Net Governance
Some moments hold eternity. Such a moment for me came in a jail. What we call “Corrections” was part of my new responsibilities as the Chief Management Officer of the District of Columbia. On this evening, I had eaten the jail food, seen the crumbling ceilings and walls, walked through the “community” area where the recent inmate killing had occurred and talked with people with their arms draped over the bars that held them in their cells. My last stop was the youth unit. There I met a group of teenagers — some waiting their turn to talk on the one pay phone, others practicing their latest rap songs, others reading, and others staring into the space of their own thoughts. Their eyes. I remember their eyes. There was a sadness there too deep for the young. All of these teenagers were African American. They were all in jail for murder.
As I left, I noticed that I had begun to cry. In that moment, I knew that something is terribly wrong.
In that moment, I saw and felt the truth we public officials avoid. We have failed. Governments are not governing. Whatever we are doing, it is not enough.
We are failing with governmental structures that are federal, state and local — when the issues we must address are global, regional and in neighborhoods.
We are failing even though we are trying. We are failing despite some successes. We are failing despite our good management.
My early public management was “scientific management”, an emphasis on efficiency and productivity. City managers were expected to “run government like a business”. Of course, businesses were also command and control bureaucracies. They became non-competitive in the new global economy and non-responsive to a changing workforce and changing customers.
Governments, like ailing businesses, then discovered the power of focusing on the customer. Governments experimented with new ways of involving citizens and new ways of improving services.
Many of our experiments coalesced in the “reinventing government” movement of the 1990’s. We embraced customer focus, entrepreneurial government, steering not rowing, anticipation not reaction. We focused on improving organizational systems. It was not enough.
As David Osborne, co-author of Reinventing Government and Banishing Bureaucracy, says
“In government, most organizations exist within fairly dysfunctional systems. .Hence, the most important strategic levers in the public sector lie within the larger system, not within the organization. Civic entrepreneurs must change these larger systems — education systems, welfare systems, regulatory systems, federal-state-local systems, budget systems, personnel systems, and the like.”
(Banishing Bureaucracy p. 12)
Too often we are “reinventing” the same old system. We are doing the same things and expecting different results.
Do we really believe that a better criminal justice system will prevent crimes? The problem is bigger than that, more complicated than that, more connected than that. Having an impact requires action in many areas, connected to action in many other areas. We do need a better criminal justice system —and we need a better educational system, more boys and girls clubs and other social support, better early childhood education, more affordable housing, better economic opportunities and many other things. Mostly, we need a better vision. We need real and practical ways to make and nurture the connections between one policy or program and another.
As Einstein said,
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness which created it.”
Our mental model is still hierarchical. Kevin Kelly in his book Out of Control: (p. 8.) says our mental model is the atom:
“The popular symbol of the Atom is stark: a black dot encircled by the hairline orbits of several other dots. The Atom whirls alone, the epitome of singleness. It is the metaphor for individuality: atomic. . The Atom stand for power and knowledge and certainty.” (p. 25)
Kelly says the icon for the 21st century is the Net.
“The Net icon has no center-it is a bunch of dots connected to other dots ., the restless image fading at indeterminate edges. The Net is.all intelligence, all interdependence, all things economic and social and ecological, all communications, all democracy, all groups, all large systems.” (p. 25)
Our mental model of governance is still one of central control.
Likewise, the mental model of many cities is the Atom: a central city surrounded by other jurisdictions in its orbit. We lament the decline of the central city and blame the suburbs. We are desperately trying to put the Atom together again.
Yet the things we really care about in cities cannot be resolved without looking beyond the arbitrary political jurisdictions we call cities. We want the five E’s of sustainable cities: a strong Economy, a clean Environment, social Equity, quality Education, and civic Engagement. None of these issues stop at borders. We are all connected. A city today is actually a complex system of overlapping, interrelating jurisdictions — a Net.
How do you govern a Net? Focus on flows — of resources, ideas, power. Facilitate flows.
Net Governance is more facilitation and less control. Net Governance means bringing together disparate parts and repairing broken connections. Net Governance means crossing boundaries and including diversity. Net Governance is constant openness to experimentation and the search for better outcomes. Net Governance is distributed governance.
Can you imagine net governance of a metropolitan region? What if we focused on repairing broken connections between cities, suburbs and farmland? What if we strengthen our interdependencies through revenue sharing and joint projects? What if we were able to see our collective self-interest in economic development and environmental protection strategies? What if we were able to cooperate without a central authority requiring it? What if we focused on results by using sustainability indicators?
What if we used virtual reality technology to model land use and transportation decisions of our region? What if the citizens of a region could see these land use decisions on their computer or television screens?
What if governments consistently highlighted the relationships, the consequences and the unintended consequences of various public policies in land use, transportation, economic development, environment, education, health, housing, social services and public safety? What if governance encouraged sharing of ideas between diverse cultures? What if governance could leverage the creativity and intelligence of more and more individuals?
What if we governed our regions as if they were nets, not atoms?
New organizational forms are emerging that follow these Net principles of distributed power, diversity and ingenuity. The most familiar of these new organizations is the Internet. Used creatively, it allows every person connected to contribute to the thought process. It can be especially effective in connecting metropolitan regions where common interests abound.
Like the Internet, all of these organizations are highly decentralized and highly collaborative. Some have actually been around for a while, like Alcoholics Anonymous and the VISA Corporation. Others are using these principles in newer organizations, like the Appleseed Foundation and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. These organizations collaborate to achieve results.
Dee Hock, Visa’s creator and first CEO said:
“The better an organization is, the less obvious it is. In Visa, we tried to create an invisible organization and keep it that way. It’s the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent.”
(Fast Company, November, 1996, p. 76)
Dee Hock created the trillion-dollar Visa enterprise by focusing on a few principles. He created Visa as a “chaordic” organization, a word he uses to combine chaos and order. The organizing principles are:
- “It must be equitably owned by all the participants.
- Power and function must be distributive to the maximum degree.
- Governance must be distributive.
- It must be infinitely malleable yet extremely durable.
- It must embrace diversity and change.”
(“The Chaordic Organization: Out of Control and into Order”, World Business Academy Perspectives, Vol. 9 No. 1, 1995)
The chaordic organization is a networked organization. The key to distributive governance is agreement on the principles of organization.
What if we were able to use a collaborative process to agree on the principles? What if we connected thought leaders focused on specific problems and opportunities of our metropolitan regions? What if every specialist in every government — from education to town planning, economic development to human services — thought across boundaries, about how his or her program affects all others in both the public and private sectors?
What, then, if leaders collaboratively produced ideas and recommendations that fueled other collaborative processes of experimenting with those ideas and recommendations? What if the knowledge generated in solving real problems could then be distributed to a larger audience? What if innovation, intelligence, leadership and control could be distributed throughout an essentially invisible organization?
What if this process brought us to fresh, mutually embraced approaches? What, for example, if it led us to create new solutions to problems of racism and youth violence?
What if we tried Net Governance?