Making a strategic investment in public servants

Image from AmeriCorps

This post is Part II of II. Part I focused on why now is the time to make a historic investment in public servants.

COVID-19 has exposed weaknesses in our social and economic systems. With 85,000 fatalities to date and the death toll rising, it is clear our public health system was not ready to meet a challenge like this pandemic. Nor has our social safety net been able to deliver the relief that individuals, families, and small businesses need to survive this crisis.   

In the previous post I argued that we will need big, bold ideas to recreate and rebuild our systems into something that serves everyone better. And we will also need people to do this work -- government employees who are courageous, creative, and connected to the communities they serve, AKA ‘Herocrats.’

With COVID-19, we need Herocrats now more than ever. But where and how can we make the investment that is needed to develop them?

With the economic slowdown, tax revenues are way down, which means government budgets are being dramatically cut. The type of programs that develop Herocrats – paid internships, leadership development cohorts, fellowships – are being reduced or canceled completely. All Peace Corps volunteers were sent home in March. Summer intern positions in local and state government have been called off. Not only are budgets tight, but it is difficult to deliver these programs virtually because they rely on relationship-building, observation, and on-the-job training.

Yet, it can be done. It will just take creativity to figure out the model, and courage to make a significant investment.  

Proposals are on the table to rapidly expand existing service programs like AmeriCorps to manage the epidemic and safely reopen our economy. This action would not only help with short term needs like expanding testing, conducting contact tracing, and stemming unemployment. It would also give hundreds of thousands of people a potential ‘foot in the door’ and skill-building for future careers in public service.

This kind of sweeping action is needed on the national level. But we don’t have to wait for Congress to act in order to apply similar concepts at the local and state levels. Here in Minnesota we already have a solid infrastructure of public service programs that serve different populations and purposes. Some of the prominent ones include:

• StepUp and Right Track programs place thousands of high school students and other youth in paid internships in local government agencies and with other employers. These programs build young people’s careers while also diversifying and strengthening organizations.

• Urban Scholars places college and graduate students in paid internships in government agencies, helping them to explore potential careers in public service. Program participants also get mentoring from senior leaders in government. Since 2012, Urban Scholars has grown from placing just eight students to developing over 100 scholars each summer.

• Capitol Pathways is a program by the Citizens League that places college students of color in paid internships with government offices, nonprofits, corporations, and law firms where they can gain experience and build relationships in and around the Capitol.

• Nexus Community Partners’ Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute is a 7-month leadership program that supports, trains and helps place People of Color and other underrepresented community members on city and county publicly appointed boards and commissions. In these roles, community members are able to influence and impact equity in the Twin Cities Metro Area in economic development, health, housing, transit and workforce development.

Image from https://www.solid-ground.org/

In addition to these nonprofit- and government-led programs, colleges and universities do much of the heavy lifting to prepare people for careers in public service. Here in the Twin Cities, we have several first-class graduate and undergraduate programs in public administration, public affairs, and related fields.

Within the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, the Master of Public Policy and Master of Urban and Regional Planning programs produce dozens of future Herocrats each year. Students in these programs participate in internships, which provide valuable hands-on professional development (and usually, a wage). But given the upheaval caused by COVID-19 this year, a Humphrey School administrator reports that paid internship opportunities for students with public agencies have decreased significantly.

Beyond these Minnesota examples, similar programs are also training Herocrats throughout the country. And in addition to the well-known national programs like AmeriCorps, Teach for America and Peace Corps, there are smaller but powerful programs like Coro Fellows and the International City and County Managers’ Association’s (ICMA) Local Government Management Fellowship.

As someone who has benefited from two of these programs -- I am a returned Peace Corps Volunteer and Local Government Management Fellow-- I know how they can affect the trajectory of a life and a career. But I also believe that when taken together, over years, these programs can make a positive impact on our country. By shaping the people who are operating and reimagining our systems, these programs change the shape of those systems.

While it may be tempting to dial these programs back in a crisis like this, now is the time to invest in them more than ever. Here are some ways you can be part of that effort:

• Make a donation to any of the programs listed above; each organization can accept gifts to support these specific programs. Revenues are falling and budgets are tightening for all types of organizations. Your donation can help to ensure that people have opportunities.

• Contact your elected officials to express your support for legislation that invests in public service while also addressing COVID-19 challenges.

• Volunteer through your local government. Here is the Twin Cities both Ramsey and Hennepin Counties provide volunteer opportunities.

• Encourage others to consider public service, either through the programs mentioned above or by directly applying to job postings.

• Show your appreciation to the Herocrats in your life, whether that means sending a note to an acquaintance who is a public servant, or simply by thanking your bus driver or mail delivery person.

In uncovering our systemic weaknesses, COVID-19 has also reminded us where to apply our collective strengths. Public service programs are one strategic place to start.

After COVID-19, who will rebuild the house?

Photo by Roan Lavery

Many of us are still trying to make sense of what is happening in our world, and what our place might be in a better future. Especially for people who worked for systems change before the pandemic, Arundhati Roy’s conclusion to her April 3rd article is a rallying cry:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

As this global pandemic continues to shake our country to its core, it also opens opportunities that were previously unavailable. Ideas once considered ‘fringe’ are now on the table, and some are even being tested. If you told me on New Years Day that in a few months, most Americans would be working from home, having collected stimulus checks, and that they would be able to bike or walk down public streets that had previously been reserved for cars, I would have been skeptical. But here we are.

COVID-19 is testing our systems and revealing their weaknesses. Most notably, it is demonstrating that the public policies that systematically privileged whites and middle/upper classes have an enduring legacy. Death rates from COVID-19 among Black and Hispanic people are substantially higher than those for whites or Asians. Along with this, long-standing structural inequities are harder for the mainstream to ignore because they are now affecting all of us. Leave it to a virus to clearly demonstrate how our fates are intertwined.

