On Point: Sustaining innovation and transforming the culture of government

By Dane Smith and Jack Ditmore The Daily Record Newswire For a more nuanced understanding of our budget debate complexities, you might consider searching YouTube for the beer commercial in which two women wrestle in the mud over whether the product "tastes great" or is "less filling." If you have somehow missed this highly educational video, you have been treated to the political version -- Less spending! More taxes! -- in the news media every day all summer. The fact is, our political leaders and governments do face a muddy dilemma over these choices, each of which is actually necessary but insufficient by itself. Simply cutting expenditures will not relieve the demand for services and the need for valuable public investment, which often grows at the exact time the private sector declines and tax revenues dry up. But simply raising tax rates is not enough either, when faced with huge deficits and an underperforming economy. More than ever, we must actively focus on transforming and redesigning government operations. And our more thoughtful political leaders on both sides of the partisan divide are in strong agreement on this imperative. The good news is that your governments have been improving, albeit in rather piecemeal fashion. More than 85 examples of local government innovation, recognized by the Humphrey School's Public and Nonprofit Leadership Center and its partners, and seven prestigious Innovations in American Government Awards from the Ash Center at Harvard University, provide ample evidence that some state and local governments have recognized this reality and embarked on efforts to transform services. The bad news is that while this is impressive, innovators too often fail to work on permanently changing bureaucracies and agencies, and toward changing how they operate to sustain innovation. The research of nationally renowned experts such as Paul Light, David Osborne and others we have studied leads us to believe that attention needs to be focused on four fundamental areas in order to move from individual acts of innovation to a sustained transformation of the culture and machinery of state and local government. These are: * Creating a permanent culture in which transformation will succeed. The work of Osborne and others suggests that the transformation of the machinery of government will not occur unless we create a lasting culture of teamwork and respect in which political leaders and civil servants believe that each is pursuing the common good. Also, leaders in both the legislative and executive branches of government need to personally embrace initiatives to transform government and work to sustain the efforts for change. Further, to assure that the right people can function effectively, individual agencies need to be empowered and provided with the right tools to bring about change (e.g., business process improvement mechanisms to increase efficiency, and performance measurements to enhance effectiveness and accountability). * Seeking flexibility in finding and hiring the people necessary to bring about transformation. To ignite and sustain the transformation of the culture and machinery of government, leaders at the state and local levels must focus on creating a more adaptable work environment -- an environment in which government officials are given the flexibility to hire new workers quickly, promote top talent, gather top experts to address complex challenges, and learn new skills that are critical to success and improved productivity. To accomplish this objective, state and local civil service systems must be redesigned. * Establishing structural systems that support transformation. Fresh ideas for redesigned services may enjoy initial success but do not necessarily survive. Two of the Minnesota organizations featured by Light in his book, "Sustaining Innovation," were essentially dead before the book was published. Light calculates that roughly one-third of the 35 projects highlighted by Osborne in "Reinventing Government" either did not survive or were at serious risk by the time the book came out in paperback. We believe that a more durable culture of innovation can be built on a framework of five principles, outlined in a policy report released by Growth & Justice this week. Among them: conducting regular organizational assessments to find opportunities for increased effectiveness and new ways of doing business; creating an improvement clearinghouse -- a center that provides information and resources for improving organizational performance and service delivery; and providing a venture capital fund, with both intellectual and financial resources for early-stage, high-potential startup ideas for investment in innovation and transformation. Importantly, this new infrastructure does not have to involve a new layer of government. Viable models are a nonprofit organization, a public corporation, a combined effort of existing local government associations and the state, or expanding an existing state program. Restoring faith in government by better engaging the public and encouraging their collaboration with political leaders and civil servants. Recent efforts at citizen engagement by the Bush Foundation, the Citizens League and TakeAction Minnesota revealed the strong desire of citizens to be directly involved in redesign proposals. Studies by Deloitte Research and by the IBM Center for the Business of Government show that when citizens are directly engaged with government redesign, policy and service-level decisions are seen as more legitimate, are challenged less frequently and have a greater success rate. Settling our political and policy differences is always going to look a bit like mud wrestling. But we can transform and redesign more effective state and local governments if we heed the words of Malcolm Gladwell in "The Tipping Point:" "Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push -- in just the right place -- it can be tipped." ---------- Dane Smith is the president of Growth & Justice, a progressive public policy organization that promotes statewide economic growth for Minnesota through smarter public investments in human capital and infrastructure. Jack Ditmore, a senior policy fellow for Growth & Justice, is a former top management official for Dakota County, a former chairman of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board, and has more than 35 years of leadership experience in state and local government. He is the author of the recent Growth & Justice report "Transforming the Culture and Machinery of Government Toward Sustained Improvement." Published: Fri, Sep 2, 2011