A long time ago in a land far, far away there was a medium sized state that had once been famous for its public works. As time went by the public works of this land deteriorated and the public works directors began to write articles and make speeches about this phenomenon. They had graphs and charts and everything. Clearly, they thought, someone would listen to them and give them more money to maintain the deteriorating works and build new ones. But people didn’t listen. They instead blamed the public works officials for spending too much money on the wrong things and being wasteful when they built or maintained the public works.
The public works directors started to think that something new and different had to be done. So they looked at old things that had been done and tried some of those. They noticed that the people running the state’s sewage works were having trouble disposing of the stuff. One solution to this problem was to market the “product” under a new name. The name chosen was bio-solids. It had a firm, organic ring to it and sounds much better than sludge. The name change stuck and a new era in sewage had begun.
The public works directors thought that if a new name for concentrated human waste could work then why not change the name of everything that was deteriorating. Public works had been around for years but a new name might result in better funding for the stuff. Some university professor probably came up with the term but the new name chosen for public works was “infrastructure”. The term has a nice solid feel to it and sounds sufficiently academic to gain more respect in, at least, those circles.
The new name didn’t work any better than the old name so each year the public works officials made the trip to their state capitol to lobby for more funds. They came up with all sorts of new and innovative ways to describe the old ways of doing business and tried to sell the newly labeled spending programs to their duly elected officials. It was a struggle.
One day a large group of public works officials left a legislative hearing at the same time. As they left the building, they saw an old disheveled man babbling on the capitol steps. He seemed harmless enough but he was clearly not coherent. One of the more kind-hearted public works officials came up to him and asked if he was okay. The old man was surprised that anyone cared and told the kind-hearted public works official so. About that time one of the other officials noticed that the old man looked familiar. He was clearly a mess but something about him reminded the official of someone who had been a public works director in the state many years ago. When he made this observation out loud a crowd began to gather. They knew that the old man had been a prominent public works director before he fell to this sorry condition. The crowd was now motivated by self interest. Perhaps if they could find out what led to the old man’s downfall, they could avoid having the same thing happen to them.
So they asked him what had happened. He didn’t give them a direct answer but this is what he said:
"I used to be like you. I used to try the same old ways harder and harder but it didn’t work so I gave up and retired. After I retired, I had time to look at what I’d done and what worked and what didn’t work. I noticed that my water and sewer and storm water utilities worked pretty well and didn’t have the same problems that my transportation system was having. If I needed more money to maintain my utilities, I had a way to justify it and get the job done. But I didn’t have a street utility and was forced to beg for what I needed to fund my transportation system."
When he said this, some of the people in the crowd started to leave muttering to each other that the crazy old man was talking about street utilities and we know that trick won’t work. What they missed was what he said next.
He went on addressing the remaining crowd with his observations on utilities. He said that utilities were different from general tax funded services. He said that the key difference was the ability to set aside reserves to replace worn out assets. You can’t do that with transportation funds because the public doesn’t trust you enough to give you more money than you need right now. So, he said, the key problem is regaining the public trust so that they’ll allow you to spend the money they give you using your best managerial judgment. At this point more of the crowd drifted away muttering about impossible dreams.
What they missed was what he said and did next. He said that we kept doing what we’ve been doing because it’s what we know how to do. What we don’t know how to do very well is strategize. He started to draw on the sidewalk with some chalk he found at a crime scene earlier in the day. He drew a line on the pavement and said, “this line represents the decision you want to have made by someone.” What you want is for someone to allow you to set aside reserves for worn out assets and other things. But the key is to find out who makes that decision. You all just came from the building behind me which means you assume that the legislature is the decision maker. But I submit to you that the citizens of this state are the real decision makers. They can pass initiatives to tell you how you can spend their money and they elect the legislators. It’s easier to talk to the legislators because there are fewer of them but the citizens have the ability to reverse their decision if they don’t like it. Because you’ve been trying to sell your way of doing things to the legislature for so long, you’ve forgotten who pays the bills. At this point a few more people left muttering something about the nerve of that old derelict telling us we don’t know our customers.
What they missed was what he did next. He drew some names and some arrows on one side of the line and labeled them pro and on the other side another column of arrows labeled con. He said that you need to take inventory of what support you have right now. Who supports the idea of giving you more authority and who’s against it. He said talk radio is generally against your idea and will tell the world about. Some liberal talk radio shows might support you. Liberal Democrats might support you and conservative Republicans will oppose you. He continued to draw arrows with anti-government citizens on one side and pro-government citizens on the other side. He also could have drawn some other arrows and but that the list was not complete but only for illustrative purposes. At this point he called there attention to the size of the arrows. The bigger forces were drawn as larger arrows. He also pointed out that the groups in favor had all the smaller arrows. Clearly a strategy needed to be developed to either eliminate the strength of the large “anti” arrows or make them irrelevant. He said that the real value of the force diagram is that it allows you to clearly see where you need to place your efforts. It doesn’t give you the strategy. It gives you the inventory. The next step is to take the information on the force diagram and develop a plan to make the large arrows smaller and the small arrows larger. At this point, he lost more of his audience. As they left, they muttered something about all the time they just wasted listening to this impractical old fool.
What they missed was what he said next. He said that he’d spent the last few years talking to anyone who would listen about his “new” approach to the problem. He’d lost his health in the process and found that shaving and bathing took too much of his time and usually he just forgot about it. There were still a few people left at this point and he told them that developing those strategies will be hard because it’s not the way we usually think and change can be hard. Learning new things can also be hard and he didn’t have all the answers and didn’t know anyone who did. He sat down to rest and buried his head in his hands as he contemplated the hard work ahead with the few people left listening to him. When he looked up, they were all gone. His shoulders sank and the chalk hung in his hand. It was after 5 o’clock and a security guard saw him standing there and called for backup. They approached him and asked him about the graffiti he had drawn on the sacred pavement of the legislative grounds. All he said was, “we can change the world”.
They hauled him away. Clearly this was crazy talk.
As usual, comments or questions can be fielded at ostrowj@pacifier.com.