Guest blog by Krishna Jayaram, IPP ’23
The Implementing Public Policy Course taught me that a successful and sustainable approach to truly complex problems requires me to be out of my comfort zone of being in command (and control) and therefore on target and on time. Instead, I have to approach issues with an open mind, a desire to learn, a willingness to listen, and the patience to take many small tentative steps, and many small set-backs, with a goal of gradual improvement. Importantly, I was also reminded that no matter how hard I work, or how capable I think I might be, truly complex problems also require me to gather others to the cause, instead of me directing others in the cause.
My implementation challenge involved, broadly speaking, turning around the shrinking City and County of Honolulu personnel numbers. My fishbone mapping and analysis involved lots of non-entry points such as distance from the continental US, high cost-of-living, negative demographics trends. But it also showed me that there were enough entry points with sufficient overlap of authority, acceptance, and ability. One of those was cutting our bureaucracy in hiring to hire more and faster – we’ve been told to cut the red tape, our departments want to cut the red tape, and in theory, unless legally required, cutting the red tape should be within our control.
Therefore after getting the authorization of the Mayor to progress along these lines, I met with our Director of the Department of Human Resources and certain members of her team to share what I learned thus far in the course. And we agreed that we would work together on the six departments with the largest vacancy numbers to see whether we could make a difference in their hiring. Some success came in the form of our iterative approach meeting every three months with each department to see how we could help them best.
The best example is our Department of Parks and Recreation, which was willing to take tentative steps as well as offer many ideas for us to take tentative steps; in essence, they had put together their own laundry list of small to medium sized entry points that they needed the Department of Human Resources and the administration to support them on. Working with the Department of Parks and Recreation we explored de-regulatory actions that involve our drug and health screening for prospective employee, a simpler interview model for a particular class of hire, and automating critical hiring cycle data. And each of these offer important lesson learned and application to other departments. Here is one example of a pilot revised hiring flow to speed our processes.
This idea came from an engaged Department of Parks and Recreation Director and her engaged staff who were onboard with the idea that we needed to approach this issue with many small actions that would start building.
But mostly thus far, it’s been difficult as I did not lay the strongest groundwork in the beginning with the departments to have their buy-in and understanding on the approach I am trying to take – I did not successfully create multiple departmental implementation teams. Too many of the teams approach our meetings as a reporting obligation or burden, rather than an opportunity to put our heads together and identify entry points to tackle the red tape barrier to hiring. Too often when we start the discussion, the question from them is what metrics do you want, what information are you trying to get, with the subtext of what are we being judged on.
Notwithstanding, I decided to started over, not from scratch exactly, but with the core Department of Human Resources team, the individuals I met early in the process. These people are critical as they have been dealing with the challenges of hiring for years and understand the ins-and-outs of a complicated personnel system and contractual and regulatory framework. I am concerned that they are too silent in the meetings with the departments and don’t feel entirely free to share all the knowledge they hold. My intention was to go through the main concepts with them again, to do my best to demonstrate my sincerity that I need them to walk alongside me on this journey, that I am not dictating what happens and I want there to be psychological safety within the team.
The meeting resulted in a very good discussion with everyone joining in. We re-articulated the Mayor’s support for our efforts (authority), re-affirmed that working with the individual departments made sense (acceptance) and that we needed to tailor our approach to each department (ability?). We also worked through some common data gathering points and I was told by the team that I need to reset the tone with the departments, that we need to re-emphasize that we are looking to pathways to increase hiring, most importantly that we are looking to do that together. I felt like that meeting was a small evolution in our functioning as a team and I look forward to the reset.
The pressure, however, is on. Our hiring numbers will be scrutinized again in a few months during the budget adoption process and continued poor hiring numbers potentially means less authority to do what we are doing in the form of decreased credibility or financial backing from the legislative body. The hope is that we’ve taken enough concrete steps, and have made appreciable progress in hiring, that we are structurally and appropriately funded in order to keep moving forward. I have learned, truly learned, that complex problems are complex for a reason, and there is no simple best practice, fix or plan that we throw at it – otherwise it would have been done. This approach takes a massive amount of patience, the ability to build and maintain teams, and communication skills (mostly listening).
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 47 Participants successfully completed this 7-month hybrid program in December 2023. These are their learning journey stories.