#735 Government is People and Culture in Action with Michael Baskin, Montgomery County, MD

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hey y'.

Speaker A: All.

Speaker B: Coming to you from Jacksonville, Florida, this is GovLove, a podcast about local government brought to you by Engaging Local Government Leaders. I'm Ben Kittleson, manager at Raftelis and govlove co host. Uh, we've got a great episode for you today. We're going to be talking innovation and people centered government with uh, one of, uh, our, our dear friends. Uh, but first, the best way to support GovLove is become an ELGL member. Engaging local Government Leaders is a national volunteer run, membership based nonprofit organization with a mission to engage the brightest minds in local government. Uh, check us out and learn more about our 50 annual membership fee@elg.org uh, we also have a conference coming up, um, in September so you can learn more about that, um, at the website as well. Now let me introduce today's guests. Um, Michael Baskin is the Chief Innovation Officer for Montgomery County, Maryland, a position he's been in since 2019. Um, he works to uh, create a just liberating and human government. Um, before joining Montgomery county he worked as the chief Innovation and Policy Officer for the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee and he's also held uh, roles at the People Lab and the foundation for Civic Leadership. Um, Michael has actually guest hosted an episode of Gov Love way back in the day and has been a longtime writer for the ELGO Morning Buzz series and so really appreciate him coming on. He's also been a top influencer I believe in a couple of years, I'm sure for eel jail. So welcome to govlove. Michael. It's been a long time coming that you're an official guest on the podcast.

Speaker A: I am delighted. I am honored to be a guest. Uh, thanks for having me, Ben. I remember, um, Alex Johnston of Cities Reimagined when I was a wee youngster in the government world called me and she's like, there's some really eager people who love fun images in love government. You've got to be a part of this. And I was like, what is this? And that was my first 50 bucks but not my last 50 bucks. Uh, and I'm glad to be here.

Speaker B: I love that. Yeah, eager is, is the right, the right word sometimes.

Speaker A: Yeah. These people, we're like really excited about government.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: If you're really excited, I think they outdo you. And so honored to be here.

Speaker B: Well, perfect. Well, um, as you know, uh, what we start with at the uh, Kevin podcast is a little lightning round to get to know our guests a little better. Um, and so my first question for you, uh, what Was the first concert that you went to.

Speaker A: Wow. This is the question I forgot to have you edit out. Uh, the first concert that I remember going to is My buddy. This is embarrassing. Uh, we're going to talk about Phil Ford, I guess. Uh, we really wanted to see Lady Sovereign, but we didn't really know how to drive because we're from Boston, so we got there late. Which means that the first concert I saw was Gwen Stefani.

Speaker B: Nice.

Speaker A: Which was an incredible concert. Uh, but I don't know if she messes so well with Sam Bush and John Butler Trio and the jams I listen to these days. But, um, yeah. Uh, whole performance.

Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah, yeah. If you miss the opener, then it really does change the first concert. Yeah. All right, then what's the last, uh, great movie or TV show that you watch and would recommend for art listeners?

Speaker A: Um, okay. I don't watch a lot of TV, but I'm. I watch the Tour de France on YouTube. Does that count?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: I spent a lot of time looking at outdoor public benches. So, like, I. People get really into, like, watching shows, and I like to look at, like, a snoop and be like, is that a. Is that a bench? Uh, impact or. Or intent? Like, is that really public? Or is this in, like, an interesting zoning space? So it's a government nerd. Yeah. I've got thousands of photos of benches. That's what I watch them on. Like, you know. Yeah, that's it.

Speaker B: I like that. Uh, and you would recommend. It sounds like checking out benches. Yeah.

Speaker A: You send benches your way. Things. Things that you're wondering, is this a bench? Is it not a bench? Is it public? Is it not public? The outdoor one is. Seems like an obvious one, but in New York City, there's like, these indoor semi public gardens with benches. It. It poses the question, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. And it's practice. Right. Like, uh, innovation is really about observing things in new and different ways and asking questions about categories. So really, when you're being weird looking on benches, um, you're doing government work. I'm sure people feel that way when they watch the West Wing, and that's their show too.

Speaker B: Well, it's also, um, as someone that does that, like, focuses on human centered design, like, I would imagine, like, thinking through, like, what does it. What is the space saying to someone walking up to it and like, how welcome do they. And are they actually allowed to sit there like that? That's. That's like really putting yourself in the, uh, in the shoes of, you know, someone experiencing public services.

Speaker A: Who is the Public. Right. If this is a hostile bench and people can't sleep on it, like, who's getting excluded from being public here?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: These are the questions of life.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Next slide. Narrator question for you. What book are you currently reading?

Speaker A: Um, I am always reading multiple. I'm. I'm currently rereading the Ancillary justice series by Ann Leckie. Um, her acknowledgement section has a real shout out to the interlibrary loan librarians, which is the hottest acknowledgment I have ever heard. Also. Yeah. If you love interlibrary loan librarians. And librarians are some of the greatest public servants, the Ancillary justice series is awesome. And then I'm reading. I'm in a chapter club right now with a bunch of friends. Um, uh, Leading in Everyone Culture by Kagan and Leahy, which is about creating, uh, cultures and organizations where the development of individuals run side by side as a goal with the profit or the impact or whatever else the other normally seen as primary goal is. It's a beautiful read, and I think it's a lot to do with. With the future of where we're going.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, cool. That's very cool.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right, last line question for you. Where do you go for inspiration?

Speaker A: Outside. Nice. I go outside and then to the awesome government people. Like, you know when you are stuck fixing forms and you're like, I don't know if this really matters. You, like, call up Brendan Babb in Alaska or Amanda in LA and be like, oh, you're also fixing forms. Like, yeah, together we're gonna fix all the forms in the world. It's gonna be so great. So when that doesn't work, I go outside.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. When you guys are all frustrated, it's time to go outside.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Deep Covid jumping upon.

Speaker B: Perfect. All right, then. I, uh, love to always ask guests, like, their path to local government and how they ended up in this career and in the position they're in for in today. And I know I read a little bit of your background and kind of the intro, but, you know, kind of in your own words. How'd you end up in local government and end up working for Montgomery County? What was your. What was your path to this career?

