The KUPMC Blog

The Green Tape Doctor

The Green Tape Doctor is Leisha DeHart-Davis, an associate professor in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. She conducts research on effective organizational rules, which she refers to as “green tape.” Feel free to email her with your questions on creating effective rules for public sector organizations (lddavis@ku.edu).

Is It Time To Write a Rule?

I once interviewed a public manager who told me, “I decide to write a rule when I’m becoming stressed from people coming into my office with the same issue or problem.”

The manager’s comment suggests that rules can solve workplace problems. But when to write a rule is sometimes unclear: on the one hand, managers need administrative capacity to empower action. On the other hand, they do not want excessive bureaucracy in their workplaces.

How do you know when a written rule is needed? Here are three questions to ask:

** What is the worst that will happen if you do not write a rule? Answering this question is a good way to figure out whether a workplace issue is important enough to write a rule. If the worst-case scenario is likely and imposes unacceptable costs on organizational integrity or operational effectiveness, then a written rule may be in order.

** Are you clear on rule objectives? Written rules are well-suited to clear objectives. Even general objectives – reduced personal Internet usage or increased employee professionalism – greatly simplify rule-writing and help focus the rule on what you are trying to accomplish.

** What is causing the issue? Written rules are like the practice of medicine: prescribing the remedy requires diagnosing the ailment. Take time to investigate the causes of a workplace issue before formulating the rule. If the issue pertains to depleted sick leave, talk to employees to find out what’s going on. Written rules are more effective when designed with root causes in mind.

If the worst-case scenario is unacceptable and if you have clear rule objectives and a good grasp on root causes, then your workplace problem is a good candidate for a written rule.

Is there a workplace issue that you solved using a written rule?  What was it?

When the Green Tape Doctor returns to our blog, look for advice on creating logical rules.

This special report from American City & County highlights an exciting project we’ve been working on with the City of Olathe so we’re reposting here.

Olathe, Kan., builds a collaborative culture to improve service delivery
By Jeff Johnston

Nowhere is the image of a silo more familiar than in America’s heartland, where the tall structures that contain harvested grain function as essential hubs in the spokes of agricultural commerce. But, silos take on negative connotations when they describe government departments that function independently with limited interaction or coordination with other organizations.

As resources become more scarce and service demands increase, many cities and counties are breaking down their organizational silos to foster cooperation and collaboration among their internal departments. By coordinating the use of limited funds, equipment and staff, cities and counties are finding new efficiencies and maintaining or improving their service levels.

Olathe, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, recently embarked on a journey to eliminate the organizational silos between its departments and build a culture of collaboration instead. Knowing that they could not just tell departments to work together, City Manager Michael Wilkes and Assistant City Manager Susan Sherman sought to develop department heads’ collaborative leadership skills and recognize those skills in their performance reviews. The city worked with the University of Kansas Public Management Center and the School of Public Affairs and Administration to develop a supervisory training program for its managers that, among other things, included practical exercises designed to teach supervisors the skills they need to be effective collaborators. Researchers at the university are measuring the effectiveness of the training program and tracking the city’s transition to its new culture.

A ‘Shift in Thinking’
For the last decade, Olathe has been on a quest to deliver exceptional public service and has been measuring its progress toward that goal with annual citizen surveys. The surveys, administered by locally based ETC Institute, gauge residents’ satisfaction with city services, including emergency services, parks, water and wastewater, street and building maintenance, and communication. As all departments have been working toward improving their survey results, however, each became inwardly focused on their individual operations. “We were doing so much as a rapidly growing city, a lot of people were just focused on what they did and not what other departments were doing,” Sherman says.

Although collaboration was essential for certain tasks, such as emergency planning and response, elsewhere it was not pursued. “Everybody is so task-oriented, and collaboration really takes time,” Wilkes says. “We get so focused on the task and accomplishing the task and checking the stuff off the list that we don’t look for those opportunities to collaborate with others.”