With our metaphorical house burning down, many of us are asking: What do we build in its place? From universal basic income to universal health care, there are lots of big ideas out there. Now is the time to discuss them.

And at the same time, we need to think ahead to implementation. How will we put the big ideas --whatever they end up being-- in place? Who is going to build our new house? Do they have the skills? How do we prepare the site for construction?

This is systems change we are talking about, and systems don’t change themselves. In fact, through the force of inertia, they often stay the same. To reimagine and rebuild our country, we will need talented people in every sector working together to change these systems.

Within government, this will require a commitment to developing the public workforce, and I’m not talking just about growing the number of government employees (though with the impending ‘Silver Tsunami’ we will need to attract a lot of new people to public service). It is also about the qualities of those employees.

To rebuild our systems, we will need  government employees who are courageous, creative and connected to the communities they serve – the kind of government employees known as ‘Herocrats.’ Here’s why these qualities will be especially important in recreating our systems after COVID-19.

It will take courage for Herocrats to speak the truth about the inequitable systems of which they are a part. This truth-telling will upset the power structure they inhabit and potentially threaten their positions, and even their personal well-being.

It will take creativity to imagine how government policies, programs and practices could be more equitable, and to figure out how to collaborate with other people, systems and cultures to make things work for everybody.

And the public servants who can do this will be those who draw on strong connections with their own sense of purpose, as well their connections with the communities they serve. Every successful effort to build more equitable systems will include the participation of the people who are most impacted by those systems.    

Now is the time to make a New Deal-scale investment in developing Herocrats. This will serve short-term needs like combating unemployment and delivering urgent services. But more importantly it will enable us to make the longer-term structural changes that are needed for our country survive our next big challenge.

In this time of billion-dollar budget shortfalls and calls for layoffs, such a proposal may seem far-fetched. But other previously unthinkable things are now becoming a reality. As Ms. Roy pointed out, now is the time to imagine another, better world and prepare ourselves to fight for it.

This post was Part I of II. The next post will address some ways we can make this historic investment in Herocrats happen.

Herocrats are more essential than ever.

Across the country, elected officials are making tough policy decisions about how to respond to the Coronavirus pandemic. They hold regular press conferences to announce efforts to lessen the impact of the virus. For example, here in Minnesota, the levelheaded leadership of Governor Walz has provided comfort and resources to people across the state.

And behind every good governor, county commissioner, and mayor are thousands of public employees who are working around the clock to put the changes into place. Quickly adapting a government bureaucracy to a global pandemic is no small task. These are entrenched systems that weren’t built for the rate of change we’re facing today.

This is why Herocrats are more essential than ever. Herocrats are government employees who use their superpowers of courage, connection and creativity to adapt their agencies to a rapidly changing world. Without Herocrats to figure out how to get it done, the assurances of elected officials would be meaningless.

The State of Minnesota’s #StayHomeMN logo in Somali

Like everyone else, Herocrats are scared. Yet, they are showing up and bringing help to the people who need it:

• IT staff are figuring out how to keep local government open for business.

• Bus drivers are delivering meals and learning packets to kids.

• Communications staff are designing and rolling out informational campaigns.

• Teachers are moving learning online.

• Principals are supporting teachers remotely.

• City transportation staff are shutting down roads to cars so people can safely exercise.

• City and County staff are finding innovative ways to help people experiencing homelessness.

• Police officers are adjusting how they respond to calls and doing new types of community engagement.

These are just a few examples of how Herocrats are putting their superpowers to work in this crisis. How is COVID-19 affecting your work in state or local government? What types of innovation and adaptation are you witnessing?

Do we really need an app for that?

Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

Last fall, Governing Magazine closed shop. For over 3 decades it was the go-to source for news and analysis of state and local government. Since then, its online presence, governing.com, has survived. But it shrank its focus to “what state and local government looks like in a world of rapidly advancing technology.”

I don’t know what factors went into governing.com’s decision to focus on technology. But I doubt it’s a coincidence that large tech companies – many of whom support governing.com – reap big profits in government technology contracts.

I, too, am interested in the impact of technology on government. I’ve seen firsthand how antiquated systems hamper efforts to better serve the public. Among other things, we need powerful software to run online services and integrated databases to inform decision-making.

And, if we’re really talking about the solutions that will make government work better for ALL people, technology is only one part of the picture. Yet it dominates government innovation conferences, books and articles. What is sometimes missing is a more holistic exploration of government management and leadership.

A community engagement manager at a mid-sized city told me that she recently returned from a national conference about best practices in public engagement. Afterwards, her inbox was flooded with emails from companies trying to sell her the latest and greatest online tools to engage the public. Her take? Those tools will only amplify the already-loud voices in her community, which could exacerbate existing disparities. What she needs to make happen is face-to-face resident engagement that informs policy and programs.

She doesn’t need an app for that. Mostly what she needs is for her colleagues to be creative and courageous in doing things differently. In this example and others, much of the innovation that is needed in government can be achieved with little or no new technology.

At its core, state and local government agencies face a major human capital challenge: building and maintaining a top-notch workforce. Problems like this, which have to do with how people think and act, take longer to solve than technology ones (and they are more difficult for companies to monetize.) But if we are going to improve government results, we need to focus on building the best government workforce possible.

Of course, this isn’t really an either-or topic. We can be concerned about human capital AND government technology. And the topics are interrelated. With effective leaders and employees, we’ll be able to get the right technology solutions in place. And having up-to-date technology will help government to keep the skilled workers who have lots of career options.

