Seven Reasons Local Government is F***ed - And Seven Simple Nudges To Make Them More Functional
“When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.” David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International, has a first-hand experience with the flaws of local government. In this essay, he suggests seven nudges to make communities work better.
By David Engwicht, CEO of Creative Communities International
Fourteen years ago I took a job working inside Local Government in a small rural city. I was mystified by how the entire system worked - or to be more accurate, didn’t work.
This experience gave me a first-hand insight into why local government, as a system, is f***ed.
When it comes to local government, there are some really big elephants in the room which no one is willing to name or discuss. We tip-toe around them, and pretend they don’t exist because we really want to believe that local government is “democracy at work at the community level” and we turn a blind eye to any evidence to the contrary.
So lets start with seven of those deep flaws and then discuss some simple, transformative “nudges” (like putting kids’ hats in all the meeting rooms). These initiatives can be implemented within the current structures of local government. (I’m a realist, and there is no way we can scrap the existing structure and start from scratch.)
1. Two arms - a marriage made in hell
Local government has two independent but connected arms: political and administration. The administration gives fearless advice to the elected officials who then make a decision. The administration then action that decision, even if they disagree with it.
Well that’s the dream.
In reality, this relationship between elected officials and the administration is more like a deeply dysfunctional marriage in which both parties engage in manipulation, coercion, and even outright bullying.
On any given day, the admin staff are looking at the elected officials saying to themselves, “How the hell did he/she get elected? They are a complete novice who knows nothing about the area in which I’m an expert. How can I convince them to adopt the policy I know is best for the community?”
At the same time, the elected officials are looking at the staff and saying to themselves, “I need to get X done in my community if I’m to get reelected. Why is the bureaucracy standing in my way? How do I convince them to make X happen for me?”
There is often a high level of disdain in the relationship. The admin staff believe they have superior knowledge, and are not driven by ego. The elected officials often see the bureaucrats as stick-in-the-mud, risk-adverse, pencil pushers.
The problem is that both parties in this marriage never sit down and discuss the dysfunctional nature of the relationship. They put on a show to the world that they are a rock-solid united team. But behind closed doors, the toxic nature of the relationship is tearing the family apart.
2. How the “board of directors” is selected
Let’s unpack some of the reasons this relationship is so dysfunctional.
The elected officials are, in effect, the “board of directors” guiding the corporate ship. But how are they selected? Well certainly not on the basis of expertise in running a city, or understanding of community development, or how to build social capital. We do it by popular vote.
The result is that we often end up with a board of directors composed of:
• Famous nay-sayers who gained a public profile fighting something. Their underlying predisposition is to say no to everything. Any change frightens them.
• Single issue people who know a lot about their issue, but little outside this area.
• Axe-grinders who have a pet project they have been pushing for the past twenty years.
• People who have gained a public profile in a completely unrelated field - e.g. sports star or media personality.
• Utopian dreamers.
• Political hacks (where party politics has become part of the equation).
• People who need reassurance that they are loved.
I am in no way implying that ALL elected officials fall into these categories. There are some who have earned their profile through genuine service to the community. But the danger of the existing structure is that we too often end up with an unqualified board of directors, some of whom are driven by deep psychological needs.
This further inflames the toxic state of the marriage.
3. Risk-adverse nature of admin
So it’s no secret that bureaucracies attract people with a certain psychological profile. They love certainty, and hate risk. And there is nothing more risky than making a decision that potentially impacts the lives of hundreds or thousands of residents. So their are some standard tactics for looking competent, without taking the risk of making a decision or actually doing anything.
• Commission another study
• Better still, have a plan to make a plan
• Organise another meeting
• Organise some community consultation.
Again, not all people working for LGAs fall into this category. But I have observed that the people who actually make things happen inside LGAs, are the staff who do not see themselves working for the organisation in two or three years time. This frees them from the fear of making the wrong decision. They’ll be gone in the near future, so if it happens a little sooner, so what? However, these people are the minority, and the culture of local government avoids risk which means looking productive without producing anything. And that drives the elected officials bananas.
