The more work I do in the community development, engagement, and improvement spaces, the more I realize that cities and neighborhoods are not that much different from companies. Really, hear me out. Cities are nothing if not complex systems, and the same techniques we’ve learned through empirical evidence to rely on in our workplaces, tend to also be quite successful in our cities and their neighborhoods.
For example, we’ve known for decades that if you want to improve business outcomes, you need to organize your people into small teams that are colocated, dedicated to the same goal and purpose, and ensure they have all of the skills and resources they need to get the job done. Oh, and then you need to get out of their way.
So it should not surprise us that big, “shared-services”-style programs in our cities that handle a single, specialized need like housing, workforce development, or education are likely to be just about as successful as a functional development team of, say Database Analysts, Quality Assurance Engineers, or .Net Software Developers. They end up being spread too thin and working on too many efforts all at once in an attempt to meet goals that don’t align with those in other ares of the community, and have little sense of commitment or dedication to the individuals they serve.
That’s what makes this experiment in Atlanta so intriguing. They’ve effectively created agile teams, or cross-functional pods within several neighborhoods with a common goal of improving neighborhood outcomes. These pods then collectively focus their efforts on four domains: housing, schools, commercial corridors, and physical landscape.
The mayor’s role in this arrangement is akin to what us business transformation agents might call a corporate sponsor (maybe a community sponsor?). This arrangement makes it clear to all involved that the effort has the full support of the entire local government, and puts the resources of the mayor’s office at the service of these small and nimble groups.
This arrangement also results in a holistic or “horizontal” approach that provides governance across the entire spectrum of services and supports necessary for a neighborhood and its people to thrive.
The results are probably not surprising to those of us who have done this type of work in the business sector. Even though the experiment targeted neighborhoods with high and prolonged levels of distress and latent assets, the article sites the following early wins:
- Public land has been consolidated to accelerate development.
- Agencies now share accountability for neighborhood outcomes rather than program outputs.
- Philanthropic actors are being asked to reorient from service delivery to place-based capacity building
Circling back to the agile techniques, we have:
- Small Teams? Check.
- Colocated? Check.
- Cross-functional? Check.
- Common Goal and Purpose? Check.
- Leadership that got out of their way and provided the structure necessary for success? Check and check.
The article linked above, by Seth Kaplan, goes into more detail about how Atlanta is succeeding on this path, including an emphasis on diversity of place (think mixed-use buildings and mixed-income housing), and a strategic, long-term view rather than a siloed, short-sighted one.
Take a look and let me know what you think in the comments. How could we encourage our cities and towns to think small, strategic, and diverse rather than big, siloed, and uniform? What’s the least we could do to move our neighborhoods forward in such a direction?
nicolederr.com 