Guest blog by Eileen Cipriani
It has been a great pleasure to be part of a class with so many dynamic leaders, doing such diverse and important work and to be part of such an impressive program at the Harvard Kennedy School. After listening to the problems my colleagues were trying to solve, I thought mine was, say… maybe not quite as consequential. It wasn’t solving a national problem, or state problem, but hopefully it is solving a problem that every city in the world struggles to address. My problem was to develop a new rental registration ordinance for the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, but the underlaying issue we are really trying to solve is how do we as a city, ensure that there is adequate affordable quality housing for our residents.
My original thought when I started was that I had solid experience in developing policy so this should not be that difficult, that notion soon faded…fast. After several fishbone iterations it became clear that the problem, I was attempting to solve was much more complex and would involve numerous authorizers, also explains why no one had addressed our poor ordinance previously. The fishbone served to lay out the problem, organize and prioritize my plan, but it was complicated and not everyone thought it was a great idea to try and tackle it.
Multiple complications arose, it was hard to find enough time to devote to the problem and I was very depended on our legal staff, who did not share my urgency in solving the rental registration problem. At times over the summer, I thought this initiative was not going to get off the starting line, let alone be implemented.
After several months of stalled progress, I spoke to the mayor, my primary authorizer and asked her to call a meeting of all the stakeholders to try and jump start the process. Several insights from the class were very timely and played a big part on how things started to come together. The 4-P’s, (People, Process, Perception and Projection) and Time Management and Delegation were tools that I had to a degree, but now I was learning how to use them to develop a strategy to solve this problem. I needed to get the people involved in this effort moving in the same direction. The mayor’s interested in updated the Rental Registration Ordinance spurred the legal team into action, with the help of a Harvard Fellow who had dug into the data and best practices, we had the process documented. If it wasn’t for the mayor’s push, I am not sure we would have moved forward, but I learned I needed to use all my tools.
There were other stakeholders, the county, the tax office and our housing inspectors and staff and especially renters who we needed to understand their Perception of the problem. With the help of the fellow, we were able to gather input bringing more people to the table. That did not include to the city inspectors and staff, they to this day remain a challenge. I think their wish is I find a new project.
My biggest take away, along with using all the tools I learned, was how important delegating is to a successful project. Delegating was not my strong suit when I started this class, but it was my biggest take away. I learned I had to trust the people that I reported to and even more importantly that reported to me. Sometimes I revert to my old ways and want to assign a task and then do it myself. Being able to trust people to do the task at hand and trust that they will do it well, is a key to success. The more I trust in delegation, the easier it makes my time management. I will continue to be a work in progress, but the benefits of effective delegation are hard to not acknowledge.
As for our Rental Registration Ordinance, we presented it to city council last week. We stated our case for its benefit and the local newspaper addressed the need for it in their weekend editorial, Projection. I am feeling confident we can get the required votes to pass the new ordinance…then the next hurdle, implementation. Back to the fishbone.
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.