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, so I grew up in the city of Boston, and the path in was pizza, which was being offered at, ah, the Mayor's Youth Council, um, with Mayor Menino. And I showed up, um, and I just thought it was, like, the coolest thing ever. And Patty McMahon who ran the mayor's youth council for a gazillion years, asked the mayor, like, what do you want the kids to do? And he was like, I want them to tell me what to do. And he meant it. And it was amazing to be in high school and think this is the most powerful my voice will ever be. And I remember him inviting in the chief of police and them showing us, uh, what we called Operation Ceasefire, like, our focused deterrence model for policing. And they're gonna roll a lot of program called, like, Goofy Kids. And it was like, oh, nope, that's probably not gonna work. But it was really never about us, without us. And that really. And I saw all these departments all working together, and we were told, like, go talk to your peers. Go organize. And I fell in love with local government. Ah, there weren't as many opportunities to jump right in then. So, uh, I studied democracy stuff, and I was interested in how organizations work. So my rebellion, I went work for a large organization that put me Bruin Beer in California and stocking Walmarts in Ohio and doing a bunch of Data analytics in St. Louis. And I finally, um, uh, I ended up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And, uh, my boss at the time said, said, you know, you're from the brewery here to help. And, like, no criticism for the first six months. You know, I started to run, like, Data Driven Performance Management. And he was like, no criticism. Go and stock beer. And I had so much to learn from the wholesalers that I was working with. Yeah, the difference between, like a dolly and a two wheeler, um, there's actually no difference. Um, you know what a flood is, which is when you drop a pack of 40s in the back of a concrete floor in the back of a convenience store. But I had so much to learn from them. And then in time, they said, oh, wait a second. Well, what do you know about beer? And what do you know about how do we use our. Our data to better forecast and things like that? And that was just like, a really important lesson, but also end to me. Chattanooga. I did some community organizing for a guy, became mayor, and, um, a mentor of mine, Mayor Purcell, also sort of made that introduction. I think that's important because a lot of people are like, oh, like, did you go to policy school, whatever? And the answer is, like, if you want to get involved in government, like, go. Go get involved. Go be there. And also to recognize when. If you have someone who wants to make an instruction, to take it. Um, so encourage people to reach out. Um, and I was about to move Overseas. And the mayor was like, hey, do you want to come back and lead policy for the city? And I sort of thought about it and I was like, he's like, well, like, what would you really want to do? I was like, well, could we start a youth council? And he was like, yeah, come create the best youth council in the country. And so we invited in over 300 young people, uh, to, um, create a platform for Youth Voice in the city. And, like, it's super cool. It still works. It's in the next administration now in Chattanooga. Like, youth council members still call me up. Um, of course. Like, I thought, like, oh, yeah, I'm the expert in this. Like, I stayed democracy council. And then the young someone was like, hey, you know, you're not a youth anymore.

Speaker B: Like, what do you mean?

Speaker A: Yeah, Ben, if that's your next question. Like, don't ask. Um, was tough. And so, you know, we ripped that up. And that's when we invited all the young people to plan their own platform for Youth Voice in the city. And similarly, like, I was sort of told just, you know, like, go tell the affordable housing team how to do affordable housing policy. And I was like, I think they know how. But I went down there and they were struggling to reload the printer. And I was like, oh, wait, I know something about this from working in a factory. And so we, we, um, we stole Peak Academy from Denver, which was a similar set of tools. Like, it's a, you know, we. We launched our performance data program, we launched our outcomes based budgeting program to change to make sure every dollar was tied to an outcome. Chatted, that is, how do we make sure we're on track to achieve those outcomes? And the third leg of the stool was really, well, how do we actually make things better around here? And it's that how question that I've been really jazzed about ever since. And so we brought in tools from other places that, you know, the best part about local government in my mind is that we can just copy from each other. And it's a really creative act. Like, and then, you know, I still will get back in touch with Brian or Megan who runs it. And actually they just was on the hiring panel for the new Denver Peak Academy. Something I stole 10 years ago. Yeah, um, and, you know, we were doing Operation Ceasefire, so we worked a lot with police. That's where I got my first introduction to coaching. Our chief of police was a mentor of mine, but also m. My running and cycling buddy. He said, well, you ask a lot of questions, like you're coaching me and I'm mentoring you. And I got to sort of see what it meant to create space for leaders to step out of themselves and into a new story. And then, um, you know, I taught innovation, launching Innovation Academies from Miami to Las Vegas with Brian, did a whole bunch of work on the census, uh, to make sure that cities were connected and that we were voting with the foundation for Civic Leadership. And then we were moved to dc. My. My wife was moving. My now wife was moving to D.C. so we moved to D.C. and, um, Andrew Klein, who is, uh, leading the budget in Baltimore, um, was the CAO there. And we have an awesome, awesome opportunity. Montgomery county is over a million people. We got 9,000, um, amazing folks and who work with us, my colleagues. And they. It's. It's cool, right? We have Health and Human Services, a traditional county function, and then police, a traditional city function.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's, like, super jazzy. And so that's how I ended up where I am today.

Speaker B: Very cool. Yeah, well, uh, yeah, like, not a. Not a winding path, but kind of. Kind of like not quite a straight line.

Speaker A: Feels a lot more winding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like, I like. I like making government work well with people.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I just keep making enough mistakes to slowly get better at it and keep doing.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, I mean, you touched on this and sort of like the. Some of the. The work you got through in Chattanooga and then obviously the work in Montgomery County. But, like, you've been in this sort of, you know, quote unquote, innovation space for. For a long time now. Um, and that's, uh. I'm just curious on hearing you kind of reflect on that, like, how. How has that. That work maybe changed over that your career. How has, um. How. Yeah. What has it come in? It's almost like, well, from the outside, maybe I'll say this, uh, seems like it's coming in and out of fashion a little bit. Uh, yeah. And so, like, how. How is. How have you kind of shifted to, like, continue to stay relevant and like. And continue to, like, make impact, do impactful work and like, what does that kind of look like as someone that's, you know, in the weeds doing this sort of, again, quote unquote innovation work, um, in local government?

Speaker A: Yeah. I am old. Thanks for pointing it out.

Speaker B: No, if you've done it, you said you weren't youth. I don't know.

Speaker A: That's right. Oh, and that was a long time ago. I'm, um, no longer youths. Uh, you know, like, it's a great question, but I think one is we're not the first people to try to make government work better. And that's all that innovation is. Right. Like before he was an urban planner, like worked on merit reform in the progressive good government movement in New York. So people, ah, have been trying this for a really long time.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean public administration at its core is about making government work better, which is what innovation is. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and it has changed a lot. I think, you know, it's fun now that we run like, you know, government people as sort of a network of folks who lead innovation in the US and cities. And like, it started as a little WhatsApp group like seven years ago with like a couple of friends. And now it's like still all friends, but there's more of us. Um, there's also hopefully people who have just entered the innovation field who can call me and be like, hey, listen, what you just described is completely wrong. Like you're just old and foggy now. And I think that's part of being an innovation is being open to that. I think, you know, there's the arcs that we've seen some things ring true. Right. The c. The, the core community organizing inside of government that supports people in stepping into their own power in improving processes is still, I think, absolutely critical. I am lucky enough to have tried, you know, we launched a civic design team. We, um, which is more like a sort of a Bloomberg I team. We have, you know, I did behavioral insights trials with Elizabeth Linos and the behavioral insights team. Um, we have done like, let's do random projects. I've done strategic planning, I've overhauled budget processes. So we've tried all of these different things.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And the fun thing is people are still doing them. Like they're still trying. The what works City standards means that now there's 300 cities that are doing some of the chatted data stuff that we did with our very first cities. I think though, what we've begun to see is people hitting the limits of what these new, these tools can do. Mhm. I think it's useful to think about them as like apps. Right. Human centered design is an app and process improvement is an app and applied behavioral science is an app and uh, sort of agile and digital perspectives. They're apps and oftentimes the core operating system, um, of government rejects those apps because all of those are based on this idea that like one, we might be wrong, two, like we don't actually know. Right. Like a big Massive modernization project says like we will. We know what we're going to do versus let's try things, let's experiment, let's play. We could be wrong along the way. And so I think a shift, a broad shift that we're seeing while operating at lots of different levels is folks beginning to ask how do we shift that core operating system of government to build in learning and unknowing and wonder. It's a little bit woo. But I think it's a, like to make it concrete. One of my favorite accelerator projects, and that's sort of our core flagship program here in Montgomery County. Mhm. We had Ash, who's our procurement director and, and he went through. And of course we don't do titles, so we didn't know he was the procurement director as he went through the course. I mean, we knew, but we didn't know. Um, it's like this guy's really got his stuff together.

