Local governments are in a unique and advantageous position to tackle some of our society’s toughest social problems. They don’t have the severe gridlock of federal and state politics, nor do they operate under the whims of philanthropy like most nonprofits.
And even despite volatile funding sources and burdensome state mandates, counties and cities have sufficient budgets and autonomy to creatively improve the community. The $65.1 billion of aid to counties and $45.6 billion to metropolitan cities from The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) only increases this opportunity.
However, not all local governments will be able to realize the positive changes they envision.
In this blog post, I explore internal conditions that prevent local government from achieving transformational systems change. Specifically, I use seven insights from The Fifth Disciple by Peter Senge to show how counties and cities can use a systems thinking lens to more effectively achieve impact.
The 7 organizational learning disabilities
Peter Senge’s 1980 bestseller, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization, focused on how companies can use systems thinking to become learning organizations. Early in the book, Senge outlines the mindsets and habits that prevent companies from thinking systemically. He calls these “learning disabilities.”
- “I am my position.”
- “The enemy is out there.”
- The Illusion of Taking Charge
- The Fixation on Events
- The Parable of the boiling frog
- The Delusion of Learning from Experience
- The Myth of the Management Team
Although Senge was focused on private sector companies, the insights aptly apply to local government as well. Below, I explore each of these seven mindsets in the context of social problems faced by counties and cities.
#1. “I am my position.”
Like most big organizations, local governments gain efficiency and alignment through hierarchy. It makes sense to divide the work into departments and delegate leadership.
However, in organizational silos, people can begin to associate more with the tasks they do every day than with the mission of the greater organization. While interdepartmental tension is perhaps inevitable, the issue comes to a head when governments try to solve problems that exist across departmental boundaries.
For example, homelessness is an issue that manifests across employment, housing, health and public safety departments. Uncoordinated efforts to address only one aspect of the problem will only have limited effectiveness.
To solve the issue, government workers must see themselves as more than just their position. For example, a director of employment services must see their role as more than just employment outcomes, but as one of many contributors to the county’s goal of reducing homelessness.
#2. “The enemy is out there.”
When issues like homelessness persist in a region, it’s a common reaction to blame other government departments. Public safety may point fingers at human services, who in turn may assign accountability to the housing department.
As Senge points out, finding someone to blame is a subset of the “I am my position” problem. It’s much easier to find a scapegoat in another department than investigating how the organization as a whole can solve homelessness.
The solution is to focus on how outcomes result from the connections between various parts of the organization. In other words, an increase in homelessness isn’t the fault of any one department, but a result of the quality of relationships between departments.
#3. The illusion of taking charge
When problems persist, the pressure for solutions rises. Departmental managers may be encouraged to proactively tackle the problem, doing more to address the issue.
To return to the homelessness issue, proactive departmental directors may simultaneously introduce a new training program targeted to homeless veterans, a new housing voucher program, and a short-term public safety push to clear encampments.
A deeper look at these actions reveals Senge’s insight that:
“All too often, ‘proactiveness’ is reactiveness in disguise.”
In this example, homeless veterans don’t have stable enough life conditions to complete longer-term training programs. Housing vouchers have limited effect when waitlists for affordable housing are many months long. And cleared encampments just move to another part of town. The net effects of these efforts may be increased spending, overburdened staff, and even less time to collaborate across departments. This approach is the opposite of subtractive systems change.
Directors could have instead spent their time figuring out how to integrate their siloed approaches. As Senge writes,
“True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems.”
#4. The fixation on events
It’s only natural to focus on what just happened. Today’s news is tomorrow’s crisis, right?
Just like any other organization, local government can fixate on events: high profile police encounters, the latest budget appropriations from the State, and upcoming county board or city council elections.
In the news, each event has its over-simplified explanation. Increased traffic congestion is explained as resulting from the county’s underinvestment in roads. Rising public healthcare costs are explained as resulting from the city’’s recent reimbursement policy change.
As Senge relates,
“Today, the primary threats to our survival, both of our organizations and of our societies, come not from sudden events but from slow, gradual processes.”
But a fixation on daily events and their supposed linear causes can distract people from the longer-term trends that are more fundamentally causing change. For the examples above, traffic congestion may be driven more by economic development policy that incents businesses to locate farther from residential areas than by lack of county road investment. And healthcare costs may be affected more by increased emergency room visits than city reimbursement policy.
Local governments driven by today’s events and their explanations will react to symptoms rather than causes. They are apt to do what is popular rather than what may positively alter long-term trends.
#5. The parable of the boiled frog
A frog will not jump out of water that is slowly increased to boiling. This parable underscores how comfortable we become with long-term threats to our survival, and our inability to act.
While flashy events distract us, long-term trends lull us into a sense that “things have always been this way.” But small changes over time accumulate and generate their own dynamics.
Seemingly small issues become big ones. For example, the county’s water pipes may deteriorate year after year until the entire water system is at risk. Burnout may affect a slowly increasing portion of city workers until whole departments struggle to operate because of extended absences. Backlogs in the court system may grow until temporary incarceration is full or too expensive.
The key is to discern which trends are a risk, and to spend more of our time mitigating them than day-to-day events. These types of actions don’t make the news since they preempt the newsworthy crisis, but they are nonetheless heroic.
#6. The delusion of learning from experience
Cause and effect is a very powerful learning tool. We learn best when we can act by trial and error. We do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
However, in big systems like county and city government, cause and effect are not always so closely related. The effect of a change in one department may not be noticed because its primary effect is on an entirely different department. Or the effect of a change may not occur immediately. A troubled department may be the result of policy changes made years ago by the recently retired director, not the result of the newly hired director.
As Senge observes,
“We learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions.”
Thus, learning must be about more than direct experience. By stepping back to see larger, organization-wide cycles of behavior, we can get a more holistic understanding of why certain events happen again and again.
#7. The myth of the management team
Each of the six challenges above are under the purview of the government unit’s leadership team. But, the team’s internal dynamics may prevent the necessary openness to solve cross-departmental challenges.
As Senge chronicles,
“All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy – maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team.”
Even though government departments compete for limited resources, their interests must extend beyond departmental boundaries. Their incentives should be both departmental and organization-wide. Further, leadership teams need the openness and curiosity to explore why problems persist rather than assigning blame. By creating the space to explore, leadership teams can prevent the kind of learning disabilities listed above.
Government problem solving requires systems thinking
A systems thinking lens can help county staff become more effective at achieving intended results. By focusing on the problem and how it exists in a web of connections, priority can be given to cross-departmental approaches that transcend bureaucratic silos.
But identifying these internal conditions that prevent counties from achieving transformational systems change is just the beginning. Local government staff also need the mindset, skills and tools to lead change.
If you’re interested in taking your local government’s work to the next level, let’s get together for a free consultation, or check out my online course designed to tackle complex social problems.
