Guest blog by Jeremy Flowers, IPP ’24
I was born and raised in New England, where Harvard University holds mythological levels of prestige. So, when I applied for the Kennedy School’s Implementing Public Policy program, I expected knowledge and skills that couldn’t be obtained anywhere else, and world-class presentations by dazzlingly brilliant professors. I was shocked by how far the experience exceeded even this high bar.
The crux of the program is Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation, a set of data-driven techniques for solving complex governmental challenges. These include procedures like the infamous fishbone diagram, a handy way of analyzing a problem’s contributing factors. However, these strategies are underpinned throughout the course by a surprising foundation of emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. The class covers practicalities like building legitimacy, engaging detractors, and recognizing informal authority, so students will be able to overcome the many unexpected obstacles they encounter when tackling policy problems in the real world.
My Challenge
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) is a federally funded program designed to strengthen local economies by connecting workers with skills and credentials that will lead them to self-sufficient careers. Despite their presence in every county in the USA, WIOA programs are often referred to as “the best-kept secret in government service” by administrators because their complexity has historically made them difficult to market to the public.
The United States is home to a staggering diversity of geographic, economic, and demographic regions. This variety demands that WIOA policy be extremely flexible, so it can meet the needs of any city or town in the nation. However, this flexibility means that each program needs to be carefully tailored to the unique communities of its designated Local Area.
I became the Executive Director of the Northeastern Arizona Workforce Development Area following a period of high turnover in the administration and conflict between leadership and stakeholders. This left the department’s legitimacy dangerously low among both authorizers at the oversight level and implementers at the case management level.
When I attended a week on Harvard’s campus as part of the 2024 IPP cohort, I was a year and half into my tenure as director. The department had made huge strides in rebuilding the administrative team and reconnecting with our partners, supervisors, and staff as individuals and separate groups. The next step was to develop procedures for communication and collaborative service delivery between these groups so that the Workforce Area could fulfill its mission to deliver services as a cohesive whole.
My first attempt at defining this problem was something like “the Northeastern Arizona Workforce Program is not effectively coordinated.” I believed that if I could only come up with a comprehensive enough plan, I could instruct everybody on how to work together, and was interested in whether the class could help me do this. Instead, they showed me an entirely better way of doing things.
Applying PDIA to the Challenge
My personal greatest takeaway from the course was a new perspective on how leadership should be delegated. After refining my fishbone chart through several iterations during the week on campus — and going through several earthshaking personal revelations during the professors’ heartfelt class sessions — I had reframed my problem as “Leaders within the Northeastern Arizona Workforce Development program are not coordinated with each other.”
I came away determined to hand off higher levels of project management authority to my staff so that they could be more fully invested in their assignments and have more ownership over their tasks. My own role would shift to one of coaching rather than modeling or pacesetting. By putting the team members in positions where they could ensure their own success through forming connections and acting independently, I hoped to incentivize them to learn more about the roles of their colleagues and to network within the organization.
When I returned home from Cambridge, I gathered my team to walk them through this problem identification process and propose increased project ownership as an entry point to improving our administrative coordination. My peers and direct reports were unanimously supportive of this new approach, and its positive impact quickly became clear. Within weeks of being passed higher-level task assignments, the team members implemented improved practices in accounting, business services, and case management. Despite this increased productivity, my own workload as an executive felt more manageable than ever, since my team was now empowered to perform their work with fewer touchpoints from me.
I was fortunate enough to work with a passionate, dedicated group of hard workers with great ideas of their own. I came to understand that my direct reports had wanted all along to take on greater challenges so they could win more significant accomplishments for the team. Giving them more responsibility, rather than shielding them from it, meant we could achieve more together for the community we served
Outcomes and Conclusions
The Northeastern Arizona PDIA project culminated in a series of all-staff training sessions organized by the area’s administrative team after I handed them the high-level task of improving coordination within our job centers. The presentation was designed to ensure that all staff in the workforce area, regardless of which program they worked for, understood how they were interconnected and meant to serve as resources for each other.
The team conceived and planned this independently, while my part was to provide support for their vision. As word spread that this cross training was being organized, the overwhelmingly positive response from the job center staff, built excitement and appeared to increase morale throughout the whole system. All the Northeastern Arizona job center network were invited, including partner program staff, managers, and the Local Workforce Development Board. Each of the three sessions were attended by 24 to 40 staff and stakeholders, making this the most comprehensive staff training effort in the area’s history.
Because WIOA job centers include several partner programs overseen by different state agencies, coordinating a training course that included all of them was a significant logistical feat that drew attention and praise from the department’s oversight in Arizona’s Department of Economic Services. Internally, staff who attended reported that they felt more confident in their understanding of both workforce services generally and the Northeastern Arizona network specifically. Coordinating this event and celebrating its completion were meaningful team building experiences in themselves, and many staff expressed pride in having been part of it. The team even printed graduation certificates and had a “congratulations” cake made for the occasion.
The success of this training was the most visible of the immediate positive outcomes that PDIA brought to the department, but this new leadership model also motivated staff, empowered them to better solve problems, and improved the culture of the workplace itself. This experience is going to change the way I lead and engage with teams, but the course also taught me valuable lessons about how to support and develop individual team members, and even about the importance of my own work-life balance.
I would encourage fellow PDIA practitioners who find themselves in an authorizer role to consider handing off ownership of projects during the problem identification stage. Try thinking of managerial relationships in terms of how you can support your staff’s plans rather than how they can enact yours. PDIA provides a framework to align your team at the strategic level while allowing them to apply their own tactics, while you as their manager focus on mitigating risks and promoting wins to your stakeholders.
And keep your fishbone close.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 42 Participants successfully completed this 6-month hybrid program in November 2024. These are their learning journey stories.