we learned about an American manufacturing firm that, after researching emerging tax credits for renewable energy technologies, made a strategic shift in their business to build out their green technology vertical. This would have been a missed opportunity without deliberate, proactive work by the government relations team.

Prioritize the issues that can be pursued

Using your map, rank your issues that you’ve uncovered by their relative impact on your business (high, medium, low) and the relative effort and/or cost required to influence them (high, medium, low). You can use a simple two-by-two matrix to draw this out visually. Are there obvious winners (High Impact, Low Cost) or losers (High Cost, Low Impact)? Note them as such and move to the “stickier” issues (High Impact, High Cost; etc). Which of these align most strongly with your goals internally? Asking these questions is essential, as you won’t be able to pursue all of the issues at the same time.

Create campaigns around each issue to make a dent

Once you have your top issues identified, you must think strategically about how to influence the relevant government officials and departments. Your government relations and external affairs staff should be able to organize the resources, tasks, and target stakeholders to support your goals. Be sure to build some flexibility into your strategy – tactics will be your saving grace if you experience any friction.

In another example, we learned about a potential production facility that would be built in a Southeast Asian nation by an American multinational firm. The firm planned to get a US Senator from their home state to make a personal call to the leader of the Southeast Asian nation, but when the Senator declined, they instead produced a joint letter signed by all of the Congresspeople from their state. This is an example of achieving the same goal, without following the strategy verbatim.

Conclusion

Government has a constant and likely growing role in every sector of the economy. In Macroeconomics 101, you are taught that government is the biggest consumer and usually the biggest producer in every country. It makes sense that 30% of earnings would be at stake, and likely much, much more indirectly as well. By creating strong processes internally to research, plan, and implement influence campaigns, companies can flip the script and proactively engage government in ways that benefit both parties.

Understanding Strategy vs. Tactics

Strategy

This post was inspired by Mr. Timothy Richards, who I had the pleasure of studying under while attending the University of Pennsylvania. His graduate-level course, “Strategic Engagement with Governments,” was among my favorite I’ve taken at any academic level.

Whether you are reading about sport, politics, movement building, or are just mindlessly scrolling your social media feed – you are engaging with strategy almost constantly. Though it is ubiquitous, it is also often misunderstood or misapplied within organizations. Many of my clients came to us with problems that were merely symptoms of deeper issues. “We need to rebrand because the restaurant down the block is crushing us.” “Our website is outdated, so our online donations are down this year.”

It is important to address these surface-level issues in most cases, but in others, you need to start at the beginning. Is that other restaurant really more crowded because of its logo? Are you asking enough supporters to donate to make your goals? These questions move you beyond your presenting symptoms to your central issue. They lead you to strategy.

What is strategy?

In simple terms, strategy is your plan to get from A to B under ideal conditions. With zero friction, changes, or challenges your strategy would lead you on the most direct path to success. It represents why, how, and what for your organization, your team, or a campaign.

For example, your strategy for getting your car washed might be:

  1. Get in the car
  2. Drive to the car wash
  3. Wash the car
  4. Return home

While it is not the most complex strategic approach, it does fit our definition, and it isn’t the only path forward. For example, an alternative strategy might be to simply walk out to your driveway and wash your car at home. This would still get you from A to B – your current state to your desired future state – just in a much different way from the first strategy.

Knowing which approach is best for you will require three pieces of data – knowledge of the past, observation of the present, and forecast of the future. Historically, have you been happy with your local car wash? Do you have time to drive across town and back? Are there other services (waxing, vacuuming, etc) that you will need that can’t be done at home easily? You can imagine applying this to your organization, department, or individual contributions as well.

What are tactics? And how do they interact with strategy?

Once you decide you’d prefer to go out to the car wash, you can begin implementing your strategy. Go outside. Get in your car. Start driving to the car wash. But what happens if something external interferes with your strategy? Let’s say, even though it wasn’t forecast, you notice rain clouds rolling in as you drive to the car wash. No one wants to wash their car right before a storm that will muck it up again. In this situation, you might want to abandon your strategy.

But you have a goal! You want to get your car washed. Do you continue following your strategy? Or do you need to make a change? This is where tactics come in to play. A tactic can be thought of as a tool to use in case your strategy doesn’t work out exactly as it should. You will be reading and reacting to the environment as your strategy unfolds, and tactics are how you course correct or take advantage of opportunities. In the case of the car wash, your tactic might be “retreat” for now, and go back out after the rain clears. This way you still get from A to B, but you are not sacrificing reaching your goal of a clean car (for more than a few hours).

Organizations don’t always do the best with tactics. Oftentimes, leadership promotes their goals over all else. The strategic plan either reigns supreme or sits on a shelf and is replaced with the desires of executives. Tactics can be viewed as “failures” or “abandoning the strategy,” when in reality they are simply a pivot or, to borrow from the negotiation field, the BATNA. If your strategy is to increase turnout at your events, but volunteers aren’t responding well to your free t-shirts, you might consider changing tactics. Maybe diverting that funding to food, entertainment, or childcare would help to bump up your numbers. It doesn’t mean that you were failing, it just means a new tactic was needed.

