Supporting Collective Action and Reform Coalitions in PNG: Trust is Critical

Guest blog by Barbara Thomas, Maliwai Sasingian, & Kirk Gibson 

In January 2024, the Black Wednesday riots shook Papua New Guinea (PNG). Local thinkers highlight these as acts of desperation, driven by underlying causes including unemployment and the increasing cost of living. But governments alone cannot solve the complex problems that drive these events. Citizens, civil society, and the private sector must also lead on reform or support good government policy aimed at addressing these issues. This is, and has been, happening, with groups of reformers finding uniquely Papua New Guinean ways to use collective action to solve social and economic problems. 

This blog summarises our learning about some recent reformers, groups being supported by The Voice Inc’s (TVI) local leadership and collective action program (LLCAP) which aims to support local leaders to reform or improve implementation of PNG public policy. TVI is itself is a local leadership organisation, supporting young leaders since it began 17 years ago at the University of PNG and now through a network of more than 3,000 members in 19 provinces.  

Podcast: Building Effective Teams with Monica Higgins

Implementing public policy and solving complex development problems requires working in teams, but working in a collaborative way often creates significant challenges. In conversation with Building State Capability, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor Monica Higgins shares critical insights on how to build and manage an effective team. Instead of viewing teams as simply a collection of individuals, Higgins emphasizes the importance of establishing clear boundaries, having a compelling direction, and the right representation of stakeholders.

Through practical examples from her work in education systems change, Higgins demonstrates how effective teams require leadership and management. She highlights that in addition to creating a clear and compelling direction, management should also enable the right conditions for success, whether that involves running effective meetings or creating psychological safety. Most importantly, she underscores how teams thrive when they meld external accountability with intrinsic motivation, creating what Higgins calls “felt accountability” through meaningful tasks and clear interdependencies.

Case: Tackling a Frustrating Recycling Problem

In the city of Blueville, a newly elected mayor entered office with ambitious promises. Central to her platform was a strong environmental message, with a particular focus on promoting recycling and reducing the quantity of plastic waste littering the city streets. The challenge was clear: Blueville had no existing recycling program, and the path to implementing one was quite complex.

When the mayor’s initial solution of distributing recycling boxes and setting up collection points failed to reduce street waste after a year, she assembled a diverse team to investigate why. Through the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) process, the team moved beyond their initial frustration and blame to deeply analyze the issue. They used tools like the Ishikawa (fishbone) diagram to map out causes and engaged directly with stakeholders, from business owners to commuters, to understand the real barriers to recycling. This process revealed that the challenge was far more complex than initially understood, involving issues of knowledge, access, cost, and incentives.

Event: Motivation and Purpose in the Public Sector

On Monday, October 28th, we co-hosted a seminar with The People Lab featuring Dan Honig, BSC Associate, Associate Professor at Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy and University College London in conversation with Elizabeth Linos, Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor of Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School.

In this talk, Dan Honig discusses the relationship between empowerment and compliance-based management in the public sector. He outlines research showing how excessive focus on compliance and control tends to undermine performance and motivation among public servants, demonstrating through examples drawn from different countries that when public sector workers are given autonomy and feel connected with their mission, they perform better and are more likely to remain committed to their roles. Honig rejects some common misconceptions about how to manage public servants, arguing that the desire to serve the public good remains universal across countries and the generational gap.

Through examples like Hurricane Sandy relief efforts and child protective services in Detroit, Honig illustrates how compliance-oriented accountability systems, while intended to prevent abuse, often create contradictory incentives that make it hard for mission-driven bureaucrats to serve effectively. He highlights that empowerment and compliance aren’t mutually exclusive, and that government agencies are putting too much emphasis on compliance. In conversation with Elizabeth Linos, the two HKS alumni explore how these ideas connect to larger questions of trust between government and individuals, generational changes in public service career paths, and the challenge of measuring success rather than simply attempting to prevent failures.

Exploring the lack of access to revenue in Wyoming

Guest blog by Tom Brauer, Justin D. Farley, Amber Pollock

In Wyoming, much like throughout the United States, communities lack access to revenue and control of the revenue-raising mechanisms needed to self-determine their future.

Over the past 12 weeks, The Wild Optimists have been immersed in the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) course, where we’ve grown as a team and participated in the process of identifying and working towards solutions to a complex problem we are all impacted by in various way in our day-to-day work. This blog post will walk through the problem we focused on, the key learnings we’ve taken from the course, the progress and insights we achieved, and how we plan to apply these lessons moving forward. We’ll also share some words of wisdom for fellow PDIA practitioners who are on similar journeys.

Addressing Business Sustainability in Star Valley, Wyoming

Guest blog by Sarah Hale, Mason Koch, Violet Sanderson, Devin J Simpson

The SOAR Team selected Business Sustainability as their project for the 12-week course. Our goal was to figure out what was needed in order for area businesses in Star Valley, Wyoming to not only survive (a difficult task in its own right), but thrive!

Event: Good Intentions, Great Laws, Terrible Outcomes

Join us on Tuesday, October 8th for a seminar featuring Lant Pritchett, Research Director, Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP).

Addressing Behavioral Health in Casper, Wyoming: A Community-Driven Approach Using PDIA 

Guest blog by Tina A. Hoebelheinrich, Anna Kinder, Sabrina Kemper

The Wyoming Business Council recently convened a diverse group of community leaders to address a pressing issue using the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) framework. This powerful approach, which empowers communities to tackle complex problems by breaking them into manageable components, was the perfect fit for our mission. Our initial team, which included key figures such as the CNCHD Executive Director, the Casper Area Chamber of Commerce CEO, the City of Mills Community Development Coordinator, an elected Mills government representative, and a top real estate producer, was confident in the potential of the PDIA framework. 

Using PDIA to Reduce Gun Violence in New York

Pablo Uribe thought he was done with fighting crime. That was his job as the deputy security director of his hometown of Cali, Colombia. He’d had success with reducing the murder rate there, but was feeling burned out by the work. So when Uribe left to get his master’s at the Harvard Kennedy School, he was ready to find a new purpose in public service.

That plan took a turn as he approached graduation in 2022. Uribe landed a Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellowship, which placed him in Syracuse, New York, for two years to work on one of Mayor Ben Walsh’s top priorities. The priority, it turned out, was reducing gun violence.

Event: The Mirror Cracked? On Democracy, Welfare Politics, and India’s General Election

The Mirror Cracked? On Democracy, Welfare Politics, and India’s General Election featuring Yamini Aiyar, Senior Visiting Fellow at Brown University, was hosted at HKS on September 23, 2024. In this talk, Yamini discusses the intersections between welfare politics, state capability, and democratic institutions in India’s 2024 elections. She examines how direct benefit transfers and technology-driven welfare schemes have shaped political attribution and voter behavior and highlights the emergence of competitive welfare politics among regional parties and the impact this has had on federal dynamics.