Also it’s important to note that there are a lot of things going right when it comes to government workforce. In my experience, most government workers are smart, dedicated, and in it for the right reasons. They do the best with what they have, even when they get little recognition for their hard work.

That said, government faces some big, potentially unprecedented workforce challenges.  The much-feared Silver Tsunami is here. Baby boomers are finally retiring, leaving jobs for others and taking their experience with them. And with the economy at nearly full employment (for some segments of the population) there’s tough competition for workers. It is especially difficult for government to compete with private-sector wages.

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

But the people problem is more than a numbers game. Government workers, on average, are whiter and more likely to be male than the communities they serve. People with disabilities are underrepresented. There are many reasons why this mismatch is problematic. For one, it makes it more difficult for agencies to be relevant and connected to the communities they serve.

So in addition to looking at technological fixes, what if we invested at least as much in a world-class government workforce? What if we poured our attention and resources into attracting and keeping Herocrats in government?

Herocrats are government employees who transform their agencies to better serve their communities. They are connected to the people they serve, which enables them to accurately define problems and possible solutions. They have the courage to test solutions out and the creativity to figure out how to institutionalize them in the long run.

To hire and keep Herocrats, we need to change the existing, entrenched systems. That’s hard, slow and sometimes boring work. Much harder than purchasing new technology. It requires us to ‘upset the apple cart,’ adapting our human resources processes and policies to hire people with different backgrounds. It also means finding people who want to change the world but never considered doing it as a government employee.

And it requires us to change our workplace cultures and policies to empower Herocrats, who often feel isolated and unsupported. This means offering professional development opportunities and incentives for employees who drive innovation.

And frankly, agencies need to give Fearocrats, who hold us back from innovation, the hint that it’s time to leave. Senior leaders can set the stage in ways that make Fearocrats self-select out, choosing early retirement or a shift to the private sector.

Ultimately, even if we have the best government technology, if we don’t have the right people running it, we’re in trouble. So let’s keep people – employees and community members – front and center in discussions of government innovation, right where they belong.

Photo by "My Life Through A Lens" on Unsplash

My Beef with the "Business Case for Equity" in Government

If you’ve worked in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the public sector, you’ve probably been told at least once that you need to make “the business case for equity.” This is shorthand for “show me how DEI actions will create economic benefits.”

At its best, “the business case” presents an alternative to well-worn, deficit-based narratives by illuminating the connections between us. “The business case” demonstrates –and sometimes even quantifies-- how exclusionary policies and practices hurt us all through higher costs, inefficiencies and lost opportunities.

We’ve gotten used to observing racial disparities in education, income, and employment and talking about what to do about them. This deficit-based approach is unhelpful for many reasons, including that it presents low-income people and People of Color (POC) as problems to that need be fixed, which is wrong, damaging and counterproductive.

On the contrary, “the business case” presents racial equity as an opportunity for our collective growth, with a focus on leveraging the existing, undervalued assets in our communities.

In this way, “the business case” is a welcome reframing of the issues. It can help private sector businesses understand that DEI is closely related to the bottom line. This is a good thing. But we need to be careful that we don’t lean too heavily on “the business case” framing in government because government is not a business. Public agencies are not profit-driven; they are institutions established for the common good. A focus on the business case for DEI can distort the actions governments take to advance their mission.

Let’s look at some examples. The first one shows how the business case for equity can be helpful in the government context; the second demonstrates its limited applicability.

Example 1: Bus Driver Shortage

Metro Transit, the Twin Cities’ transit agency, is experiencing a multi-year shortage of drivers. The combination of retirements and other attrition, along with low unemployment, has made it nearly impossible for the agency to keep all the buses on the road according to schedule. On some days this means that trips get cancelled, leaving customers waiting for a bus that isn’t coming. This results in the loss of customers and revenue (in lost fares).

This shortage has led the agency to think creatively about recruitment efforts, and many of their efforts fall under the banner of diversity and inclusion.  They’ve asked themselves: how can we broaden our pool of applicants? How can we attract and retain diverse bus drivers so that our business can run smoothly again? The agency has used current drivers to participate in recruitment events in their own communities, including drivers from the Hmong and Somali communities. They’ve examined the hiring process to remove opportunities for unconscious bias to unfairly influence it. They’ve taken steps to make their workplaces more inclusive.

Despite these actions, the agency continues to struggle to maintain a full workforce of drivers, and likely will until the economy and larger factors shift. But their diversity and inclusion steps have helped to stem the tide; without them the agency would be in much worse shape. And the fact that the actions didn’t completely solve the problem doesn’t mean that they weren’t the right thing to do. Perhaps the agency simply needs to do more, or different, diversity and inclusion programs for bus drivers.

Example 2: Making Transit Affordable

Let’s consider another example from the same agency.

As Metro Transit considered raising fares in 2016, a proposal surfaced to allow eligible low-income people to qualify for a discounted fare. Community and transit advocates raised their voices in favor of this program as a necessary step to allow low-income people to reach their destinations, whether it is school, work, the grocery store or the doctor. They were already struggling to pay the regular fare; an increase would be an additional barrier to them.

As the fare increase gathered a sense of inevitability, the staff at Metro Transit researched program models and created scenarios to predict their impact on the budget and operations. They found that, across all models, the program would be a hard hit on the already-strapped budget. The size of the hit depended on many factors, such as the price of the discounted fare, if it would affect a person’s decision to use transit more, and how many people were eligible to enroll (and how many did).