So, when Wilkes and Sherman set out to create a new supervisory training program for city managers, they wanted to incorporate collaborative leadership skills training into the program. “We’re not going to get [all] the people that we’d like to have; we’re not going to have all the resources that we need for all of the stuff that we need; so, we’re going to have to figure out different ways to deal with and address our problems, and collaboration and innovation are the ways we’re going to get there,” Wilkes says.

The city began working with the University of Kansas Public Management Center to develop the program that would start with the city’s executive leadership team and, over one year, bring together managers and assistant managers in groups representing each department for three days of training. The main goals of the program were to link the supervisors’ responsibilities to the city’s stated vision, values and mission, and to teach collaborative leadership skills.

“When we talk about collaborative leadership, what we’re really talking about is that we have to learn to align very different goals at times; we have to coordinate multiple partners; we have to learn to share information effectively; we have to learn to work through conflict so that we can achieve the best possible solution to these pressing public problems that are not isolated to any one sector,” says Heather Getha-Taylor, assistant professor in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. “We’ve realized that producing public value is best achieved when we overcome the fragmented and siloed approaches – when we can take an integrated approach and solve problems using expertise, resources and information that spans boundaries.”

The training program also aimed to change the mindset of department supervisors who were focused on being direct service providers and building up the capacity of their departments internally. “It represents a need for a shift in thinking,” says Jonathan Morris, instructor and program manager for the University of Kansas Public Management Center. “If local government has traditionally been the direct service provider, what we hope to address in this training is to get the leaders and supervisors to rethink their role and see themselves instead as the convener of multiple providers, as the collaborator of public and private entities or intergovernmental collaboration. So, as you begin to rethink that role, it requires new skill sets.”

A small group setting and specific exercises created an environment that encouraged collaboration. After the three-day training, participants met with their small groups independently to discuss how they were putting their new skills into practice and making progress toward a collaborative project with another department. Also, collaboration was added to the performance goals of managers, who needed to show how they were engaging other departments, Wilkes says.

Collaboration Pays Off
To measure the results of the training program, University of Kansas researchers are conducting a long-term survey of city supervisors. Participants not only report their immediate reactions to the training, they must report on changes in their behavior and results over time.

A final report is due in October, but preliminary survey results show that the training has been successful in showing managers the value of collaboration. “Those who participated in the training perceive collaboration as key to getting their jobs done, and they agree that collaboration is worth the extra effort involved,” Getha-Taylor says. “We see a strong positive relationship between participation in the training and self-awareness, listening and communication skills. Those are the key collaboration skills that we need to be developing.”

In practice, collaborative efforts paid off for Olathe last winter when it experienced some of the heaviest snowfall and winter storms in recent history. In preparing its snow response plan last year, the streets department for the first time worked with the fire and police departments to develop a snow-clearing strategy. Previously, the streets department created its plan independently and had divided its crews to focus on different types of roads.

By working with the emergency departments to prioritize route clearing and by strategically directing plows during and after storms, the city improved its performance even during one of its worst winters. “We were good at snowplowing before, but we were outstanding in the winter of 2010-2011,” Wilkes says. “We had more snow than we usually have in Kansas City, and we got better results from our customers than ever before. And, I think it was because we worked together in a way that we had never worked together before.”

Although collaborative efforts might take more time and the outcomes might not be clear at the beginning, Wilkes and Sherman have seen that the risks are worth the effort. To break down the silos, they say local government leaders need to brush up on a few skills and then arm themselves with a little courage to take the first steps. “The first thing to do is to jump in and try something. Take a little risk and try something you haven’t done before, and hope it is successful,” Sherman says. “But if it isn’t, learn from it and try again, and try again.”

Jeff Johnston is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.

In an interview in the New York Times, Peggy Klaus, author of The Hard Truth About Soft Skills, was asked “What exactly are soft skills and why should we be worried about them?”

She replied that “the hard skills are the technical expertise you need to get the job done. The soft skills are really everything else — competencies that go from self-awareness to one’s attitude to managing one’s career to handling critics, not taking things personally, taking risks, getting along with people and many, many more.”