Speaker B: Um, that was actually a lot about RFPs.

Speaker A: Yeah. Really? Yeah. Uh, he's got acronyms more than I do. And uh, so these people are trusted with signing and approving the contracts for millions and millions of dollars.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But if they want a pen, they have to ask someone at the front desk to unlock the supply closet to get a pen.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And because of those process steps, when they finally unlock the closet, they found a bunch of pens with dead ink in them.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And so Ash's innovation was to unlock the closet.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And it seems so small, but the message he was sending to his team, which now 40% of them and his entire management team have been through our accelerator, is you're worthy of trust.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You're capable of creating change. You're powerful. If you need a pen, go use a pen. Like blunt tools lead over time to blunt people. Mhm. How do we give folks sharp tools and trust them to use them and see what they can do? And so I think the future of innovation looks like a lot of these people moves behind the process. Moves.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: To change towards systems where public servants are worthy of trust and capable of creating change. And we're powerful.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Governance, uh, people do.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I love that you're. You're different. I had a bunch of stuff I want to talk about, but I. There's something you said there that I don't want to leave, but because one thing I think I've struggled with because, you know, I've, I've done some innovation work in my career and you know, been in a department that launched an I team and all that good stuff. And, and some sometimes you look around at some of the examples that you know from, from back then or even from more recently and like you know some of that work is still going and some of it's not. And it's why was it able to sustain in one place or uh, be able to transform and keep going maybe in a different form and then why did it peter out in other places? Um, and I think your point around that the operating system of government can reject this new way of thinking is a really good one. That if you don't get at the culture and at the trust of employees and how we in rethinking how we do things then these are just kind of like one off initiatives that may not lead to any kind of big, big organizational change. Um, I think that's, that's a really, really insightful point and it probably points to why there are times when this innovation work feels more can feel. I should say I'll put it in I statements uh, where I perceive it as like this was a one time thing that, that didn't end up leading to like uh, a big change within an organization.

Speaker A: Totally. And Ben, I think you point something that is just important and I think it's some of the work that ELGL and you do in changing these stories that we're telling because a lot of these stories are polished to such a high production value.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Seem impossible to the rest of us.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: But at the end of the day it's just a person. And Kyle Patterson in uh, Boise calls it like a personal, like a people production value. Right. And like instead of a polished production value we're like yep. Like that story that seemed like it was a huge transformative thing might not actually have been quite as hot as we make it out to be. Right. And also a huge amount of work and a huge amount of failures happened as well.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so like the sustained piece, the storytelling is really, really important. But it's also about storytelling as a way to change the way that we see ourselves. And there's like that Ash story, it's a really little story now. It's not a big grand change but it's changed the way that they do business there.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I think you know, it's worth we talk on our team a core value sort of start small and scale. Mhm. And so sometimes I hope that when people see these amazing and so wonderful. There's so many case studies and amazing studies of people doing all awesome work in local government that people don't say, I could never do this, or I've got to hire someone and a consultant to help me do this. But to say, wait, wait a second, there's. This is another human being and I hope we can share more fail stories and more of the human stories of people struggling through and things working out. That's.

Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I think you're right on. And you're totally right. I think about the stories I tell about some of the work I did. And I don't talk about the, the failure or the department directors that rejected me with my hair braid idea. I talk about the ones that worked. And you're right, they end up being more polished than kind of talking about that struggle and the people that you had to bring along the way or kind of cajole into helping you. Yeah, it's a different perspective to bring that all together. Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, there's so many people who are doing this without innovation in their title. Right. Like I think we have innovation, everyone's title, but a lot of the big stories we often hear are, have some outside support, have some storytelling support. And there was 10 of which comes one story.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And I hope that that's not the, um, the bar by which folks measure themselves and then it's at head level and just keep walking into it, banging their head and saying, I can never get there. Right. We, we start with the very smallest of things and we grow that m muscle, we grow that capacity. I think a lot in innovation folks will say, because I've gone through new administrations and they go, well, give us all of your ideas. And then they hear either a bunch of ideas and it's like a suggestion box. And then people come back, oh, yeah, well, I gave my idea to you. Or they wonder why a lot of people don't throw in a bunch of ideas. Well, ideas come from processes, from the act of observing public outdoor benches over time to begin to notice the workarounds that people are working in. What's really the bottleneck? How, how is it a different way of seeing, um, you know, boarded up windows and could clear windows help, uh, the way that Terence is doing in Baltimore? So I think that, yeah, I'm just hopeful that people see these, these different ways.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I think, I think that's right on. Um, okay, so. And then you touched on this. But I do want to talk about it more directly. So some of the innovation work going on in Montgomery county, and you mentioned the accelerator program. Can you maybe just share with the listeners A little bit more about that and um, kind of what all goes into that. And I do think it's really cool to like, you know, the shift you guys have made towards this more organizational development. You know, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but more of an organizational development bent of like, hey, let's focus on our leaders and how we change, uh, again, culture more than kind of, um, you know, anything else. And so. Yeah, can you talk about that course?

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. I just want to make one quick. I worked for a politician so you can ask me a question. I'll just block and bridge so you can bring. But I often don't like to think about us working on culture because the number of times I've heard, oh, I'd love to do, be more innovative or do more innovative things, but that's just not. The culture we have around here is absurd.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Culture is built in action. Right. It is the series of things that we do and that can include speak jocks. Right. Things that we say, but is the things that we do that over time create culture. And so, you know, I have people say, oh, we uh, love your accelerator. It changes hearts and minds. Well, great, but hearts and minds snap right back if hands are doing the same thing and hands are doing the things that are coming down the line from them in a process. So how do we change those processes? And the innovation accelerator is a way of slowing things down to speed things up. It's an introduction to structured problem solving and an introduction to community. So the structured problem solving is a mix of methods, uh, to figure out why is change needed, what's the current state, what's the future state, what's the gap between the current state and the future state? And to move all the way through to measuring results and capturing learnings and starting again.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And you know, it is both a sequential process but also an iterative process. But folks go through it together. You do a three day launch and then you ignite your change. And then we have a big bright spots showcase that sort of a Dan Heath Chip Heath. Um, switch Bright spots. Let's, let's put a light on what's working well and see how we can replicate it and grow it. Mhm. That's the course.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. We say it's worse because you're going to do those nine steps three times in those three days and you're going to build a yach mod. You can make a difference because you've seen others people make a difference around you. You've Done it yourself. Um, and, and you know that you have a process to go and do it again. But the introduction to community is just as important. You know, like often someone says, oh, you're, you're in procurement. Uh, we have, we've had people eliminate their own jobs because someone in transportation and someone in police realized that they were in the same course in the same cohort working on the exact same accident incident report that was for 80% of it. And one of the, like, honestly, like, I have better things to do with my life.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And figure out a way together to subtract which is a really powerful tool for innovation to subtract that and then create space for all of the massive power as human beings that we want to be. So that's our accelerator course. We've had hundreds, um, of folks go through. We also welcome folks from outside. So we've had folks from our, you know, Wilma, our metro, um, from around the country come. Um, and it's a sister program with, with Denver Peak Academy and some of the other ones around the country, which we always are sharing with. We welcome people like copy replicate. We do all of that change with no new budget, no new people, no new technology. And so if you want to launch one, don't look for a new person, just do it. Um, my co conspirator, Tim Moreland back in Chattanooga just wrote a letter to himself at the end of the course and said, like, you believe in this, you can do it. And so we just did. And then we brought the mayor over and I was like, oh yeah, like it's your time. Like these people, they're going to tell you that change is really great. Um, and the change. And you're supposed to tell them like how awesome changes and they believe in it. So that's where accelerator course, just to circle back on the, on the how it changes culture.