Conclusion

Your strategy is your plan A – what you would do if there was zero friction and no change in the wind. Tactics are what you need when you rollout your strategy in the real world, and you find that your strategy runs into blockers. Knowing the difference is helpful, but its even more important to get comfortable with moving between the two as you approach your mission.

Smarter Government: Why the best strategy for governing fails

Public Policy, Strategy

What is Smarter Government?

Governor Martin O’Malley wrote Smarter Government in collaboration with ESRI in November 2019 as a capstone on his political experience. In it, Mr. O’Malley outlines his career-long pursuit of more effective government through “Stat” programs. He was initially inspired by Jack Maple and his CompStat program in New York City’s Police Department. Eventually, the two would collaborate on what might soon become known as the single most effective strategy to govern a city or state.

CompStat was a revolutionary idea at the time – it was originally known as Charts of the Future and involved sticking colored pins into a paper map to display data on the intersection of crime and police activity. While it was significantly upgraded in terms of technology, the core tenets remained: timely and accurate information or intelligence, rapid deployment of resources, effective tactics, and relentless follow-up. The result was a major shift in the success of the police department to not only solve but also prevent crime by strategically deploying officers and other resources across the city.

Over the first few chapters, Mr. O’Malley tells the story of working with Mr. Maple to bring CompStat to the city of Baltimore when Mr. O’Malley became Mayor. They called the new system “CitiStat.” There are six main elements of the CitiStat strategy for performance management:

  • Performance management and data-driven processes
  • GIS technology
  • Customer service technology (like a 311 call number for city services)
  • Collaborative, informed decision-making
  • Openness and transparency
  • Getting things done by bringing people together regularly (and optimizing the meeting space and project management process)

Mr. O’Malley’s administration made extremely impressive progress during his time in office – both as Mayor of Baltimore and then as Governor of Maryland. He reduced crime and blight, reduced healthcare costs, and quite possibly saved the Chesapeake Bay Watershed from total destruction. His book includes several contributors, but it is obvious from the language and the content that Mr. O’Malley is a true expert in this area. He now teaches the concepts at Universities in the region, and consults on bringing Stat programs to the Federal Government level and beyond.

Why won’t it work in my city?

If there is a “secret sauce” for effective city and state government, why is this not the standard operating procedure for all public administrators? The truth of the matter is performance management in general, and CitiStat in particular, can be controversial and difficult to implement. Not everyone is on board with showing their peers “how” they work, and getting potentially a dozen departments aligned on a schedule and goals is challenging, which creates significant barriers to entry. I believe that it can work anywhere, but it will only work where an administration can manage these three risks.

Leadership

One thing that becomes clear through Mr. O’Malley’s war stories is his indisputable strength as a leader. This is not a boast or exaggeration by someone telling his own story. By highlighting both his wins and losses, Mr. O’Malley reveals much about the thinking behind his actions. His ability to see the opportunity that CitiStat offered, rally his colleagues to the cause, and consistently participate in the process at the appropriate level made the success of his subordinates possible.

You cannot implement one half or one third of CitiStat – you have to dive in head first and stick with it through your time in office. Not all leaders are prepared to take that plunge, but if they can believe in the fundamental value of the system, it can lead to massive successes.

Capacity

Similar to the leader’s capacity, the administration must have sufficient capacity to establish the processes needed to establish CitiStat. They must be the ones to conduct the meetings, measurement, and implementation of improvements to their service area. To be clear: any administration has the ability to choose CitiStat as a framework for performance management, but not all administrations will succeed in its total adoption.

Mr. O’Malley talks about the crucial first few months of an administration. It is here, he says, that you must move confidently and completely towards CitiStat or else you will miss the opportunity entirely. Without the buy-in and quick action taken to make these changes, too many in the administration will have the built in excuse that changing how we work will reduce velocity.

Ego

The final risk is maybe most existential to the CitiStat methodology. For an incoming administration, it is just the last politician’s shiny object. Any executive entering a political office will be most concerned with their priorities and promises from the campaign trail, as well as their own legacy that they must begin to write.

When Mr. O’Malley left Baltimore, his successor did keep CitiStat in place, but without the same zeal. Gradually the interest and urgency eroded, and eventually there were departments going months without the customary bi-weekly meetings. The succeeding Mayor did not view the CitiStat process as their own, and they did not give it the same attention or resources that they lavished on their own projects. Unfortunately, their ego kept them from embracing a strategy that may have helped them achieve exactly what they were setting out to do.

Conclusion

Despite being a very systematic and data-driven approach to management, CitiStat absolutely needs enthusiastic leadership and shared sense of responsibility to carry out. Many cities use data to make decisions, and some might even have transparency across departments. There are many fewer though that perform the rituals associated with CitiStat that cement it as the overarching framework for how governing gets done.

Cities that want to make CitiStat the standard must ensure that there is a process in place that can make it viable with or without strong executive leadership and that make it more durable than a political project would normally need to be. To achieve this, administrators might consider:

  • Establish a cabinet-level position to manage CitiStat.
  • Create administrative policies, or if possible legislation, requiring Departmental CitiStat meetings to take place regularly.
  • Limit the discussion of or praise for CitiStat in public – the more it is associated with one administration or individual, the less durable it becomes!