Intricacies aside, the low-income fare, which would surely provide people access to opportunities, would have a negative impact on the agency’s budget, both in the short and long term. Not only would the agency miss out on the regular fare revenue, but it could affect the large amount of revenue the agency received from counties, which purchase and distribute fare cards to their social services clients. And in the long run, if the program is successful, and low-income people are able to be mobile and get to their destinations, their incomes will hopefully increase. While this is a welcome social outcome, for Metro Transit it often means that people no longer need their services because they purchase a car.

In the end, Metro Transit rolled out the program, which provides $1 transit fares to qualified people. Although no evaluation of the program has been released to the public, it appears that it has been successful in making transit more affordable to the people who most need it, while containing its impact to the budget. It was the right thing to do, and it’s helping people. But if staff had used only a “business case” lens it never would have happened.

Limitations

As the examples show, the “business case” can be applied in government, but it has major limitations. Clearly, it shouldn’t be the only reason for agencies to advance DEI. If decisions are made only through that lens, agencies will miss out on many effective ways they can advance their missions.

Here are some other ways it is problematic:

• The language is misleading and potentially harmful. “Running government like a business” fails to recognize the fundamental differences in the sectors, including the governance model, mission and metrics of success. It takes the focus away from the people being served and shifts it to money.

• It’s about putting equity in white majority culture terms. Sure, this can help people who feel unaffected by racism to see the need for action. But let’s call it what it is: self-interest. It’s saying to white people that we should care about racism because it harms us. In the bus driver example, if the agency had not faced a shortage of its usual worker pool –white men with commercial drivers licenses—they may not have done the DEI work at all. In this example, DEI becomes a priority only when other options have been exhausted.

• Its application is often uneven and reflects the biases of those in leadership, who are disproportionately white men. In my experience, policy and program changes to advance DEI often face a higher level of scrutiny and analysis by leaders. In this way the “business case” supports status quo power structures over innovation and equity. Staff rarely are asked to make a business case for an ongoing program; in practice it is mostly applied to new proposals. Regarding the second example, the same kind of “business case” analysis is not applied to services that already benefit high-income riders. If it was, it would show that the people with the highest incomes pay the least for transit because of programs such as MetroPass. These subsidies to riders who are often white, wealthy and suburban would not necessarily prove to be smart business decisions.

• The timing is off. Sometimes it will take a long time for the benefits of DEI to bear out. If we are only focused on the solutions that have the most immediate impact on the “business,” we might miss out on those that will have the largest benefit to the mission over the long term.

Alternatives

Despite its limitations, there can be value in showing connections and causal relationships between DEI investments and other goals we care about. But what are those goals? And who defines them?

Here are some ways government agencies can expand their thinking around “the business case” and use it to advance DEI:

• Use a collaborative, community-engaged process to clearly define the agency’s goals and priorities. Sometimes agencies have too many goals, and it’s not clear what is most important. Other times the staff are focused on goals that are different than the community’s priorities. In the case of Metro Transit, the mantra has traditionally been “ridership and revenue.” While these are important for operations, they do not relate directly to riders’ experiences. More often riders want to know they can get to their destination safely and in a reasonable amount of time. A robust community engagement process can clarify what priorities are most important.

• Then use these community-driven goals to screen opportunities, programs and policy changes. Apply this lens to everything the agency does, including existing programs. Everything needs to be on the table and DEI needs to be incorporated into all our actions. In this way, the “business case” analysis and an equity analysis become one in the same.

• Find ways to build empathy and trusting relationships between agency staff and the people they serve. One-on-one interviews and other forms of engagement can provide context and help to interpret data, and inform what data is collected in the first place.

• Think long-term. Some investments are worthwhile but won’t pay back for a generation or more.

Ultimately the “business case” is only helpful if it opens discussions around the fundamental questions, such as: Whom do we serve? What are our goals? And, how does our community define success?

But too often the “business case” framing has been used in government to benefit those who already hold the most power. So let’s just skip it, get back to basics and recognize that equity is the business of government.

Fearocrats

Herocrats use their superpowers of courage, creativity and connection to adapt their organizations to serve the public better.

But not everyone who works in government is there to change the world. Some people started out there and then lost their OOMPH along the way. Others have other motivations for public service, like the solid pay and benefits.

Below, I’ve compiled a list that describes different types of “Fearocrats,” or people in public service who aren’t yet leading with courage, connection and creativity.

This isn’t about judging our co-workers; it’s about how we can more effectively work together toward shared goals. If we understand our co-workers values and motivations, we can find common ground to get things done together.

And in reality, everyone is complex. I believe that most people are doing the best they can with what they got. There is no purity test for being a Herocrat versus a Fearocrat. The point is that we all can use Herocrats Mindsets and Moves to activate our superpowers. (See the other blog posts for examples).

So here are some of the Fearocrats that I’ve encountered:

“If Only”

They are sympathetic to the cause, If Only…

They have many reasons for not acting, many valid. But what their excuses have in common are a lack of research, prodding and exploration. Barriers are taken as fact and passed down as organizational lore.

If only…

•We had the authority to do it

•The other governmental agency would just cooperate with us

•The elected officials would support it

“Doing-my-job-bob“

This Fearocrat can’t be bothered to exert additional energy or brainwaves beyond what is prescribed in their job description, and they read it narrowly.

“That’s not my job.”

“Good Ole Boy”

This Fearocrat has the power and they know it. They think of themselves as “good guys” and would like to help, as long as it doesn’t threaten their power or position.

“I’d like to help you but I would get into trouble with ______”

“Smarty pants”

They’ve seen the research, and they already know the right answer. They are more interested in looking smart and important than getting anything done.

“Well, actually…”

“the purist”

This Fearocrat is going to hold out for the ideal solution. They have never heard the saying “perfect is the enemy of the good,” or they just disagree with it.