Speaker B: Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: A lot of times the muscles of innovation, the muscles of making things better are so weakened. And I just imagine so many of us and our colleagues like stuck in jail cells and then like a new administration comes in, they open the door and people like stumble out emaciated and they try to do something better and they fail and it doesn't work well. Mhm. And so often the response is like, retrench and say, well, guess these people couldn't do innovation. Let's lock them back up again. Let's add some more layers of approval. Mhm. It's like that doesn't work. And so part of our role for those of us who have innovation in our titles. And this comes from Nigel of the mayor's office for New Urban Mechanics is to like take the hits every single time and then celebrate when someone wins. And I remember we were doing this event and it was in a non zoom space so it was like you could move around to different rooms and we always get feedback. We say plus deltas at the end of everything. And. Mhm. Someone said well this is super great but I really wished I could have moved breakout rooms. And I remember just being like hit like a brick, Ben.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because he could have moved at any point. He was never. But he was so used to being locked up that he never realized he was free.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And how often does that happen to so many of us? And so yeah, I think, you know, we've done all this work on the core underlying processes and sometimes we realize that it's less, it's not just the process but like you know, there's always one more layer of the onion. And I'm sure do this again in five years ago, Ben. I was way wrong. But it's always the process. It's the people. Right. There's people who hold on to these processes. Mhm. And the accelerator believes that at its core the best people to fix a system, to fix a process are the people who are in the system and in the process the people closest to the challenge themselves. And that also means that sometimes we hold on to things that no longer serve us.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And so you know something, I'm really excited that we're launching uh, next week is our innovating leadership program which is for some of our most high impactful leaders, some of our highest merit based folks, if you go through uh, an administration train, so we're not doing appointments right now who are going to do immunity to change work. They're going to be doing positive intelligence work. They're going to be doing pre morms, they're going to be into the deep human work individually and as a cohorts to reshape the stories of what's possible so that as we try to build organizations that are more ready for emergent features, are more adaptive, that they are expanding their complexity fitness, that they're changing and upgrading their own operating systems so that they can then begin to design the practices. Right. The hand shaping that shapes the hearts and the minds across the organization. Um, and that's something that we're doing now that m. I'm pretty jazzed about.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I, I want to hear more about that. But to your Point around the, you know, these layers. Uh, we talk about when we do process improvement work in my day job, like it's like sedimentary rock. Like over time, you know, our processes, we add these layers because there was a, there might have been a good reason at the time and.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, are they serving us anymore? And you know, often, you know, that's. It's not. And you need to give folks the freedom to, to rethink that and the power to do that. I think having a little bit of that, you know, open mindedness, but also like humbleness that like, you know, and you're not pointing fingers at anyone that like the process as it's designed today is perfectly designed to get the outcomes you get today. Um, and so like if you want different outcomes, you got to rethink kind of some of those choices and those layers. And so creating that kind of openness is like, it's like, ah, I don't know, a huge part of it. And is giving folks that, empowering them folks to do that is like, I think the, maybe the hardest part of the change.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I love that and I think um, you know, that openness as you said, like is this any, is this servicing us any longer? Yeah. It's not like the way that we got to the government that we got full of red tape is by like a big, you know, red tape ribbon commission that came together and studied for three years, low government down and really wrapped people up and then was like, all right, here's a big red tape plan. Then we rolled it all out and like boom. Right. And so to expect that we're going to get out of it that way is so silly. Right. It's a start small and scale. It's a snowball and we don't know what the future looks like. The question is, are we able to dance with that future? Are we able to take those small steps to learn? Are these things still serving us? And that goes not just for processes but also stories.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Right. Like what is the story that we're telling ourselves about our colleagues, about residents? You know, Elizabeth Linos at the People Lab just launched the Public Servant Pulse, the first data driven project to figure out perceptions of public servants so we can benchmark this and understand this. And there's a couple of cool questions in there that we got to work on that are also about how do members of the, of uh, how do public servants view members of the public and how do they believe they're viewed by the public? I thought that was just Such an interesting addition because are those views still serving us? Do people need to fill out 15 forms? Or like, what does direct cash transfer begin to look like?

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And you know, I think that those, those, those uncoverings are really interesting. And we know how to do this work individually. Executive coaching is a way that folks do it. Leadership based co op programs with an adult developmental theme know how to do this work where you can take something that you are subject to and make it object. You can be that fish in the fishbowl and then jump out and be like, oh, look, I was in a fishbowl. That's water. I can now see it and choose. Do I get back in it? Do I go to another fishbowl? We know how to do that at an individual level. We are exploring how to do it at an organizational level. It's not yet happening at local government at scale anywhere, but it's happening in other places. There is that space. And even Ben at the, at the end there, you mentioned the word empower. And I think like, if folks aren't empowered, awesome. Let's step to empowerment.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And we can transcend and include like for me, empowerment was a word that had a lot of allergy to for a long time. I don't believe in empowering folks in the accelerator because I think that would say then that I'm some type of benevolent dictator.

Speaker B: Who can you have the power to.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And the radical thing is, and this is sort of a core value of our team, is to recognize power, to look and see the full humanity of a colleague, of a resident, of a constituent, and to see them as a full and powerful human being. Mhm. And to do that, we have to recognize our own power. Yeah, right. The drama triangles that happen in our families also happen in the way that we're late across society and in, in our organizations. We're not here to rescue folks, we're not here to empower folks. Right. We are here to recognize our own power and to recognize their power and see what then might be made possible.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry, where do I go with this now?

Speaker A: Like, it's right, but in some way, right? Like what Ash did, right. Was with opening that door was he says, you're worthy of trust, you're capable of creating change. We all of us carry these core declarations, these understandings of the world. Just like the processes that sometimes no longer serve us, but those, those to bring it back to those processes, those processes, those policies, they're all have messages in them.

Speaker B: Yeah, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Never. Don't try ChatGPT. It's banned.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: When everyone else is using and trying it, what does that say to somebody? Yeah, you need six, you know, I know the favorite story you like is the one from Chattanooga where I had someone go through our version of Peak Academy in Chattanooga. He's a buddy of mine, went for a run. I said, what'd you learn? I was hoping for like 5s, you know, or like, you know, fishbone diagram. And he was like, oh, I learned that you don't trust your people. And I was like, whoa, that's not. Yeah. And he was like, I heard so many folks around me who said that they have to get approvals for everything and that the lapse time on those approvals is weeks. Mhm. He said, look, if anything is happening where people are, you're approving 80% of the time, you might want to stop approving it. Right. Like, how do we give people the autonomy and the power to do and all of the work says, like, people want existence and relatedness and growth, but people want autonomy and connectedness and a feeling that, like, we get into public service, Ben. And it's such an honor to be in public service because we want to make things better in our communities.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Not fill out 15 forms.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And that people layer goes. Right. Like, there are times when we tried to launch big customer service initiatives and nothing sort of drives me more bonkers because it's, uh, adopting these private sector methods without adapting them. Adapting these tools to the public sector.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's, uh, you know, our people, our constituents are not customers. Right. I think we've damaged ourselves in so many ways with that language because we're, we're building something together. Right. You don't build public safety. Police don't do public safety on their own. We know that very well. Right. It's also eyes on the street, as Jane Jacobs would say in community coming together and teachers, teachers alone in superintendents, they don't do public education that also involves families and mentors and grandparents. These are things that we do together. And so as much as democracy depends on delivery, so too does delivery depend on democracy. And that all takes recognizing that there's a person on the other side of that form.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Both directions.