“I have observed that the people who actually make things happen inside LGAs, are the staff who do not see themselves working for the organisation in two or three years time.”
4. Master planning addiction
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, cities and things were made in a much more agile and iterative way. Post the Industrial Revolution, master-planing took over the more agile approach. To design a car that could be mass produced you had to design everything in advance, right down to the last screw. This master-planning mentality crept into every aspect of our lives, including how we designed our towns and cities. This required plans with every minute detail fleshed out. We had to be able to foresee every opportunity and potential problem that lay just beyond the horizon.
So we needed lots of consultants (who had this X ray vision) and lots of community consultation. The more information we could gather, the more likely we would get the plan right.
But there’s never enough information (particularly for those addicted to certainty). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with Council staff that goes something like this: “Well we can’t finalise the street makeover plan until the cycling strategy has been completed.” You ask when that will be done and they will tell you that it can’t be finished until the engineering department decides how to solve the storm-water problem. Ask when the engineering department will have this done, and they will say the engineers are waiting for the cycling strategy and the street design to be finalised.
Master-planning only works in a relatively stable environment. In an ever-changing world (such as a city or town) it is impossible to master-plan most things because the ground is constantly changing under your feet.
We treat the city like a giant machine that can be master planned.
Yes, somethings have to be master-planned, like the location of a rail line. But when this mentality seeps into the way we try, for example, to revitalise a town centre it becomes a recipe for paralysis.
Master-planning feeds wonderfully into the psychological need of the admin staff (and some of the elected officials). It is a very convenient way to look like you’re taking action when you are really procrastinating making a decision or acting on that decision.
“Yes, somethings have to be master-planned, like the location of a rail line. But when this mentality seeps into the way we try, for example, to revitalise a town centre it becomes a recipe for paralysis.”
5. Shallow thinking about risk
LGAs are in the grip of some kind of group-think about risk: “Risk leads to accidents and accidents lead to law suits. Therefore it is our job to remove risk.” But this is faulty logic on two fronts.
Firstly, all risks contain a reward. Remove risk and you remove the reward - read, impoverish some section of the community. You deal with risk, not by removing it, but by asking, “how can we increase the benefits while minimising the risk?”
Many of the things we do in the name of safety make environments less safe. We treat risk too simplistically.
Secondly, the perception of risk causes people to act with more caution (technically called “Risk Compensation Theory”). In other words, if I’m driving my car down the street and there is a high fence between me and the pedestrians on the footpath, I will drive faster because I perceive that the city engineers have reduced the risk of a pedestrian running out in front of me. However, if a drunk 18 year old jumps the fence, I’m not in the right head space to deal with this unexpected event. Because the engineer has seduced me into driving faster by reducing perceived risk, I seriously maim or kill this person rather than cause minor injuries.
Taken to its extreme, this group-think about risk will result in removing all the branches from all the trees. It is extremely dangerous to climb out on the twigs at the top of the tree.
6. The customer model
Most LGAs have officially moved to a customer model. Residents of the town or city are treated as “customers” and the job of both arms of the LGA is to deliver a product to the customers – the best quality of life possible for the rates and taxes paid by the customer.
However, this model is sending our LGAs broke and results in social-capital bankruptcy.
In the past, towns and cities were based on a “citizen model” – each citizen makes their contribution to civic and economic life and as a result, everyone is richer than if they acted alone. It’s a kind of magic pudding where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Civic richness is not something that can be manufactured as a product that can be sold to consumers.
The customer model encourages residents to outsource their civic responsibility to the LGA. I once worked with a group of residents in Auckland, designing a traffic calming scheme for their street. Council had allocated $250K for the works. However, when I asked the residents in the street why they had spent years lobbing Council for traffic calming, they told me it was to stop the youth from doing donuts in the street at 2am. When I asked how many of these youth there were, an elderly man said, “Five, and I can tell you where every single one of them lives.” Now under the citizen model, these residents would have knocked on those five doors and negotiated a peace deal with the youth (at zero cost to the LGA). But under the customer model, they outsourced this to the LGA at a cost of $250K – which ultimately came out of their pocket. By the way, this equated to $50k per young person.