Basically, soft skills are those that enable you to put your technical skills productively to work.

Can you resolve a conflict with a co-worker about a work plan or about cubicle distractions? Can you sell the value of your approach to your boss and teammates? Can you write an email that gets the results you need? Can you challenge someone’s idea in a productive rather than destructive way?

Then celebrate and thank your soft skills. And as you mentally make note of everyone you work with whose lack of soft skills makes them unpleasant–or even unbearable–to work with, the pivotal role of soft skills in the workplace becomes very visible. Without the soft skills to support the technical abilities of a staff, projects simply don’t get very far. Even the US Department of Labor sees soft skills as “the competitive edge.”

This is a hugely important lesson that most of us have learned the hard way as we struggle to work with those who make everyone around them miserable. But having learned this lesson, make it work for you: make sure your hiring processes are designed to measure soft skills as well as hard skills.

There are some terrific web resources to help you do this. The Soft Skills blog offers questions divided by skill area to ask about. And if you’ve ever heard of or used behavioral-based interviewing, the focus is on soft skills. Here’s one good explanation and resource. And here’s another.

Meanwhile, don’t pass up any opportunities to improve your own soft skills. They’ll be key to moving into the next job you desire, and in the interim your co-workers will thank you for it.

“No service without proper ID!”

“No Outside Food or Drink.”

“DO NOT DISPOSE HYGIENE PRODUCTS IN THE TOILET.”

“Absolutely NO PARKING in this area.”

All government offices are filled with people whose work is, ultimately, about serving the public. But some offices serve the public more directly by providing direct service to customers who physically walk in the door.

Unfortunately, not all of the signs posted to communicate with those customers are written with the customer in mind. Instead, many are phrased in ways that highlight frustrations of staff.

While this is true of many businesses, too–just think of all the “NO” signs on the entry doors to some establishments–in those cases the customer is free to go to a competitor. In the case of government offices, the customer probably has no choice but to use that office and that service. When we greet people with signs that essentially say “here’s what we expect that you’ll do wrong and we find it very annoying so don’t,” there’s a huge missed opportunity.

Instead, we could write our signs in a reader-centered way to create a more positive impression of government services and the staff that provide them. Invite your customers to positively participate in what your agency is trying to accomplish.

“Please have your ID available so that we can assist you today. Acceptable ID includes…”

“Please help us maintain the plumbing by not disposing of hygiene products in the toilet.”

“Your patronage of our concession stand helps pay for pool maintenance.”

“We’re sorry you have to wait in line. If you use this time to make sure you have these 3 forms prepared, it’ll help us serve you more quickly.”

“Public parking is available behind the building.”

Once you’ve assessed the messages you’re sending to the public, you might also review the signs posted for staff and see whether some new wording might improve the tone of the workplace.

Have you ever been struck by a sudden bolt of insight that rearranging what’s stored where in the kitchen cupboards would better serve the way you actually use the kitchen? So you get out the step stool and started to pull things down, which leads to the realization that the cupboards need to be cleaned.

There are two main options at this point: put stuff back where it was since this is a larger job than you thought, or embrace the process and forge ahead because you anticipate the improved outcome being worth the hassle.

Even for those of us who opt to forge ahead, we’ll still find ourselves having to adjust to things being in new places. No matter how much better the new system, one that we came up with on our own, will function, we still struggle to unlearn old habits.

So if change is this hard when it’s our own idea, is it any wonder that most of us resist change in our organizations when the change wasn’t of our making and where our input may not have been considered?

Keep this in mind when you’re working to implement a change in a process or structure. No matter how beneficial the new arrangement may be, you’re still asking folks to give up something their comfortable with. Even if the current process is something they complain about, your colleagues at least know how to work the process. This gives them an experience of competence.

Change means giving up some of that competence so it brings on insecurity. To help the people around you move past the resistance they may have to a change, acknowledge what they’re giving up and make sure they’ll have the tools and resources they’ll need to become competent in the new system.