Speaker B: Yeah. We, we treat residents like customers, and then they treat us like vending machines. And so. And that doesn't solve the ultimate, uh, you know, service. It doesn't provide the ultimate service you're trying to provide, um, because it takes, you're Right on. It takes everybody um, default vending machines.

Speaker A: Right. No wonder people banging on us trying to get pop tart out, you know.

Speaker B: Well, and I love um, there was a, I think an article you wrote for Eel Jail on, on this topic around remembering that like government is people and like that and how. How that opens you up to rethinking the way that things are done with an organization. Is that like there's someone behind that, you know, form or someone that has to fill it out. Um, and someone that has to, you know, unlock the cage to let the pens out. And when you. And I think you've. You've captured it well of like how remembering that people um, that make up government, like can really lead to different ways of doing things and like. And hopefully as long as you're. As long as you, you know, trust those folks that feel like that you're willing to extend trust and empower those folks that can really be powerful. I think it's a really like a great mindset, um, change to. For folks to consider. Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean there's a, There's a new piece out um, by Jeff Vogan about civi as a mesh and I think a way to think about all of this. There's different mindsets that work for different situations. In Covid, we switch our mindsets really radically. Right. Um, we're switching to emergency situation. But as you said, the people were not cognizant in a machine. There's a role for understanding cogs. You have to be able to recognize that we all create widgets.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: In order to count those widgets, in order to prove those widgets. But you also have to be able again to question what the widget is. Right. Is this an outdoor public bench or is it a stump? Um. And yes it's useful in so many ways to be able to see our organizations as machines that are very complicated. But that can also blind us to the ways that when they are government is people too. They are also organic and work much more like ecosystems. So you know, I've been involved with outcomes based budgeting in deep ways. I think it's a beautiful. Often in spirit.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But when it's done from a budget office that imagines that if they can just allocate every dollar perfectly and then all we will all knowing and then we will do the whole thing maybe right. Like Boeing and I'm going to borrow this from Fred Laloux, one of my favorite authors. A Boeing airplane is complicated and like the number of people who spend time figuring Out. The exact strength of every single screw and bolt on a Boeing airplane is insane. And like, I've worked on teams. Every time I get off on an airplane, I'm like, there's just no way a group of people did this. Like, there's just like, we had trouble having a meeting agenda, but this, uh, guy. But that's complicated. And a lot of times we cheat our organizations like that. And it can be awesome for some things, but the world I would offer is often more complex. It's more like a bowl of spaghetti, maybe with some, some pasta sauce on it. And when you stick a fork in, you begin to pull out. We don't know what's going to emerge there.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so you manage those two things in different ways. You see them in two different ways. They're valuable in different ways. And over time, at least in the United States governments, you know, we've changed the ways that we do democracy in order to create space for different organizational forms to emerge. Right. The National Civic League, formerly the National Municipal League in the Progressive era, moved us from, like, these governments where people would, um, you know, there was a fair amount of corruption and there was a lot of, like, patronage systems and boss machines, and there was sort of a commissioner form of government, and they switched it to more professional, to city manager or to a strong mayor, strong executive form with the idea that we can professionalize and we can routinize and we can have things more standardized and we can treat things more like a machine. Well, that was awesome and it got us so far, but that next. Is that story still serving us? I don't know, but I think there's a story that understands complexity that. That is going to serve us better. Yeah. And hopefully we can make those shifts.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I think that gets at some of the elements you were talking about with the Innovation Leadership Program. And like, how do we sit with that complexity and give folks tools to like, manage in that unknown? And I don't know that there are good. I have not seen maybe in my career. Uh, I'll make, I'll turn that I statement again. I don't know that I've been exposed to, like, good tools or ways of thinking to sit in that, that, uh, kind of complexity and that unknown. I mean, how are you thinking about, like, how do you prepare a leader for doing just that and being open to, like, hey, this isn't just a, a machine that we could understand and be able to perfectly explain with each budget, each adopted budget and moving towards more of like, that kind of ecosystem, interrelated thinking. Like, how do you prepare folks to like, change their, their mindset in that way?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, honestly, Ben, we're trying to figure that out. Right. And there's, there's people who are doing it in different ways. I think one answer is it's got to be experiential. Right. There's a big difference between knowing about innovation and knowing how to innovate, about knowing about leadership and knowing how to lead. Right. So it's, it's knowledge in the, in, in the hands. I think there are tools that we know from other fields to do this on the individual level. So, you know, we ran with Innovate Us a uh, workshop on polarity navigation, which is. Okay. Um, there is a balance between diplomacy, um, in candor, and we don't have to swing like a pendulum, like, ah, ah. We're all the people who have really all into candor and we're the people really into diplomacy. Diplomacy.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. Or people who do results versus relationships. But to begin to recognize that both of these things add value and we're going to sort of find and thread a middle way. And our language often doesn't have the words for that. So like, you know, we have a screw and we have a bolt. But if I was to show you an image, Ben, of a screw and a bolt together. We don't have a word for that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And so it's beginning to develop a new vocabulary, a new language for, for those screws bolt together things. And I borrow that from, from the polarity folks. But so it's, you know, one, uh, of the things I think it's a real challenge and something I'm working on now is when we talk about these organizational stages, it's like this giant titanic leaps and then it feels too big. Just like those innovation projects that we talked about earlier that like our ancestry, beautiful polished versions like I can never do that. Um, and there's some folks who, who. Boston, uh, Ellis, whose metaphor. I really like that. Which were. Were sort of working on how to do this at the organizational level. But what they did was they said when we talk about complexity fitness, we talk about, you know, let's, we talk about like this, these stage jumps, but we talk about physical fitness. Like you go to a gym, right? And there's like endurance and speed and strength work, and you sort of are exercising these different muscle areas and they all come to components of fitness. And so that when we think about complexity fitness, we might think about it in these different chunks and we think about these organizational fitness for complexity. We might think about this. So it's not just you have to make this huge phase shift, but you get to start small, unlocking some doors, looking where you have too many approvals, figuring out where you can celebrate failure, recognizing um, the ways in which we can center the actual humans and change what we're seeing. You know, I think that's where then things like the accelerates, they're all building blocks up to this. Um, it's not some giant thing we have to do all at once, but we all have to do it together. And. Right. Local government, especially through elgl, we just copy and share with each other as we go.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well the other thing I'm hearing there is like being open to the, like that you don't know and you don't have all the answers and you got to kind of figure it out together and, and there may be a point where you pull one of those noodles and that's not the one that you should have pulled and you, and you go back and you figure out the right one to, to pursue and, and, and being. I think that's really hard as a leader to, to be uh, to be able to say that to staff and be like, I, I don't know. And we're going to figure it out. Um, and like that takes a little bit of humility and a little bit of um, I don't know, being comfortable in that unknown in a different. That uh. I, I don't know. I don't always see from, from leaders. I think it's not something that you're, you're, you're drilled to, to express as a leader.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it's, and it comes from like it's hard as a, if you're in a politician. Right. It's hard to do that.