When you analyse what a LGA is spending its energy and time on, most of it is accepting responsibility for fixing problems that citizens should be fixing themselves. However, this outsourcing of civic responsibility is a two way street. By adopting a customer model, the LGA puts systems in place which dis-empower citizens and turns them into passive consumers. These passive consumers demand more and more from the magic pudding which is gradually shrinking. And if they choke on a mouthful, they do what any consumer would do – sue.
“The customer model encourages residents to outsource their civic responsibility to the LGA.”
7. Solutions-focused group think
As the magic pudding shrinks and the quality of civic life declines, residents and LGA officials start searching for silver bullets, which results in a solutions-focused group think.
Early in my career, I visited Traverse City in the USA. They had just been involved in a three year battle over a multi-story car park downtown. A group of residents had opposed the development and gained enough signatures to force a citizen referendum in which the original decision to proceed was overturned. For the three years that this all-consuming battle raged, decision-making in Traverse City was paralysed.
What went wrong? Well, downtown Traverse City was in decline. One retailer thought the solution to this was more car parking. They shared this thought with others. Soon the entire group of retailers believed this was the solution to boosting their businesses, and they began lobbying the LGA for more parking. The city officials bought into this group-think, and commissioned a study, which showed, that according to the computer modeling, there was indeed a shortage of parking. (Come on, what else was it going to say? The consultants who programmed it knew exactly what answer the city wanted.)
At no point did anyone in the city say to the businesses, “But why do you need more car parking?” If they had drilled down by asking “But Why?” enough times, they would have discovered that the real problem that the retailers were trying to solve was how to get more money in the till, not how to get more cars downtown. Somehow the businesses had made an unconscious conceptual leap that having more parking would magically increase their turnover.
Not asking this one simple question resulted in the city wasting three years of creative energy. And if they had built the multi-story car park, they would have wasted millions of dollars on a silver bullet that would not have improved the bottom line for a single business.
So much of the energy burned by LGAs is on group-think solutions to problems that have never been properly defined. In some cases I would say it is as high as 99%.
Seven simple nudges
I’m a realist. The LGA structures we have today are not likely to change. In any case, regardless of how we restructured them, they would soon fall into the same traps as I’ve outlined above. The defects are not caused by the system but rather by human psychology and cultural norms. I am a great believer that change happens through “triggers” and “nudges”, not revolutions. Nudges are achievable. Revolutions are pipe-dreams. However, nudges can trigger revolutions.
Nudge 1: Rules for the Fight Club
Hold a workshop with the elected officials and senior management where the dysfunctional nature of the marriage is discussed openly. In particular discuss the power relationship and in what ways both parties try to manipulate, cajole or bully the other. Put it all on the table. Discuss how this is impacting the kids (the residents). Discuss how the relationship could become more productive, and the rules for fighting fairer. I’d suggest using a very skilled marriage counselor to facilitate this.
Nudge 2: Reversed roles
At the start of each meeting of elected officials, the name plaques that sit in front of each official are put in a bag and shaken up. Each person then draws a name plaque and puts it in front of them. For the rest of the meeting they must step into the shoes of that person and argue as if they were that person.
Too often elected officials find themselves in an alliance of like-minded people and these alliances then get caught up in adversarial politics, which often results in lowest-common-denominator solutions. Swapping identities forces everyone to consider a multi-faceted world full of complexity and nuances. I’ve used it in conflict resolutions sessions and instead of the parties trying to grind each other down, they end up working together to find a solution that is a win-win-win for everyone.
Nudge 3: The kids hat test
Before any proposed “solution” goes past the suggestion stage, it must pass the kids hat test. This involves a minimum of six people sitting down to discuss the proposed solution. (Every action a LGA considers is a perceived solution to something – whether that’s speed bumps in a street or a stop sign.) Three people are the “solution proposers” and the other three are “inquisitive kids” (wearing a kid’s hat to get them in the role). The solution proposers explain their solution (like building a multi-story car park, or doing a makeover of the main street) and the job of the kids is to ask, “But why?” a minimum of five times. Their job is to drill down to the “base need” - what is the real problem you’re trying to solve here?
