Guest blog by Joe N. Savage Jr.
It was a late Wednesday night as I sat in my room at the DoubleTree hotel. I was sitting comfortably in my desk chair feeling supported by its stern back. My Pepsi Zero was resting in a glass splattered with tiny beads of cool water. My other comfort. Surrounded by these comforts, I was ready to read my PDIA materials in preparation for Thursday’s session. My Adobe app was ready for the multiple pdf’s, my eyes energized by Pepsi Zero caffeine were keenly focused, but my mind still sat in a place of confusion. There were so many swirling dots that were disconnected, orbiting far from one another. The task of connecting them seemed overwhelmingly daunting and my mind didn’t have the energy to do it. Sitting in that moment about to begin my readings, I felt a churning in my mind. What was originally anxiety, mixed with procrastination with a hint of confusion churned into a determination to understand. It was in that moment that I decided I would “dig in” and truly discover what PDIA was about.
However, I must be honest. Up until that moment in my hotel room, I was “speed reading” through the articles and viewing the YouTube videos at a faster speed of 1.75. I wasn’t grasping PDIA because I wasn’t digging into the material. Realizing this, I got another Pepsi Zero, poured it into my Harvard flask, grabbed a few snacks and rested once again in the stern support of my chair, but this time I was determined to dig. I dug into the readings going back to prior weeks, prior days, and prior class session notes. I dug into each YouTube video, not rushing the playback, but allowing my mind to “hear”. As I dug into 2 hours of PDIA material, the dots stopped swirling. I began to feel “settled” in what I was learning.
A slow rising excitement began to manifest. Was I finally getting it? The only way to answer that question was to do a mock explanation of PDIA. If I were in front of my agency colleagues, how would I explain PDIA? I rose from the comfort of my chair and began to pace about the room. My hands moving, forming gestures as I spoke, I started explaining PDIA. As I spoke the concepts out loud going “dot by dot”, they began to connect. My explanations began to make logical leaps from one dot to the next. Dots were connecting forming networks of concepts. Concepts turned into frameworks and frameworks into paradigms. Suddenly, there it was…I found PDIA. Reflecting on that moment, I realized that you must dig into the materials in order to find it. Skimming my way through the resources, just reading “on the surface” wouldn’t do it. The wisdom learned from that night taught me that if you dig deep, get below the surface, and put in quality time, you will find PDIA.
Once I found PDIA’s gold, I was able to really focus on my implementation challenge: the lack of flexibility in the implementation of federal policy at the community level. The use of the fishbone diagram to map my problem and its root causes was a great concept to learn. When it came to problem solving in my professional experience you usually call a meeting and fill up white boards and large sticky sheets w/ a bunch of words, terms, and phrases trying to figure it out. Problems and causes had never been mapped visually. One of the barriers in my iterations was engaging members of Congress while amid mid-term elections. How could I use “awareness” as a solution if that member of Congress would no longer be in office in a few months?
A huge step towards lowering this barrier was coming to understand the influence that career staff have on members of Congress. Although the Legislator may change, the career staff will remain. I realized that career staff can be a significant ally and therefore, I made them a key “target” for interaction and began to build relationships. Career staff are also more accessible. This changed my approach from a sole focus on members of Congress as targets to members of Congress and those career employees “surrounding” the Legislator. From this I learned that iterations of change require thinking “outside” the established authority (e.g., member of Congress) and seeing authority as a “field” that spreads among many as opposed to being a “singular point” resting on one individual.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Participants successfully completed this 6-month online learning course in December 2022. These are their learning journey stories.