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: Then you just uttered some of those powerful words which is. I don't know.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And I don't know is the opening to learning.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Right. And like we have to understand that we. I don't think humans can ever be wrong, but I do think that our thoughts and ideas can be wrong. Right. So how might be wrong? And, and how do we, you know, you can do tools, you can do pre mortems. Let's step ourselves into the future. Yeah. Ah, right. And imagine this went terribly awry or went terribly well happened. So you can begin to, you can do the, the prototyping exercise with spaghetti diet with, with spaghetti and marshmallows and building towers where kids who are in preschool beat MBAs every single time because they're more willing to try and to fail. And also the marshmallows. So yeah, like there are ways, experiential ways, the accelerators, a lot of games. Right. About perspective taking, perspective shifting. But it all starts with I don't know. And, and if we really like sit with it and I think we talked a lot about this. Like we don't. We.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, we can try to deliver better services but if we step to that next level we're really trying to do is to meet community needs.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: There was a big pushes back in the day with organizers who really inspire me who said services are bad for people because they create dependence. Uh, so like on the one hand we want to deliver excellent services and on the other hand. Right. It's. We want to ask that deeper question of what's the real need and how do we meet that? How do we step towards our own collective freedom?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I'm going like, I'm going high there but I think it's important to really just. There's always the next question and it doesn't mean you can live in the world of those questions. Right. Like just let's wander about trying to think about freedom. That sounds lovely.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: What I'm really going to do is I'm going to change the boxes on this form so that you don't just have. When I write your birth date, you include the year so you can, you can get your recreation pass. Right. So it's, it is being able to zoom in and zoom out, but always ask knowing that there's something deeper there.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, that can be really hard work as a practitioner because you're in the weeds, you're in the day to day, you're thinking about maybe those forms and like being able to zoom out and connect to the bigger picture. Like that can be a challenge. Um, and. But I think you're totally right that like that's how you, you know, maybe put some little perspective on some of the things you're doing. But it's also how we think about are we making an impact on the community and are the outcomes like what we want or are we just, you know, treating symptoms? Um, and like if we're just treating symptoms, I mean we got to rethink how we're doing this.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, Ben, I think it's a great, you know, one way we often think about this. Right. In human centered design is an approach. It's a Tool and a method in a mindset that, that asked us like how do we go take the perspective of folks and in the private sector. Right. It was how do we design for. And then we moved to design with. But we really needed to have design by which M is. You know, when we hired Civic Design leads, their job was not to go and be designers. Their job was to hold the space for the people in the program to design their own features. So we reimagine when we do libraries, we reimagined the standards by which we want customer experience in this film. But those tools and I think so much of our focus has been on that tool building. Let's add new skills, let's add new knowledge. It's new. That sort of capability. It's like things that you put into your bucket. Mhm. And the adult development orgs talk about capability. The things you put in your bucket, the skills, the knowledge, the tools as differentiated from capacity, which is the shape of the bucket itself. The ability to hold that complexity, that ambiguity.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And so uh, when your bucket, your water carry is different shapes, those same tools that we keep adding on like. Well, we've taught people how to prototype. Okay. Awesome. Right. But like a prototype looks different in a different hand. You know, from one form of mind. Prototyping is about performance. You know, here's a prototype demo to show that I did a good job and any failure, it feels like a personal, a social rejection.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And then from an expanded form of mind, that same prototype, it's a hypothesis. You know, here's a prototype, a test for my theory. I can handle being wrong if it leads to another, a better version, uh, 2.0 that I can control.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then from an even further sort of expanded form of mind, a prototype is. It's just another thing. It's a conversation, it's a way to talk to the system. There's no ego in being right. Because I'm a learner, not an owner. And so we can take then this idea like the same tool in different ways. And we can see how when we keep investing in innovation, we keep trying to do better in government, we keep investing in the tools and the capability. And I think what we really need to begin to focus on more is investing in that capacity. As you said, how do we get people to say I don't know M over and over and over again? Because right when you. To be in that, that into. Recognize that we might never know while at the same time having the, the, the certainty to move M forward and to take action.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's being able to. Each of these stages transcends and includes the last one. Right. It's like um, like the within a tree. Right. Like the, the outside doesn't work without the inside. And m. We apply different things in different spaces. Sometimes we need organizations that are like a pyramid with one thing at the top directing down and other things. We need them to be more like meshes. And how do we know and are able to shift and transition for what our communities need and what our communities of colleagues need when they need them?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right on. And I think I love the mesh. Like um, I don't know if metaphor is the right word, but kind of framework of thinking about the organization. Because I do think, you know, uh, one of the fun things about being a consultant is you get to work with all sorts of different organizations all across the country and doing things in a bunch of different ways. And like one of the, you know, the, the challenges that I see is organizations that have to connect or organizations to be successful need to connect the day to day work of staff to the like vision for the organization that the governing body has and vice versa. Like that vision's gotta be informed by like what's going on at the ground level, like what's actually happening in the community. And like that, that doesn't just. That can't be top down and it also can't just be bottom up. It's gotta be maybe the mesh is the best, the best word. But like it's gotta be kind of interactive in that way. And I think that gets to the complexity you're talking about the ecosystem P. You're talking about. And um, to be able to like live in that sort of back and forth I think is. Is the challenge of like making local government work in kind of this, this era.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ben, can I build on that?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because I think, you know, I remember working with consultants in an old job and they were like, oh, usually what we do is we take something from the marketing team and we bring it over to the logistics team and like that counts as our work. Right. We're simply connecting those dots.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But in our. The organization I worked in, they're like, but you guys already talked to each other so we're not sure what to do as consultants here. But like, you know, what appears on an org chart misses what is already happening. Right. There's. You can design your organization to look more like a mesh instead of a pyramid.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: You can Also recognize that even if you have a perfect period pyramid on an org chart, right. That mechanistic view, let's allocate every dollar to every budget. Let's perform it stat. Everything that the reality is there's all sorts of interesting informal webs happening already exists. The question is like, can you play with that mesh and use it effectively to create change? It's one of the reasons why we say the accelerator is introduction to a structured problem solving course and community. Because the tools that we teach are useful, but the connections that are created are powerful.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. Like thing that like always because you sort of like the governing body. One of the, sort of. The interesting joys of this role has been listening to people's stories of power. Like there are folks who are way, um, the rubber meets the rope who are like, I'm not powerful because I can't make any of these big changes. I'm not in charge of the policy. And there's people who are in the center of the wheel. The county executive who's like, gosh, I have no power here.

Speaker B: I'm not doing any of them.

