Doers and Thinkers?

"...[T]here were [are] two types of people in the development universe: thinkers and doers. The doers were out in the real world, doing the best they could -- but they were essentially blind. Meanwhile, in the halls of academia, thinkers were doing interesting analytical research -- but they were often mute when it came to talking with doers"

Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel. More Than Good Intentions: Improving the Ways the World's Poor Borrow, Save, Farm, Learn, and Stay Healthy.

This dichotomy is neither accurate or helpful. And the depiction of "doers" as "essentially blind" is a typical economist conceit. Another MIT invention of the 1970s and 1980s was the "reflective practitioner" who occupied a middle ground and bridged the two worlds. William Foote Whyte's participatory action researchers likewise provided a model for researchers who wanted to escape muteness and the "halls of academia." I rarely meet practitioners in the U.S these days who aren't somewhat conversant with, and frequently curious about, evidence and evidence building. I'm sure my sample of practitioners is skewed, and more work certainly needs to be done. And, for better or worse, there are plenty of academics and think tankers with their fingers in practice. I think the issue may be more about the mindsets and priorities of investors and donors, and Karlan and Appel make this point.

No Exceptions

"But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained."

Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Live, death, and hope in a Mumbai Undercity.

Corruption and political machines are not new to the growth of major cities and the plight of immigrants in these cities. I was struck by Boo's portrayal of NGOs as players in this corruption--or at least as innocent, passive, ineffective bystanders. No one in her book held NGOs in much regard, except as an occasional source of resources and contracts that could be redirected for personal use. There are certainly parallels in U.S. urban poverty efforts, more in the past than today, I suspect. I was surprised and disappointed that Boo didn't find any exceptions to this unfortunate rule.

Realities of Good Intentions

"I fill...in on my background and my current journey to find answers about the truth of aid."

Tori Hogan. Beyond Good Intentions: A Journey into the Realities of International Aid. Seal Press. 2012.

Pompous, yes. Self involved, yes. But in the end, I found a few nuggets made it worth plowing through the tortuous love affair, reminders of personal accomplishments, and stilted dialogue. The breakthrough moments related to the uninspired and demeaning food lines for refugees, the dependencies reinforced by aid, ex-pats sitting around the TV while locals did the dirty work, inspired commitments of aid workers, instances of authentic self reliance, local push back against the aid and NGO regime, and the hopes and dreams of students in refugee camps who inspired this journey. The author certainly conveyed an important journey for herself and the field, not sure she's reach "truth" yet. But, who has?

Failure Learning

"In Silicon Valley, failure is a rite of passage....If you're not failing, you're not considered to be innovative enough."

Quote from Wayan Vota of the World Bank, in Sarika Bansal, "The Power of Failure," The New York Times, December 2, 2012.

This short piece promotes failure recognition in the nonprofit sector as a key component of learning and innovation. In particular, it highlights a great tool the World Bank has developed called FAILfare, a process for openly discussing investments that didn't work. It's like the mistakes potlucks we suggest along with other tools on www.mistakestosuccess.org. Of course, these can't be one-time events, and organizations must do a lot of things to make failure talk a normal habit of everyday organizational life.

Back to Silicon Valley. Is this rite of passage metaphor relevant for the nonprofit sector? I was talking to someone the other day who bemoaned the fact that this same breed of venture investors  from Silicon Valley sometimes become narrowly focused on single measures of success, and think pouring in lots of money is the answer to social problems. That's frequently a mistake in in itself.

We in the nonprofit sector should become much better at recognizing more  quickly tactical mistakes and taking corrective action or exiting. The challenge is with constructive mistakes, when we are pushing the envelope on what works to solve deep challenges. Failing fast may not be the right approach. We need to stick with promising ideas long enough to see if they are successes or failure. That's a different kind of courage.

"Baltimore abandoned and condemned commercial buildings on the corner of Washington Street and East Preston Street." A photo.

...[T]he boarded-up ghost neighborhoods of Baltimore made familiar by 'The Wire" -- all on the line that connects America's financial center and its booming capital city."

Adam Davidson, photographs by Pieter Hugo "Empire of the In-Between; the death and life of the industrial corridor linking New York and Washington."