And be patient. Even if the mixer is now in the cupboard directly in front of where you’re standing, you’re still likely to go try to retrieve if from it’s old, inconvenient location multiple times before the benefits of the new arrangement work their way into your muscle memory.

What helps you embrace change?

Is there a more often longed-for yet less often achieved workplace goal than bringing change to one’s organization?

The desire to shift the way things are in some large or small way likely reflects an innate creativity that’s part of the human condition. We long to leave our mark, and we can usually imagine some change in the conditions around us that would allow us to more effectively do so.

And yet, we simultaneously resist – consciously or not – many of the efforts those around us make to bring about organizational changes. What’s up with that?

Fortunately, many able thinkers have taken on this question. Here are a few resources for those interested in pondering this conundrum and putting their own change propositions in the best position for success.

First, a talk: on Wednesday this week (3/2), Dr. Marlesa Roney will present a talk on Effective Organizational Change at the KU Edwards Campus in Overland Park. Click here for details.

Second, a fabulous post from Heidi Grant Halvorson’s “Succeed” blog on the tendency to believe that whatever is older is better and the way this interferes with embracing the new.

Third, from Psychology Today: a leadership researcher and consultant’s look at the psychology behind habits and what managers need to know about brain research to help them work effectively with staff to overcome old habits and embrace the new.

And finally, a new book from ASTD called The Change Book, which invites us to “change the way you think about change.” Looks promising.

What tips can you share about successful organizational change projects you’ve observed or implemented?

I remember being puzzled when I learned about plate tectonics in elementary school. The various continental and oceanic plates, I was told, moved incredibly slowly–only a few inches a year. Yet somehow this generated enough pressure and force, as they pushed into one another, that it caused explosive events like volcano eruptions.

I could vaguely grasp the idea of that much pressure–I mean, thinking of something the size of the continent moving, it made sense to me that there’d be some friction and force there.

What I struggled with was the idea that only a few inches of movement a year could result in changes significant enough to yield such explosions. And yet, over time, those inches add up to wildly significant change.

I thought of this today as I read Seth Godin’s blog post “Resilience and the Incredible Power of Slow Change.”

Most people I know seem to be frustrated with the slow pace of change in their organizations. And yet most of us, unfortunately, have plenty of experience with change processes that were implemented badly–often too quickly without enough information about the value of the change–and died on the vine.

His post reminds us about the shocking amount of change that actually does occur when we step back and look at the big picture. He has a point. I mean, whatever one’s politics, it’s amazing to think of the violence that met efforts to integrate lunch counters less than 50 years ago while we now have an African American man in the office of President.

Or, for a more mundane example, how quaint those old-fashioned toy telephones on wheels now look given that most kids will never encounter a rotary dial.

Seth suggests that we “Don’t worry about what happened yesterday (or five minutes ago). Focus on what happened ten years ago and think about what you can do that will make a huge impact in six months.”

What changes do you see if you look back 10 years? What can you do to influence the direction of the tectonic plates’ movement in your organization?

There are big failures like the Deep Water Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fortunately, however, most failures don’t have stakes that are quite so high. In a recent post on Lifehacker, Jason Fitzpatrick suggests we bear that in mind and “embrace the inevitability of failure” to achieve higher levels of workplace productivity.

He notes that “when you abandon the stance that the mistake-maker is flawed and embrace the stance that mistakes are part of human cognition and everyone will make them, you can focus on productivity instead of scapegoating the mistake makers.”

This rings so true that I can feel myself breathe a bit easier just reading his words. I think of my experiences working with college writers to improve their papers at the KU Writing Center.

A lot of students who knew about our services for their entire time at KU would spend multiple semesters avoiding us before finally coming in. I absolutely understand this–coming in means admitting that one’s writing isn’t perfect.

Of course, the Writing Center staff approached this as a given and believed that no one’s writing–even (especially) our own–was perfect. Starting with this assumption allows space for improvement.