Speaker A: But like, you guys do all the work. I can't do anything. And of course there's the middle, which is like in the sandwich between. And they really can't feel unpowerful.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But when we begin to relate across that mesh to be able to all recognize. Oh wait, in so many ways all of us don't feel powerful and then shift to all being powerful and recognizing the power that we have that other people have and the way that we're interpreting, dependent upon each other in the way that the center of the wheel can let go a little bit.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: In the, in the, in the, in the. Where the rubber meets the road can feed in a little bit more. Like then suddenly really cool and powerful things begin to happen. But I, I just always this like funny chuckle or like, you know, I'll be talking to the county executives like, oh, I just don't have any power. And I'll be talking to frontline stuff like, oh, the county executive power. We don't have any power. It's like y' all at some point recognize that the system is powerful and it shapes us. And also we are powerful and we shape the system.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And holding those like, I think the things of innovation is being able to hold both of those things to be true at the same time.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're exactly right that the. Yeah. That there's. It takes all of us to Change it. Um, but the, the act of being, um, in the organization also changes us individually. Yeah, I think.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's where, like, having community, like, you know, reconnecting at ELGL conferences, like, being with each other helps because you remember, I'm not the only one doing this. I'm not alone. Right. And like, it's why we love the eager beavers of elgl because it's great to feel. I'm bummed it's no longer called the, um, was the Top Influence Award. It used to be called the Trigger Award. Yeah. That was literally the best name for an award of all time. Like, it was great. And I happened to be training for Half Ironman, so I was doing some push ups in the office while running the budget process and I hadn't watched Parks and Rec yet and I wish someone had told me, but like, this is a sad and depressing character like me, but like. Yeah, like it matters that a bunch of us believe that we can make government work with people. Yeah.

Speaker B: Oh, for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, and because. Because government only exists because a bunch of people are like, you know what, there's certain things that we can't do that well alone that we'd rather do better together. And so let's create this thing we're going to call government to try to solve our common problems. And so often we forget that that's what government really is here for. Yeah. Collaborate together to solve our needs.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's not a service provider that we just bang on for Pop Tarts.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, that's. That's right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, and I think, um, that transitions nicely into something that I want to talk about because I think someone listening could probably tell that you are thinking about and wrestling with a little bit of local government in this era of democracy and what democracy means. And you talked about democracy is dependent on delivery. Delivery is dependent on democracy. I'm just curious for you personally and maybe even your work in Montgomery county, how does that, you. How does that, you know, you know democracy and thinking about the future of it, how is that kind of informing your work and how are you kind of wrestling with that? Because I do think it seems like it's. I don't want put words in your mouth or assume, but it does seem like it's. It's part of, like how you're. You're thinking about the things that the county does and the things that you and your team do. And, um, like, how is that kind of informing maybe, you know, the approaches you take?

Speaker A: Um, I don't know totally how to. I'm at a bit of a loss to be honest. Ben.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I can give you an example of like how but I'm going to come back. So like when we did an amazing teammate Kate who led um, the re like the library's reimagining of their strategic plan and we did in a really human centered design way and so well we wanted to get young people's voices in and it was around Valley Valentine's Day. So we had them all write Valentine's Day card like love notes. The library as a way of sourcing what they really believed in.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And then instead of having designers do all that sorting, we had members of library staff do that sorting, do that sense making and shape things. Right. So it's this beautiful sort of dialogue process. Mhm. We launched some things we had designed by people fellows, um, which and the idea was this was right at the same time the USDR was sort of taking off was we have these amazing designers outside of government. Let's be open about our challenges. And you know, Anna was on govlove podcast once and she was our first design people fellow and she came in to work with a three on one team. We basically said like guess what? What we're doing isn't working. You've got some skills. We're not going to hide it. Let's try to create this better together. Yeah. But when it really comes like how does all this democracy. Like those are ways I think of opening those doors, seeing people as people. But uh, honestly I think some of the ways I'm thinking about this, Ben, I really don't know but I'm looking to history a little bit.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah.

Speaker A: And so like right there were in that progressive era we changed the, you know, the actual mechanisms of voting. You didn't, you know, voting from. No longer voting for commissioners, voting for city managers, voting between sort of at large races and district races.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And so they changed the mechanisms of voting. And we begin to see like you know, when we started work in citizens assembly citizen lotteries, which is this idea that you choose a random selection, like an actual random selection of folks and they deliberate and debate and make choices. M When started on this work like nine years ago, like it was happening in some random small places but like not a huge amount. And then now like there are citizen. Citizen assemblies all over the place. Mhm. In Fort Collins, in Dayton and like they're making big decisions and doing things. What happens if we replaced Congress right now with a random sample of residents from around the country and they only got to serve for two or four years. Think about the power dynamics. Like immediately we'd have a more representative. We'd have less millionaires, we'd have more women, we'd have more people of color. Right. To more accurately represent this country m or this locality. I think that hopefully a lot of this is going to happen at the local level. So what happens when you begin to do that and the power shifts? You're not going to be running for office again because the next set of people is going to be random. So you're really just going to try to figure out what does our country need to do in these spaces. And I think the places to begin where the experimentation happened, this is why I love local government, is because I think that we look at the rise of ranked choice voting. I don't think rape choice voting is a panacea. It is an experiment in. And like there's blacks or uh, arrows and possibility theorem. Right. So different forms of voting just lead to different outcomes. But there are. So, yeah, I think that we can change the way potentially that we imagine democracy. In ancient Greece, they didn't just vote for who was going to be the leader of the country. They also voted out the person they thought would be most likely to be. To be a tyrant. Like, there's all these totally cool ways democracy is. M. You know, we know we live in a representative democracy, but it's. It's agreements that we make with each other about how we want to govern in the same way that there's agreements that we make with ourselves about how we want to be, how we want to see ourselves. Or agreements that we make with our. With our partners about how we want to live together. Or agreements that we make with their teams that we call norms that are guidelines for how we want to grow. And all of those agreements are tools for freedom. And so I like that you can get wonky on this. On there's a substack. I write about this, but like all of this is about getting in choice. You know, you said, like, are they still serving us? Is this process still serving us? Is this story still serving us? Is the way that we're doing democracy right now still serving us? And sometimes it's helpful to zoom out and to look at all these other areas where democracy looks really different in different places.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's, I think something, you know, a big limit for me is I'm really focused on the United States. And so over the last couple of years, I've began to like, play with places in different countries and you're like, oh, I thought we were having a conversation about X, we're having a conversation about Y. Because you're a non federal, you don't have a federal government. You have a national government. Like, and that means there's different things going on. So I don't know. I'm, I'm deeply hopeful about democracy. I don't know that we'll continue to have representative democracy as we know it, but I'm deeply hopeful for people to continue to step into their power and into collective choice together and then for us in government to be able to step into those spaces. Um, and government will shift. I mean, my wife is from Vermont. They, they run. It's a town. It's town meetings. Right. It's just a different thing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I do think like this living through history is always a, you know, interesting. Um, but I do think when I try to zoom out and be like, and think about this moment in American democracy and governance, like we, we rethink our democracy every couple generations in this country. And like, the last time we did it was probably the 60s and maybe it is time to rethink what we've done and like, and what it looks like now and is it meeting the needs of, you know, this, this era and this, this century and, and I think, uh, local government can be a real place for that where I think a lot of what you talked about today could be a way, our, our way in as local government to be like, you know, these are, these are problems, these wicked problems that local governments are now facing that, you know, that didn't exist in the 50s when we're building some of our communities from scratch out the suburbs or, you know, whether it's a different era of prosperity, like, you know, solving affordable housing and aging infrastructure and um, you know, all the kind of like, wicked challenges that we have. Like, that will take more than just, you know, one, you know, mayor or county executive that's got all the right ideas. Um, it's going to take all of us. Um, and you know, I think to some extent, like the folks that work in public administration and the city manager, council manager forms of government, like, they've got a little bit of practice in this. They're like, well, you know, the whole point is that there's this collective groups that sets the vision and then we try to like, execute on it and there's this like tension between politics and administration. But, you know, have we been responsive enough? Have we included the Community enough, I think, I think that's an open question. And ah, I like your, your point around these citizen assemblies. And I think participatory budgeting is another area where now that's gotten more popular in the last few years. And as an example of like, maybe we just need to hand more power back to our residents and, and let them choose. Um, but I do think, you know, for people with you know, the MPA after their name or you know, you know, have that master's in planning or you know, they're a city engineer, like it's hard to let go of and say that like their, your expertise is valuable there. There is I think, attention there that we don't talk enough about in, in kind of this profession that like, you know, maybe what's best for our community and democracy is that we empower, you know, our residents a little more and, but that, you know, that takes saying that like, well my. It's not that your expertise isn't valuable. Maybe it's not valuable in this setting or in this situation and we gotta have more of a balance there.

