Guest blog by Renny MacKay, LEG ’23
The LEG course offered incredible ideas related to understanding the economics of growth – or the lack thereof – specific to countries and metro areas. The product space illustrates a path towards expanding industries, growth diagnostics help to use price signals to best identify what is binding expansion. These are powerful. For my home state, the bottom line is that Wyoming is lacking complexity and it makes diversification particularly hard. The evidence shows that we need to take strategic bets and by exploring the Atlas of Complexity I can see more clearly why growing many new industries here has been intractable. For decades people in Wyoming have been looking to diversify the economy without success.
Fortunately, these tools have given me a fact-based approach to what bets have better odds.
But, I am no economist, so what sticks with me is about how to deal with the personal side of policy work related adaptive challenges.
As I wrapped up this course, I went to an event at the local botanical garden. It is a magical facility and unusual in a community of our size, but few people take advantage of it, which is symptomatic of a bigger problem; our community lacks a common identity.
Worse, we have seen expressions of racism and intolerance. So, instead of a unified city that is proud of its institutions and experiences we are disconnected and there isn’t a shared “sense of us.”
Internally, the hard stare into the mirror leads to the question of what it would take to risk intervening and to try to offer an aspirational identity? Or as Professor Hausmann says, to shift brain systems. That’s frightening. It seems so daunting that it could be impossible.
But, through this course I see more pathways to get involved. I can almost hear Matt Andrews passionately pleading to try something, even if it seems small and then learn from it.
I also see more clearly that none of this is reliant on any one heroic figure or a person in a position of authority. In fact, it is best to find a team with diverse experiences, skill sets and rolodexes to work together.
It starts with shifting to being problem-focused.
I have been involved in trying to solve many complex problems and worked on policies to promote growth or make progress on chronic and systemic challenges. Often we developed lists of recommendations or hoped for one transformative idea to come forward. We have thought that if only the program would get funded or enough people would embrace the new paradigm then Wyoming’s economy would diversify or young people would stay in the state instead of getting their education and leaving for bigger cities and brighter lights.
Consultants have come into the state charged with producing reports on everything from how to save government money to economic development. But, those reports and plans do not magically transform state agencies or expand an industry.
Those who have been around Wyoming government fear nothing more than working in a policy area or on a problem with a task force only to have it sit on a shelf. But, the charge has almost always been to develop recommendations or THE solution.
What I have seen is that this does not move to action, does not allow the teams to iterate and measure the impact of our recommendations. It does not create systems that make change or at least make progress. People involved aren’t empowered or inspired.
That is why I am thrilled at the idea of using PDIA and to have ways to take a step and not be frozen in place in the face of intimidating challenges. This is also respectful of place and of each community’s uniqueness. Wyoming is proudly independent. No one here wants to be told what to do, especially by outsiders, but we gladly help out our neighbors in times of trouble.
By starting with seeking input from people here – and the more the better – about what the problem is and why it matters we align in purpose. As we learned in LEG, this means we do not have to be defensive about my solution versus someone else’s or to try to defend and argue for why it works or does not, as long as we are addressing the shared problem, we can coalesce, collaborate and try different options. The conversation and work is meant to continue and improve and expand.
Technical tools like the fishbone; the authority, ability and acceptance analysis; and growth diagnostic trees all illuminate the path for those doing this work. There is literally a toolkit, which can be used in a personalized way to fix the problem.
So, I do not need to establish Cheyenne or Wyoming’s sense of us or write the policy that opens the floodgates for economic diversification here. I just need to find others who see the same problems. We can work together to make that problem statement more compelling, learn together about why the problem exists and then we can take action.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 58 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in December 2023. These are their learning journey stories.