“It’s not worth doing unless we ______”

“The wearycrat”

This person would like to support what you’re doing, they’re just tired and worn down. They need a break.

“We tried that 10 years ago and it failed. (SIGH)”

“The arch enemy”

This type of Fearocrat is extremely rare, but you will know when you encounter them. They are highly motivated against the cause. They will work against you in visible --or sometimes sneaky – ways.

“Sure, I’ll work with you on that!”
[cue lies, backstabbing, sabotage]

Those are some of the types of Fearocrats I’ve encountered in my career. Who did I miss?

Also:

Which ones do you most commonly encounter?

How have you successfully worked together with them?

How can we find common ground to get things done?

Herocrats in Action: Marlon Williams

Imagine you’re in an interview for your dream job: making pies at a top-notch bakery. You are excited because you know you have what it takes to be the best pie-maker they have ever seen.

The interviewer starts by asking how many years of experience you have making pies. “I’ve been making pies my whole life,” you answer. “How many of that was paid?” she asks. “Well,” you say, “It was all volunteer, but I’ve had a job making cakes for the last 5 years.”

The interviewer furrows her brow and writes a “0” on her paper next to the question.

“What is your training?” she asks.

You explain that you have a master’s degree in bakery management.

“What about pie engineering?” she asks.

“Nope.”

Again, she writes a 0.

Finally, she asks why someone with your background would want to be a pie-maker.

You explain that you grew up in a pie community – making pies, eating pies, selling pies. You’ve seen the joy on someone’s face who is eating a great pie, and the disappointment when the pie looked better than it tasted. You tell her it’s your personal mission to spread as much joy as possible in your community by delivering the best pies imaginable.

The interviewer folds her hands and smiles.

“That’s wonderful,” she says. “But what we’re really looking for is someone with a masters in pie engineering, 5-plus years paid experience making pies, and a passion for using technology to most efficiently make pies. Thanks for your time.”

You leave feeling dejected and undervalued.

Then you go home and eat a pie and feel much better.

~             ~             ~

So, what does this silly story have to do with public service? If you’ve ever worked in government, you might already be making the connection. Like the bakery, public agencies have a lot to learn about what makes a great employee.

Just like the bakery missed an opportunity to hire this highly valuable pie-maker, government agencies overlook people with relevant lived experiences or professional training in related but different fields. They are often so focused on deep expertise within a silo that they don’t see how someone’s slightly different background could be even more valuable to the organization and the community.

Marlon Williams believes that if government is to succeed in its mission – to serve the people – this mindset needs to change. I recently sat down with Marlon to discuss what makes a great Herocrat. Among other things, he shared:

“What I've come to believe is that Herocrats are people who live at the intersection of things, right? I think there is a danger to specialization because when you become too specialized in the work you do, the cliché of when you're really good at hammering things, everything looks like a nail. And anything that doesn't look like a nail, you either pretend that it is, or you don't even see it.”

Marlon’s own resume checks all the right boxes: Masters in Public Administration from New York University and 10+ years climbing the ranks at the City of New York. And he has some unconventional Herocrat credentials: he’s a dancer and a veteran Burning Man attendee (aka “burner”).

Marlon contains multitudes.

He’s appropriately sober about the structural racism inherent in our systems, and also upbeat about efforts to change it. Regarding the promising but still-emerging trend of government agencies approaching racial equity from a healing perspective, he says “everything starts little.”  

He tells me that the best compliment he ever received in that he “speaks frameworks like poetry.” I can second that compliment. As we chatted I was struck by his eloquence in describing his observations of the problems and potential solutions. Even the interview transcript reads like a carefully crafted essay.

And he’s much more than a good talker. I’ve met many academics and foundation folks who mesmerize with words but ultimately lack the practical experience to make them useful. Not so with Marlon. He came to his wisdom the hard way: through his years of experience learning and growing as a Herocrat working in government.

One of his hard-earned lessons is that bringing one’s full self to work is the way to go. But that wasn’t his thinking when he first started:

“I kind of took the messaging that is largely out there for all public servants that when you show up for work, you put your humanity in a box and leave that in a locker and then you go into a system of which you're a cog and you process paperwork and you try to serve the public good mostly by trying to exclude the public from the services that you're charged with providing.”

For Marlon, who is African American, this meant leaving his racial identify and experiences at the office door. In meetings in which staff discussed neighborhood data, he would hold back from sharing his insights from living in the predominately African American neighborhood because he felt it would threaten his authority. His position felt tenuous, like his “ability to stay in those rooms was contingent on me making people comfortable with [him], making them forget the fact [he] was a black individual.”

This didn’t stop colleagues from asking him to be the spokesperson for all black people. In one particularly painful incident a colleague turned to him and asked “why are black men not getting married? Marlon, do you have any insight on this?” In this moment he was asked to represent the people they were trying to “fix or change,” which carried the implication that he didn’t belong in the room.

Over time Marlon began to integrate his identities of African American man, community member, and city employee, and today he proudly proclaims that at heart he’ll always be a “black bureaucrat.” As he began to bring his whole self to work, he grew into his power and became even more effective, at one point organizing a network of public and nonprofit changemakers who changed the system of workforce development in the city.

Today, through his job at a foundation, Marlon travels around the country to inspire Herocrats who are reforming their agencies to better serve the people, with a focus on advancing racial equity. He urges them to reconnect with their humanity to transform their institutions. He’s interviewed racial equity directors and other changemakers to understand what makes them extraordinary.

The common thread?

They work at the intersections of issues, not necessarily deep down in them. They have often lived and worked in many different of communities. Many of them have changed careers in their lives. They’ve learned the rules of a system and found ways of innovating within it.  