It's probably not a good idea to base all your understanding of Baltimore on The Wire. In fact, the photograph of Baltimore abandoned buildings in this article is slated to become new transit-oriented development on the Amtrak line. If looking south instead of north out of the Amtrak windows one would have seen 88 acres of cleared land, construction cranes, and the ever-expanding footprint of Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical System. While this project, the The East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative, is not without controversy, slow downs, and new plans, it represents some of the best ideas in urban development about harnessing the economic power of anchor institutions for economic and community development. This is not to say that all is well in Baltimore, but we do need to see the bright spots as well as the industrial decline and disinvestment.

Walking the SuperLoop

"In many of the largest cities in the most-populous metropolitan areas, downtown populations grew at double-digit rates from 2000 to 2010.

Chicago had the largest numerical increase -- 48,000 -- in its downtown, according to fresh Census Bureau data. The Census defines downtown as an area within 2 miles of city hall.

Haya El Nasser, "Downtowns enjoying robust population growth," USA Today," September 28, 2012.

This growth occurred while Chicago lost 200,000 jobs in the past decade with an up-tick of 8,800 jobs between 2010 and 2011. These factoids caught my eye because I recently spent time walking the SuperLoop surrounding downtown and couldn't help but sense it's a very different place. I've been walking this urban space for over forty years and have watched the demise of public housing, skid rows, old train stations, SROs, workingmen's cafeteria's, factories and warehouses, and old ethnic neighborhoods. This turf was once called the "transition zone" by Ernest Burgess of the Chicago School. Now, its more like the playground for Richard Florida's creative class. In the 1960s Daley the First tore down neighborhoods and built the University of Illinois at Chicago; in the 1970s, the Chicago 21 Committee produced the Chicago 21 plan, which called for rebuilding the SuperLoop, starting with Dearborn Park. Chicago River dreams portend more change, and the same kind of change. And on and on. Hardly natural market forces at work alone.

But, I have to admit, I still like the walks and find much of the old Chicago within my street-level view. It's in the bones, at least for now.

Job Creators?

"Most community organizers may not go into this work to become job creators, yet economic theory and widely accepted government formulas -- such as used to calculate the impact of highway and transit funding -- show community organizers can compete with the best job generators in America."

Gamaliel, Community Organizing As Job Creator: An Investment That Works for All, September 2012.

A bold claim. And a bolder claim for the past five years: "Through winning funds, finding revenue sources and changing policy the [Gamaliel] network directed over $1.6 billion into infrastructure development, education and transit that created and saved a total of 639, 385 jobs. The impact has been striking, both on the Gross Domestic Product -- nearly $22 billion -- and in its alleviation of poverty and delivery of human service."

No doubt Gamaliel network groups played an important role in all of this -- but enough to claim being job creators rivaling the private sector? I wonder. Would investments like these have been made anyway; has the pot for infrastructure dollars been expanded overall or moved around; and are these new or old jobs, part-time or full-time? Gamaliel doesn't tell us -- they use multipliers like everyone else making estimates about jobs impacts. An important sign of humility in the above text is that they recognize saving as well as creating jobs.

These community organizers and networks do great work and deserve credit for many accomplishments, including job creation and access. This kind of report, however, puts them fully in the camp of making promises based upon multipliers and other complex formulas, a dubious enterprise. They should be held as accountable as other businesses and government agencies to prove their case on the ground. The last thing we need is more numbers that never get experienced by the communities most in need.

Change Without Prophets

"And it further tries to show that we may become  the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets."

Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and its Enemies 1 Plato.

Popper is talking about his critique of historicism -- those theories of inevitability and the working out of reason or unreason in history. Another way to read his statement is that we need to give up big visions disconnected from reality and focus on changing what is. Yet some argue that the  end of Utopian thinking diminishes our imagination about what is possible.   

Promoting Grit

"Character is created by encountering and overcoming failure."


Annie Murphy Paul, School of Hard Knocks, Review of: How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, New York Times Book Review, August 23, 2012

This important book and review go on to say that character-building is not just about dealing with failure but with overcoming adversity more generally, the stuff that just happens like getting sick, having bad teachers, or parental divorce. The impact of such adversities is magnified when living in poverty and without available resources to draw upon for picking oneself up. Having grit involves skills but also the confidence that the investment can make a difference. And confidence is built upon practice and the supports needed.

Rightsizing Convictions

"That's why it's so important to remain skeptical, to reexamine assumptions, to consider alternatives. If we are going to make progress, we have to be willing to acknowledge and confront our cognitive biases. What we are doing and why, how we are doing it and where, who we are working with and when. We have to lose the courage of our convictions and open up to being wrong.