Speaker A: I don't know. Right. Yeah, uh, yeah, uh, it's cool, Ben. Like one is like, I think city planners have like, if you go to city planning school now, you learn about Robert Moses as well as Jane Jacobs. You learn about like cracking all the eggs to make omelets. You learn about the giant terrible displacements of highways through black neighborhoods. You learn about all this type of stuff in their innovation space. We're a newer field. A lot of folks coming in to bring in public tech, to bring in design, to bring process improvement. We're not necessarily trained in past, in history of government reform. And so we humanite in many ways with the same hubris as planners did 50, 60, 70 years ago. And we've got to learn, I think, that humility and that history as well.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: And also like, I think, you know, you point to like the fun possibility like you talked about city managers, you know, and that they've got a head start. And they do in some ways, but also like. And so many times organizations reach out to me to help navigating the local government space and you know, especially as there's former federal workers who are like, oh, I want to work in state and local. Ho ho. First of all, local, it's like it's two different things. Unless you're on a tech sales team. Right? Yeah, yeah, we're rally organizations. But local is often. It's one of the reasons why a lot of organizations have Trouble organizing, you know, organizing cities and counties is because, like, the mayor of LA and the mayor of New York City and the mayor of Boston and the mayor of Miami. Radically different sets of power.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, there's a bunch of city managers who, like, some have strong mayor. So there's just. The forms of government are already like, there's massive experiments going on already. There's town meetings. And so thinking about that's. To me though, is that's the beat of it, right? We're already playing in complexity. And, you know, like, look, me and a lot of friends spent a lot of time trying to get a bunch of data to be, like, more transferable. And like, when a new and powerful administration came in that maybe didn't want to use that data for good, all of us are like, thank God we were so unsuccessful for so long. Like, good thing we failed so hard, or we'd be. It could be really dangerous right now. And so there. And in that moment, I try to sit with some of the beauty of the complexity of the complexity. There's a reason for friction. There's a reason for like, I want to get this things all to work and be faster and like, sometimes, like, oof, good thing, because we need some of that slowness, um, sometimes. And I think it's why, you know, with our speed of information. I read a lot of, like, weird speculative fiction, but, like, there's a whole Vernon series and. And they look back on forms of democracy, like when information in. In the web is a web of lies. This is from a book. Not. Not here. I know that we're on the web on this podcast, uh, and we're only telling half lies.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: They couldn't believe that we would still do democracy in the same ways. Like, the world is radically different. The way that we come into agreements with each other, I hope will be, will be, will be different too. Um, how does it serve us? Yeah, well, we just went from Gwen Stefani to American democracy. I don't know where we're going next, but it's been fun.

Speaker B: Well, that was perfect. I mean, we're gonna have to just kind of have you back every few months just to get real philosophical with it.

Speaker A: Can we have Gwen Stefani on this thing or what?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, uh, I know. You know, I even booked extra time because I knew we'd have a lovely conversation that went all sorts of places. Um, couldn't have predicted gwen Stefani at 1.5 speed.

Speaker A: And he figured, why not?

Speaker B: Um, um. But, uh, you know, before we kind of wrap. What's next? What are you working on that our listeners ought to look out for? I know you mentioned, you know, launching this new innovation, innovating leadership program, but anything else you want to kind of highlight for that people can check out?

Speaker A: Yeah, we're doing that. Like, we'd love people to copy it and to come and play with it, um, because that's how we keep learning. Um, you know, I'm doing a lot more executive coaching, which just grounds me and helps me. It's me in a happy way. And yeah, you know, government people were. We're really looking to figure out how do we launch cohorts of folks who are in these fulcrum points or in these high leverage points to transform themselves as they transform their organization. So, um, you know, we're going to go and dance and play with this. And I would really. The reason I get into these conversations with you, Ben, is because I really welcome people to reach out who are thinking and exploring and acting and playing and dancing and experimenting in these ways to reach out. Um, let's all get in conversation together.

Speaker B: I love it. I love it. Yeah. And we'll, uh, we'll link to your LinkedIn, obviously, and then. And the county website so folks can, can find your, your information and reach out. Yeah. Um, and then before we, we sign off, the hardest question. Um, if you could be the gobble of a dj, what. What song would you pick as the exit music for this episode, which, I

Speaker A: mean, my very first job was. I was a bar mitzvah mc. Yeah, you just swore on the podcast, man. Got, uh, it finally success. And there's so many party rockers. I'm gonna go with One Voice by the Waylon Jenny's. And it's a song that I first played. Heard an interfaith service after the Charleston shooting, and it's one that we were launching the first cohort of the accelerator. And I'd, you know, been launching it for the past four months. I'd got there and I'd felt like I was one voice standing alone. And I looked around that room and sort of on a whim, we changed the end and we passed out to a couple people I felt safe with or at least brave with the words to this song, which starts with what? One voice voices to, um, all of us. And they sang and we had our commencement ceremony. So we had all the big wigs and then all of us from that cohort and the cohort. I didn't empower them. Right. They took power into their own hands. And they surprised me and all of us by singing this song. Voices one, voices two, voices three. All of us together. And Marshall Ganz, who teaches organizing, says that movements sing. So when we think about our future, of our governments, of our. Of our planet, of our country, of our democracy, I think about this song and, um, maybe we all get to sing it together as some exit music and some entrance music into whatever's next for all of us.

Speaker B: Perfect. Perfect. What a lovely note to end on, on. Uh, thanks, Michael, so much for coming on and talking with me. Uh, you know, every time we connect, I love to get philosophical with you. And so we, we did it for like the few minutes before we started recording and now, ah, you know, it's been well over an hour of it and I, you know, wish, wish we had another hour and a half to go. So, uh, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me.

Speaker A: Thanks so much, Ben. You know, I basically fix forms for a living, so I'm really glad to be able to wax philosophical and think that what I do is slightly more than changing boxes.

Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, it is. Don't worry. Uh, for our listeners, govlove is brought to you by engaging local government leaders. And the best way to support Gov Love is to become an ELG member. You can reach us online at elgl.org govlove or check us out on our page on M. LinkedIn with that. Thank you for listening. This has been GovLove, a podcast about local government.

Speaker A: Us.

Speaker B: This is the sound of all us.

Speaker A: This is the sound of all of us.