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Notes from a Reflective
Practitioner of Innovation
Part 4 of 4
Over the Line
Over time, a leader and an organization can establish a sense of trust and
teamwork and a willingness to take risks. This takes years, not weeks or
months, and a commitment of self to work that goes beyond the ordinary.
The payoff, though, also extends beyond the ordinary; the result is an
organization that fosters both learning and achievement. When well done,
that is an extraordinary combination. But even this achievement brings its
own, more subtle challenges, which require more subtle strategies.
Learn to Acknowledge What is Hard to Acknowledge:
People's Feelings. The
personal situations created by work are often painful. And group life is
often irrational. But these problems can neither be dismissed or ignored.
The leader must deal with them openly and explicitly.
Competition, for example, is ever-present in group life and drives some
behavior, some to the good (more work gets accomplished) but some to the
detriment of the task at hand. When competition was in the air, I could
always tell because the '"buzz" in my ear increased with a big jump in the
frequency with which executive staff members would come in to report on
their colleagues. At the next executive staff meeting, I would bring up
this observation, and we would attempt to address whatever was making
people feel particularly competitive.
Generally, the executive staff as a group found that our work was helped
by creating opportunities to acknowledge and deal with our feelings.
Irrational feelings are present at work and in group life everywhere. We
found that allowing for their expression and working with these feelings,
while difficult, made our work richer and more effective. Not facing the
irrational does not make it disappear and eventually blocks effective
work.
Resistance to change is often described as just such an irrational feeling
and attributed to the other. Our executive staff approached this issue as
we did all issues, by first trying to understand our own resistance to
change. As we explored what we feared we had to lose, we began to
understand the feeling in others. Resistance to change became discussable,
not taboo. People in the organization could voice their own concerns and
together solutions could be found, even to what was first expressed
irrationally.
For example, people worried about the move of our central office staff
from near Wall Street to less than a mile uptown, above City Hall. They
worried about how they might "fit" in the new setting, but they would
voice their concerns by raising questions as to whether they would be able
to "fit" in the new chairs. So we distributed a map that showed where you
could do errands, where you could get lunch, and people calmed down.
Talk Openly About Differences of Race, Gender, Class,
and Age. Our work
was complicated. No one person could work completely independently of
others. It required both delegation and trust, actions difficult enough to
begin with and often even more difficult across boundaries of
difference--across boundaries in our case of race, gender, class, and age.
Again, the executive staff worked these issues among ourselves first, both
because they were there to be worked and as a message to the organization
that these issues could be discussed. We talked about:
- What it was like to work for a woman executive;
- What it meant for an African American executive staff member to let
down another African American on the executive staff;
- How women compete; and
- What it felt like to deal with issues of race in an organization
whose clients were minority and in a city whose mayor was Caucasian and
where racial tensions were rising.
None of this was easy. It took a long time working together to get to the
point where we could talk these issues through. But the gains were
definitely worth the struggle.
Time Your Stay to the Size of the Task. We took on a large task and thus
needed to stay a long time. The core of the DJJ executive staff under my
tenure remained intact for the seven years I was commissioner. The average
tenure of less than two years for top-level agency staff may be as large
an impediment to wholesale change as any other put forward by
government-doubters. But this is one we can change.
Conclusion
These retrospective reflections on the process of creating a climate for
innovation are offered to extend both some hope and some guidance. And, as
is often the case, both hope and guidance come in the form of a story.
19
Hope is needed by those charged with the seemingly impossible task of
creating public agencies better able to serve citizens. Those entrusted
with this task need new stories, stories that tell of real people who did
not have a completely drawn map in front of them or years of success in
similar efforts behind them. They need stories about people who somehow
understood the importance of staying the course and were able to withstand
the demands of the career fast track that beckoned. They need stories
about people who can acknowledge all that went wrong while pointing out
some of what worked.
Hope is also needed for others, whether citizen or academic, concerned
about increasing the odds that government can work. People need stories of
success to inspire them, to keep them going, and to motivate them to find
ways to support those trying to change government.
Whatever guidance can be found here is offered primarily to those engaged
in the work of changing government. It is my hope that our story will
offer some guidance to help others invent their own stories of success.
Endnotes
1. Behn, Robert D., and Regina K. Brough. 1991. "Research
on Innovation." In Research on Innovations in State and Local Government:
The 1991 Conferences. Duke University, Governors Center.
2. Schön, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How
Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
_____1987. Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for
Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey-Bass.
3. Auth, Mary L. 1991. "Experiential Learning: Some
Pedagogical Considerations for Public Administration Educational
Programs." Paper prepared for the annual meeting of the National Teaching
Public Administration Conference, Knoxville, Tennessee, February 20-23.
4. Ibid.
5. Gilmore, Thomas N., and Ellen Schall. 1986. "Use of
Case Management as a Revitalizing Theme in a Juvenile Justice Agency."
Public Administration Review, vol. 46. no. 3 (May/June): 267-74.
6. Kinney, Jill, David Haapala, and Charlotte Booth. 1991.
Keeping Families Together: The Homebuilder's Model. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
7. Beckhard, Richard, and Reuben T. Harris. 1987.
Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change. Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley.
8. Kahn, William A. 1993. "Facilitating and Undermining
Organizational Change: A Case Study." Journal of Applied Behavioral
Science, vol. 29, no. I (March): 32-55.
9. Koch, Edward I., with Leland T. Jones. 1990.
All the
Best: Letters from a Feisty Mayor. Simon and Schuster.
10. Weick, Karl E. 1984. "Small Wins: Redefining the
Scale of Social Problems." American Psychologist, vol. 39 (January):
40-49.
11. Gilmore, Thomas N. 1988. Making a Leadership Change:
How Organizations and Leaders Can Handle Leadership Transitions
Successfully. Jossey-Bass.
12. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's Justice
Program, led by Ken Schoen, was funding the search firm to help expand the
pool of talented correction commissioners available for appointment by
newly elected governors. The foundation was persuaded that this search,
while not at the same level, was important and agreed to extend the
services of the search firm and the organizational development consultant
working in tandem with the search firm.
13. Isaacson, John. 1983. "Executive Search: A Manual for
Commissioner Schall and Her Able and Willing Staff." Boston: Isaacson,
Ford-Webb, and Miller.
14. Gilmore, Thomas N., and Ellen Schall. 1986. "Use of
Case Management as a Revitalizing Theme in a Juvenile Justice Agency."
Public Administration Review, vol. 46. no. 3 (May/June): 267-74.
15. Schein, Edgar H. 1985. Organizational Culture and
Leadership. Jossey-Bass.
16. Behn, Robert D. 1991. "Innovations and Public Values:
Mistakes, Flexibility, Purpose, Equity, Cost Control, and Trust." Paper
prepared for the conference on the Fundamental Questions of Innovation,
Duke University, May 4.
17. Schall, Ellen, and Kathleen Feely. 1992. "Guidelines
to Grope By: Reflections from the Field." Innovating, vol. 2, no. 3
(Spring): 3-11.
18. Moore, Mark H. 1995. Creating Public Value: Strategic
Management in Government. Harvard University Press.
19. Schank, Roger C. 1990. Tell Me a Story: A New Look at
Real and Artificial Memory. Scribner.
The Brookings Institution Press ©1997