We didn’t blame the writers for imperfect grammar or disorganized drafts; we assessed what they needed and offered some assistance to make the paper better. As long as they were making an effort, we were right there with them to offer support and guidance.

What if we bring this idea into the workplace?

As long as we’ve put a good-faith effort into doing our best, we could embrace the inevitability that all of us will fall short sometimes. This would allow us to direct our attention to dusting ourselves off and moving forward with new information rather than stalling out on the self-flagellation that can accompany failure.

Are there flops and failures that have contributed productively to your skills and perspectives today? Have you helped your colleagues or your kids navigate through a failure and watched them come out stronger on the other side? Share your stories in the comments to helps us all embrace the possibility of failure and dive in anyway.

Many experienced public sector managers recognize that there’s something important in all the hype about Facebook and Twitter and the need for agencies and governments to embrace their use. But, for those who are not users of social media themselves, it can be a struggle to understand exactly why it matters as much as it seems to.

Fortunately, The Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania recently published a fabulously thoughtful and interesting report on social media and local government that offers as good an explanation as I’ve ever seen about what social media do that’s different that might help you or others in your agency truly get your brain around the value of Facebook and Twitter.

A very useful suggestion is that we should stop worrying about making sense of terms like “web 2.0″ and instead think of social media as communications channels that have “a different set of rules and habits than traditional types of news and broadcast media.” From here the report outlines three points that are at the heart of these different rules and habits.

1) Social media are typically interactive rather than authoritative. Social media like Facebook and Twitter facilitate conversations rather than one-way announcements. Much of the value is provided by users who respond and recommend them, often in near real-time. A city’s Facebook post about bad potholes after a winter storm, for example, might be enhanced by user comments that detail where, exactly, the worst ones are so that other drivers can watch out and so that the city knows to fix them.

2) Social media are personal rather than institutional. Users exercise great discretion over their personal “channel”,
subscribing to only the information they want and ignoring the rest.

3) Social media tend to “narrowcast” through networks rather than broadcast. The Fel Report notes that even a large government social media audience is small by the standards of radio or television broadcasts (the City of Topeka, for example, has 120,000 residents and only 550 followers on Twitter). But, importantly, “social media facilitate a more voluntary, interactive, and symmetrical relationship between an agency and its audience, and the right message can travel extremely quickly through these networks to the general public.”

Far more quickly, it should be noted, than an announcement posted on a city’s website. A “tweet” or a Facebook update is pushed out to interested users who, if they find it relevant or worthwhile, will “share” it with their friends or followers on these sites, some of whom may then share it with theirs. This is in stark contrast with an announcement to an agency website that will only be found by those who happen to visit the website while the announcement is posted.

This also contrasts with “e-government” portal sites for the same reason: users are required to visit the portal in order for it to be useful. With social media sites, however, I get updates from my city as I catch up on new photos posted by my sister and what’s happening with my friends from college.

For professionals used to drawing a pretty thick line between their personal, professional, and public lives, this can be a new and peculiar concept. For many of the citizens you’re hoping to engage, however, nothing could be more natural. And it’s this fact that makes social media so important as a communication channel.

What benefits has your organization seen from using social media?

A report on the Business Wire indicates that, according to MetLife’s 8th annual Employee Benefits Trends Study, 68% of employees said that over the last 12 months they were affected by increased feelings of job insecurity, a decrease in the quality of their work, an increase in their workload or being distracted at work because of financial worries.

The challenge, of course, is that managers are asking more from their employees because of the very conditions that are causing these stresses.

What would help? The MetLife report suggests that providing access to health and wellness programs, work/life balance programs, and financial advice and guidance in the workplace could be a win-win as approximately eight out of ten employees say that they believe their productivity would be favorably impacted by these programs:

* 77% of employees said financial advice and guidance programs would improve their productivity.
* 81% said that health and wellness programs would improve their productivity.
* 82% stated that work/life balance programs would improve their productivity.

Many employers have yet to act on this information, however, even when they recognize the value of such wellness programs. Read more.