Remaining skeptical doesn't mean that you have to become a cynic."

Tim Ogden, "Losing the Courage of Your Convictions," Stanford Social Innovation Review, August 10,2012.

There is a lot packed into this provocative and insightful posting. We in the social sector have to become much more comfortable with learning from mistakes, constructive failure, and speaking against convention. This isn't just a matter of moral or philosophical belief; we need to train ourselves and our organizations to do this. It's unnatural. Take a look at Mistakes to Success and Mistakes Roadmap at www.mistakestosuccess.org. You will also need a different kind of courage, a courage to withstand the charge of cynicism and not being one of the team, especially for beloved projects and investments.

Unintended Consequences

"Herein lies a stunning irony. Defensive medicine is rooted in the goal of avoiding mistakes. But each additional procedure or test, no matter how cautiously performed, injects fresh possibility or error."



Sanjay Gupta, "More Treatment, More Mistakes, The New York Times Op-Ed, Wednesday, August 1, 2012.



More broadly, there is a class of mistakes that derive from investments and interventions aimed to solve social and economic problems -- for the purpose of doing good. These kind of mistakes are frequently called "unintended consequences." Before and After Action Reviews and Premortems should add simple question about unintended consequences so that we can enhance awareness that our good actions may produce bad results.

Mistake-Making

"I happen to be an unparalleled authority on the subject of failure, both through scholarship and experience--though I recommend the latter, as I believe gaining failure 'in the field' is superior to passively acquiring failure from books."


Augusten Burroughs, "How to Write How-To," New York Times Book Review, July 29, 2012.





How could one possibly advise about "how to" without knowing some the mistakes that will confront fellow travelers, whether baking, living, or writing. And knowing the heart-stopping, mind-wrenching process of dealing with one's own mistakes can only happen out in the world. Reading about mistakes can be misleading because sometimes, in the clarity of retrospect, honest efforts look like foolish blunders. Of course, some of them are. Burroughs also brought to mind how writers of all stripes lead a full life of confronting mistakes and trying to make improvements -- the wonderful world of editing. And one is frequently confronted by having to cut out what one love's best.

Scaliness

"In recent years, scale has become one of the hottest topics in the nonprofit sector...I have been frustrated by much of this discussion, which I think often oversimplifies complex issues, exaggerates our ability to understand how societal change happens, draws false analogies between the private and nonprofit sectors, discourages collaboration, and encourages cherry-picking of the most profitable activities within the nonprofit sector..."

Joe Kriesberg, "Is there a better way to think about scale?" The Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, July 9, 2012.

I couldn't agree more. Joe takes the next step, which many of us have done in recent times, and taken a look at the "collective impact" theory and fashion trend. There's a lot there to look at and learn from, especially when we have real clarity and focus about the outcomes, indicators, and data. When we move into the realm of community economic development -- whether focused on people or place -- things get a little murkier. We don't always have agreed upon results -- or we have multiple results for different people and situations. I also have a pet peeve that the "collective impact" crowd ignores our rich history of community organizing and coalition building. Think about the community reinvestment movement or living wage campaigns or many other efforts. Didn't they achieve some scale? We need to rethink and re-energize our coalitions for scale results -- but we ought to at least mine our successes for lessons

Beyond WIA?

"Unfortunately, our workforce system is not meeting its potential to help adult workers build their human capital...The purpose of our plan is to shift the top priority of the workforce system to long-term training and human capital development."

Stephen Steigleder and Louis Soares, "Let's Get Serious About Our Nation's Human Capital: A Plan to reform the U.S. Workforce Training System," Center for American Progress, June 19, 2012.

About time -- and the right focus. They call for a Workforce Investment Bank and a Career Navigation System. Conceptually and politically smart, but needs some work on how to organize informal job networks as well as other job access tools. A few quibbles: 1) there is no system -- need a way to talk about coordinating a variety of workforce resources in more effective ways; 2) not enough discussion about role of employers and economic development -- takes for granted that this is done well; 3) a bit of confusion about obtaining certificates, getting jobs and careers -- the tensions, complementarities, and what works for different populations; and 4) leaving youth out is big omission given unemployment rates, job search challenges, etc. All in all, though, a refreshing recognition that we need to stretch way beyond WIA reauthorization.

Decline Chicago?

"What accounts for Chicago's miserable performance in the 1990s?"