In short, they’ve moved to the beat of more than one drummer. This allows them to make connections that others might miss.

Likewise, Marlon says the best parties are those in which highly skilled dancers from different genres come together and improvise to a new type of music. A similar dynamic happens in government when you bring together people from different disciplines, like finance and housing, then put them to work on a new question about medicine – effectively changing the tune and clearing the stage for new moves. When you’re used to rolling with questions about how a system can be more efficient, questions about how a system can enable longer life expectancy can use different muscles – with refreshing and surprisingly effective results.

Marlon finds that these kinds of cross-disciplinary conversations hold the most promise for rethinking our systems and better serving the people.

Here are some other ways Herocrats use their superpower of connection to move their work forward:

• Herocrats focus less on the cult of specialization, and more on the cult of getting things done with the community.

• Instead of giving employees plaques for their years of service, Herocrats give employee awards for the number of new partners they brought into the work.

• Instead of making a program so complicated that nobody else can run it, Herocrats aim to make their programs so collaborative that any number of co-workers can support and grow it no matter who might be heading it up.

• Herocrats evaluate themselves and each other on their ability to translate and adapt information, not to recite it.

• Herocrats talk less and listen more, and they support their co-workers to do the same.

To be clear, Marlon’s message applies far beyond the actions of government employees.

It’s about how the public sector defines “expertise.”

It’s about what counts as data, and whose perspectives matter in making decisions about how and where to invest public money.

Reflecting on his own journey, Marlon says:

“Why did I think that I had to minimize my voice as the only way to be on the agenda? And who do we allow to legitimize things, particularly for the government? Shouldn't it be the public and the entire public that legitimizes our actions, or legitimizes our strategy? But for too long only part of the public, generally white men, have been listened to and seen as having a legitimate voice. What I do in my work is to live closer to the shared value where everybody's voice matters in that conversation.”

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What’s a time in your life when a skill or experience from one part in your life made you more successful in another? What was it? How did you apply it? What happened?

How have you communicated the value of your background to someone who doesn’t initially see the connection? How would you handle the pie-maker interview?

How can government attract employees who have different types of expertise? How can it reward employees who are creative and make connections?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Herocrats in Action: Alex Jackson Nelson

Imagine you’re in a meeting at work. It’s the weekly one with all the managers and supervisors. This meeting is a prime influencer and the play that your organization puts on to perform its culture. To an outsider it might seem like a boring government drama, with some tired comedy mixed in. But this meeting serves real purposes: it communicates the organization’s values, delineates the hierarchy, rewards those who have behaved according to the norms and ignores or possibly punishes those who haven’t.

You know what your task is in this meeting, and you’re nervous. Last time you had the same item on the agenda and it didn’t go so well. You had suggested a change to the way the organization does business, but it didn’t take hold. You got a few head nods but no culture change. After talking with your boss, you decided to go for it again this week.

As you sit in your seat, waiting for your item, you feel like you don’t quite belong. You’ve gotten the message that as a new employee, your voice doesn’t matter as much. You don’t look like the other people around the table. Or perhaps you look like them on the outside, but you feel a chasm between yourself and them in terms of your values.

After failing to move the group to action last time, how are you going to approach your item this week? How can you make them see how important it is to make your proposed change? What tactics can you use to persuade them?

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Maybe you’ve never been in this exact situation, but we’ve all had similar experiences. If you’ve worked in government, you’re familiar with performative, formal meetings. Most of us have been at organizations in which we feel we don’t fit the mold of the typical employee. And if you’re a Herocrat, you’ve been in lots of situations in which you’re advocating for a change that others don’t see the need for. Yet.

Alex Jackson Nelson is someone with a lot of experience with all these things. In fact, the above story is his own, and later on I will tell you about what he decided to do, and what transpired afterwards.

But first there are some things you need to know about Alex. He’s a trainer, supervisor, licensed therapist, American Sign Language interpreter, and longtime equity advocate. He’s most definitely a Herocrat.

When I met him for coffee at 7am a few weeks ago, his passion was powerful, his analysis was shrewd, and his stories were funny. He claims he’s not a morning person, so I can only imagine what he’s like when he’s at the top of his game.

His track record gives us some clues. In just three years at Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS), he’s led nothing short of a cultural revolution in his corner of the sprawling agency of 7,500 workers. Alex is a training supervisor in the Child Safety and Permanency Division within Children and Family Services. Among other duties, the 20 people he oversees are responsible for training all new child protection workers across the state.

Prior to coming on as a state employee, Alex was a contractor to DHS, creating curricula and training employees on LGBTQ issues. After years of asking, his DHS contact finally convinced him to make the leap to full-time employee. As he put it, “it was time. I trusted my friend who said, ‘now is the time.’” And after years of working in nonprofits, the dental insurance also didn’t hurt.

As an employee, he was affected by the bureaucracy in ways he hadn’t been as a contractor, including having to wrestle slow, inefficient processes and outdated technology. But what really got him was the culture. As he describes it, “there’s something that occurs when you enter this building . . . All of the sudden you’re on a different planet.” Communication is uneven and sometimes nonexistent. One day he walked into the office to find out an entire team had been reassigned to him, even though he knew nothing about their work or the system they used. But he was up for the challenge!

And then there’s the hierarchy. While he understands how agency power structures work, he doesn’t buy into them too much. When it comes down to it, he’s not impressed by titles, he’s impressed by courageous leadership and action. And that is exactly what he has provided to his unit.