The entire group then brainstorm other ways of potentially meeting this base need. Are there other ways that may be more cost effective?
No money can be spent investigating a proposed solution until this exercise has been done and a Kid’s Hat Report attached. Budget line items that do not have this report attached are automatically removed from the decision making process.
‘So, retailers, but why do you need a parking structure?’
‘Because there is a parking shortage.’
‘But why do you see a shortage of parking as a problem?’
‘Well, the plaza on the edge of town has unlimited free parking, and we need more free parking to compete with the mall.’
‘But why do you want to compete with the mall?’
‘Well, our customer base has dwindled since the plaza opened. We need more customers.’
‘But why do you want more customers?’
‘We are going broke! We can’t feed our families.’
‘Ah! So you don’t need more parking. You need more money in your till!’
Nudge 4: No money for studies unless implementation budget attached
No money can be spent on design processes (internal or by a consultant) unless there is a transparent implementation budget attached. I’d also suggest some guidelines for this, for example, a minimum design-to-build-ratio.
Nudge 5: Ban community consultation/engagement
Community consultation is a key corner-stone of the customer model and the master-planning mentality. It should be replaced by an “informed community doing” model. (For more details see my article, “Five reasons community consultation should be banned”.)
Nudge 6: Ban risk assessments
The underlying assumption in risk assessments is that any risk identified needs to be eliminated or ring-fenced with expensive insurances. All risk assessments should be banned and replaced with risk/benefit analysis.
The goal of a risk/benefit analysis is to document both the risks and the benefits of a particular action. For example, there are risks of letting kids climb trees. But there are also huge benefits, including an increasing capacity to know their own capabilities and the skill to judge the level of risk. The key question then becomes, “How do we reduce the risks, without diminishing the benefits or killing them altogether?”
Nudge 7: Set up a Red Tape Reduction Group and move to a permissions framework
If you want to cut through some of the bureaucratic BS, then set up a Red Tape Reduction Group (a cross-department working group) and give community leaders and business leaders the name and contact details of the leader or members of that group. Tell them that the mission of this group is to reduce red tape where it is strangling social and economic life. The LGA wants to say “yes” more often and not use “no” as a default position.
Often the biggest roadblock to volunteers participating in something like a 7 Day Makeover is all the regulations around volunteers working on Council land. The LGA wants endless training, forms filled out, risk assessments, insurance, etc. But at the same time, the LGA requires almost every resident to act as a volunteer and maintain the grass verge in front of their house, using a very dangerous piece of equipment, right next to traffic. The LGA does not require these people to have any training in using mower equipment, nor do they require a traffic management plan. They have no public liability insurance, and are not compelled to wear PPE. (They can mow with no protective footwear and can mow in the blazing sun in a singlet with no sunscreen.) The moral of this story is that there is always a precedent that an LGA can use to say yes and always a precedent that allows them to say no. It all depends on the stance and culture of the organisation, and a Red Tape Reduction Group shifts that basic starting point.
Conclusion
No system of local government is perfect, because there are humans involved, with all their fears, insecurities and foibles.
In 1987 I was elected to a committee established to fight a road widening through our neighbourhood. I had never been involved in anything like this and was shocked by the amount of infighting, political maneuvering, and back-stabbing that went on among this group of volunteers. If this happens at a micro-level where people with a common cause come together, imagine how much it is magnified at all levels of government.
I have pointed out some of the inherent weaknesses in the current model of local government, weaknesses that currently bring down the entire house of cards. Attempts to reform this system, like doing a restructure, is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. What is needed is tiny nudges that are like small pebbles thrown into the pond. Some of those pebbles (like kid’s hats in all the meeting rooms, or swapping identities at the Council meetings) may seem trivial and even ridiculous - beneath our dignity.
But that’s exactly why they are so powerful. They unconsciously subvert entrenched thinking patterns. As Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Nudges can re-balance power relationships that have got out of whack. We are conditioned to look for silver bullets, like an organisation restructure, or a whole new system.
But instead I dare you to throw a tiny pebble in the pond.