Aaron M. Renn, "The Second-Rate City?" City Journal, Spring 2012

Renn's answer to this question includes the predictable litany of bloated budgets, patronage/corruption, toxic politics, and bad business climate. He even out calls Chicago leaders out for having the hubris to think of themselves as a "global city," without any global assets from his point of view. His list of contributing factors is a bit odd because they were almost all present during the nineties when Chicago was "[e]merging from the squalor and decay of the seventieis and eighties..." So, something else must be happening, but he sheds little light on other forces at work. In addition to the impacts of the recession, we might include the challenges of Chicago's industrial/economic mix, foreclosures, and the taking down of Chicago's public housing. Of course, some of the factors are regional as well -- including loss of skilled workers because of truncated career opportunities in firms and sectors. What Chicago needs is more than a second-rate analysis.

Becoming Serious?

"Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching truth, I sensed, however vaguely."

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
"...I define a mistake as a decision, an action, or a judgment that is less than optimal, given what was possible to know at the time."

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure.

Approaching truth is about curiosity, incremental learning, and learning from mistakes. We can't help but take this seriously, at the same time knowing that posturing seriousness won't get us far. And it all feels a bit fuzzy, so we better throw in some humility. And avoid truthiness.

Chicago Reform?

"More than a century later, the man who not long ago represented (Paddy) Bauler's neighborhood in Congress insists that Chicago is finally ready...Rahm (as he's known everywhere) is bent on wholesale reform of the 'Chicago Way.'"

Jonathan Alter, "Meet the New Boss, The Atlantic, April 2012.

You have to admire anyone willing to be mayor of a big city in today's world. Unfortunately, this article falls into Chicago hype beginning with the title and by choking on the mythology of the Chicago Way (a bad Chicago detective novel).Why be taken in by Paddy Bauler's cry that "Chicago ain't ready for reform" rather than doing the hard work of recounting Chicago reform efforts over the past fifty years? And it should be no surprise to anyone that the list of reforms don't necessarily start with the mayor's office. Someone should make a list.

Density Growth

"Because we don't fully appreciate how important cities are in stoking economic development, we dismiss the economic costs of regulations that make them prohibitively expensive to live in...What they are arguing against are anti-density policies.."

Ezra Klein, "The city as growth engine," The Washington Post, March 13, 2012.

Forty years ago cities were labeled "growth machines" that generated real estate development for a cabal of land-based interests -- from big banks to big labor. These efforts rebuilt downtowns, displaced small business and manufacturing, and added to the suburban spread. It's good to see the argument evolve to cities as "growth engines," but the role of creativity, innovation, density, city form, and urban/suburban administrative boundaries is more complicated than this review suggests. The density of faceless office buildings and plazas is quite different from the density of lower-rise buildings chock full of small businesses. And maybe it's a good idea for capital and people to move to places that are less expensive and in need of more density and innovation.

What About?

"While collaborative efforts have a long history, the work remains immensely challenging--with a record of many more failures than successes. Today, a new generation of multi-sector community collaboratives across the United States is seeking to learn from previous efforts, build upon what works and use collaboration as a fulcrum for generating community-wide change."

Michele Jolin, Paul Schmitz, and Willa Seldon, Needle-Moving Community Collaboratives: A Promising Approach to Addressing America's Biggest Challenges.
I was glad to read that there have been community collaborative failures -- but there was no discussion in the document about what has been learned from these failed attempts. A mistake, I believe. The authors might have included a handful of failure case studies just to keep it real. Their list of promising efforts also raises the question about standards of evidence -- and the inevitable rush to best practices from too much early celebration. I'm struck also that community organizing campaigns are left off the big list and historical timeline -- not really surprising given the social-policy talk about "collaboratives" and all that. Arguably, the community reinvestment movement of the last forty years has been one of the largest and most successful campaigns. And then came the foreclosure crisis.

On The Ledge

"The challenge in understanding mistakes is that we make decisions looking forward and judge them in hindsight."

Paul J.H. Shoemaker, Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure.

What this means is that we make decisions about investments and actions with only partial knowledge at best in many circumstances -- and even that knowledge is riddled with uncertainly. "Everything is crystal clear in retrospect" as my father used to advise me. And a lot of decisions, approaches, investments look pretty dumb as the cloud of the future dissipates. Who wants to look dumb? Why talk about it? At the same time, the uncertainties of the present and future may lead us not to take action for similar reasons -- we're walking off the ledge. This gets to the heart of defining a leader or entrepreneur