Alex’s Herocratic superpower is boldly being himself, which creates an environment in which others can do the same. Amid a stifling culture, he lets the full force of his personality shine. He keeps his eyes fresh, refusing to start seeing the negative aspects of the culture as “normal.” He stubbornly rejects mediocrity. He adapts to the system enough to get things done, while never compromising his values.

Among those values, his top priority is always people: the families that DHS serves and his own staff. He demonstrates this value to his staff by investing in relationships with them, understanding each person’s unique strengths and needs so that he can “meet them halfway.” As HR seemingly coaches supervisors to build cases for employee dismissal, Alex instead dives deeper into relationships to better understand the needs of his staff. He has learned that employee communication and learning styles are sometimes not understood or valued in the dominant culture. So together he and his supervisees make minor adjustments to their team practices, including how they structure meetings, which has had a positive impact on several employees.

Flying in the face of Minnesota Nice, his unit has instituted “radical candor”. This practice, which requires the foundation of strong relationships, has helped staff members to grow individually and as a team. He and his boss have created a more collaborative decision-making process. Staff are able to have autonomy in flexing time to promote work/life balance and they are trusted, and held accountable, to getting their work done.

A trainer and therapist at heart, Alex not only coaches his staff on how to deal with difficult situations, but he also role plays with them. Through this practice, they are fully rehearsed and ready to bring authenticity to those performative meetings.

And perhaps most revolutionary of all, Alex and his team have fun. They’ve infused a unicorn theme throughout their work, culminating recently in “Camp Unicorn,” a retreat in which they successfully revised a nine-day training curriculum as a team. About this experience, Alex said, “It was amazing. I can't even believe it. We did it. We met our goal, and everyone was together for five days in one giant room, working in small groups. And we had camp activities. It was so much fun!"

The culture change within his unit has taken a lot of hard work and will require diligence to maintain. But it is taking root and paying off. Staff morale and productivity are up. People like their jobs and each other. The folks who didn’t like this leadership style have left for other units or organizations. And everyone else is helping to build a new culture of openness, candor and true partnership, fostered by Alex’s Herocratic leadership.

More than that, they are creating a ripple effect. Given their role in training child protection workers across the state, one can imagine how the team’s openness and positivity will radiate out to the families that DHS serves.

The next frontier for Alex? The rest of DHS, of course! As he knows, it’s one thing to change the culture of the team you lead, and it’s quite another to affect the broader organizational culture that it operates within.

One tactic to spur a more open, inclusive culture in DHS has already begun to emerge. To a veteran social justice activist like Alex, it’s almost embarrassingly basic: institutionalizing the practice of sharing one’s pronouns during the introduction round at meetings when new people are present. This is something that has been commonplace in many professional settings for years. But not at DHS.

As straightforward as it might seem, it took a lot of courage on Alex’s part to get it started. Here’s where the opening story about the stuffy meeting comes in.

Alex first proposed the practice at one of the division’s weekly manager and supervisor meetings. He was nervous, and despite his best efforts at explaining it, the practice did not take hold. The next meeting, nothing had changed – people did not share their pronouns with the meeting’s visitors.

It wasn’t until Alex brought the item back another time, and changed his approach, that the practice started to take hold. This time Alex told his own story of being a transgender man, explaining why the practice of sharing one’s pronouns is important to him personally. Although he was already very much “out” at work, it was still uncomfortable for him to talk about this personal topic at that large, formal meeting, in which typically no one shares anything personal. But Alex said that’s what it took: “I was really being vulnerable and talking about what inspires me, and that inspired other people.”

Alex flexed his Herocratic superpower – boldly being himself – to make the change. It worked, and now because of it, he’s helped to create an environment where more people can be themselves.

Introducing one’s pronouns has taken off in his division. People are doing it without any prompting. Some employees have taken it on as a personal mission. One woman hung up a poster about it in her cubicle. It’s becoming a norm.

A recent community meeting was a hopeful example. When the round of introductions reached a community member who is a Native American woman, she paused, noting that she had not introduced herself with her pronouns before. And then, building on the exercise, she also shared her Ojibwe name and said “good morning” in Ojibwe, as she does in her community. It is these spontaneous, intersectional moments that makes Alex excited. As he says, “It's not about the pronouns. It's about bringing what you do in your community, and who you really are, to the table.”

Despite all this, Alex is uncomfortable talking about “the pronoun thing” as a success. To him, it seems wrong that it’s revolutionary. The distance between where DHS culture is and where it needs to be is crushing. And he doesn’t want people to think it’s enough to say their pronouns and carry on with business-as-usual.

At the same time, he recognizes that pronouns are serving as a gateway for change. Introducing one’s pronouns is a conspicuous sign that employees are using to say, “I’m open to learning and I’m open to change.” Other employees and community members see that signal and it changes the conversation. It is creating space and energy to have larger conversations about equity at DHS. As co-chair of the division’s new equity committee, Alex has plenty of ideas for future issues to take on.

Watch out world, because unicorns and pronouns are just the beginning. 

~ ~ ~

I’d love to hear from you about your experiences leading or taking part in organizational culture change!

What does Alex’s story bring up for you?

When have you chosen to boldly be yourself? Or have you witnessed a co-worker who does this?

How did it enable others to do the same?

Have you ever used the tactic of sharing why something is important to you personally as you made the case for it? How did it feel? What were the results?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Request for Herocrats (RFH) Update

Thanks to everyone who nominated a Herocrat to be interviewed! We had a great response and I look forward to digging into the nominations. A few fun facts about the nominees:

• 36% were from Minnesota; the rest were from all over the country.

• 70% work in local government.

• 85% were nominated by someone else; 15% were self-nominations.

If you were a nominator or nominee, stay tuned! I’ll be in touch.

Herocrats in Action: Amber McReynolds

In her 13 years at the Department of Elections for the City and County of Denver, including 7 as director, Amber McReynolds led an organizational transformation that resulted in dramatically improved voter turnout and lower costs. And in 2013 she was a key player in designing and passing a state law that has made Colorado a national model in elections. Her accomplishments are impressive, and she has a stack of national and international awards to prove it.

It would be easy to look at Amber’s list of achievements and write her off as some kind of superhuman Herocrat. And she certainly is. But after getting to know Amber, I also find her story to be relatable, and I think it contains lessons for anyone leading change from inside government. Here’s how she went from mid-level staffer in a dysfunctional environment to leading an award-winning department. 

Amber’s first interactions with the Elections Department – in the hiring process – were less than encouraging. In her first interview for the supervisory position for which she was hired, the man who would later become her boss asked her, “aren’t you a little young for this job?” (She was 26, with a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and several years of director-level experience.) A few days later, the then-director kept her waiting an hour and half for her second interview. Then, sitting at her disheveled desk, the director proceeded to apply lipstick and mascara while asking Amber questions.

Despite these red flags, Amber accepted the job offer out of her passion for elections and an adventurous spirit. Quickly she saw that her interview experiences were, indeed, indications of trouble in the organizational culture, which was plagued by in-fighting, lack of resources, outdated technology, negativity and resistance to change.

Amber spent the next two years learning, observing and taking notes about problems and potential solutions in a notebook. She wrote down everything, from the security protocol to the customer service interaction, to the data, to the metrics, to the inefficiencies with paper, to the number of forms they could eliminate if they streamlined processes. She also made small changes that were within her purview.  

Struggling with the culture, she made the case to attend a leadership training, highlighting how it would benefit the department and ultimately reflect well on the department’s leaders. They agreed, and the skills she gained helped her navigate the political environment. She also made connections with other employees throughout the city who were experiencing similar challenges, which bolstered her.

And then in the 2006 election there was a high-profile technology failure that led to a departmental shake-up. Several people were fired, including her supervisor (the one who had asked about her age in the interview). The debacle also led to a new governance model, including an elected clerk. During her first meeting with the clerk, she shared that she had been keeping a notebook of ideas for change for the past two years. The clerk was impressed.

With the support of the newly elected clerk and her credentials from the leadership training under her belt, Amber was promoted to an operational manager and then a few months later, to deputy director, where she served for over three years. A few years later, she became director. Over those ten plus years in leadership, she led not only innovations in election process and technology, but also internal culture change. Here are some lessons from her experience:

• Model what you want to see. Amber strived to use open communication and honesty with her staff. She encouraged her staff to do the same, inviting them to share both the good and the bad news. If she made a commitment, she worked hard to make sure she delivered on it. If she couldn’t deliver, she was transparent and authentic about why not.

• Create a flexible and professional work environment. Amber worked hard to institute flex schedules and a 4-day work week in the department. She also changed the performance evaluation process, making it an on-going, 12-month collaborative effort in which the employee and their manager work together on setting and monitoring goals (rather than an annual review).

• Prioritize learning. Amber worked hard to always be open to new ideas from her staff and community, and she told her staff that they always needed to be learning as well. She brought in the city’s Peak Academy to train the department’s employees in process improvement, which empowered them to identify and fix inefficiencies. She also encouraged staff to attend training that was relevant for their responsibilities or would bolster their skills. This included Election Center certifications, technical training such as GIS and data analytics, and other specialized training.

• Mentor and be mentored. Amber sought out opportunities to mentor interns, students and other young people she encountered. She saw this as part of the job, even though she did not always have strong mentorship from her own more-senior colleagues.

• Don’t treat everyone the same. Amber got to know her staff as individuals and tailored her approach according to their personality. She had the team do “Strengthsfinder,” which gave them a point of reference and shared language to collaborate with one another.

• Build trusting relationships with community members. With the newly elected clerk in 2007 and the new elections director, Amber helped to create an elections advisory committee comprised of community stakeholders from all walks of life and engaged it in the decision-making process. At first it was difficult for the department's staff to be vulnerable and open up its process to the committee. But over time they built strong relationships that helped to leverage big changes, such as the state election reform in 2013. Amber continued to expand this group and engage them in the operations of the department.

• Be customer-centric. Amber's motto is “election policy and administration must be about who votes, not who wins.” She engaged voters directly and the people who work with them at the counter to better understand what needs to changed and how. She also recognized that to be customer-centric, she had to build a positive environment to support employees, so that they can best serve the customers. She encouraged her team to make process changes and suggest improvements proactively.

Amber’s superpower is how she relates to people: building relationships with her team and empowering them to do awesome work, building relationships with community members, centering customers, providing vulnerable leadership and humane management. It’s her people orientation that drove the transformational change. As Amber reflected on the passage of Colorado’s voting reform law in 2013,

“It was really those relationships that I had built that set the stage for us to be able to work together to get something done that was literally, still today, one of the most comprehensive election forums in the country. It's made Colorado one of the top states to vote, one of the top states for turnout and engagement, and one of the most secure states to vote. All of those things we built over time, as a community that made a commitment to the voters and put voters first.”

Many of us are in a hurry to make change. Like Amber, we sometimes enter jobs and are struck by the brokenness of the system and the toxic workplace culture that enables it to persist. We want to fix it immediately. Amber saw that, pushed through it, worked her way up, and changed it over the course of 13 years. When she left in 2018 to be Executive Director of the National Vote at Home Institute, she had been at the Denver Elections Department a third of her lifetime! We can either be depressed at the slow rate of change or inspired that when we do the right things over a long period of time, change can happen. I choose to be inspired.