Preface

Problems cross boundaries and so must solutions. Hierarchy alone cannot solve today’s problems. One agency alone cannot solve today’s problems. Only multi-agency coordination, cross-boundary partnerships, and citizen engagement can deliver the needed solutions. As they evolve, these focused networks will improve the practices and reduce the costs of governance while delivering better results for more of us.

The first decade of the 21st century has confirmed the new shape of democracy. The basic building blocks of governance are multi-agency, cross-boundary teams and partnerships. In every domain of democracy, from health care to national security, these networks coordinate, communicate, and leverage resources and best practices across traditional boundaries. I call these government structures performance networks because their purpose is to deliver measurable results across traditional boundaries.

The new shape of democracy is a weaving of these performance networks, advancing together toward clear goals such as a thriving economy, quality public education, comprehensive health care, energy independence, workforce development for 21st century jobs, environmental sustainability, reduced and prevented violence through community building, and respectful dialog among peoples with diverse points of view. The key to achieving these complex solutions is creating the structures that coordinate and communicate across traditional organizational and cultural boundaries.

MY PERSPECTIVE

I have worked inside the federal government as a psychologist and organizational development specialist for over 25 years. I have been confronted by the challenges of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) trying to balance enforcement and customer service, inspired by participation in Vice President Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government, and awestruck by the operational and forward-looking structures, practices, and culture of my current home agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). I have also been heartened by the vision and skill set of four exceptional leaders, one transforming law enforcement in Redlands, California, another transforming the juvenile justice system in Washington, D.C., the third accountable to deliver a transformed national airspace system, and the fourth working to turn around the way our military thinks about conflict resolution and peace-building.

This book combines the lessons of reinvention with current transformational efforts to describe a framework for understanding and building successful multi-agency, cross-sector partnerships and networks.

In 2003, in Results at the Edge: The Ten Rules of Government Reform, I summarized my observations after several assignments totaling six and one-half years on the reinvention staff. My most compelling observation was the brightness of best practices. For every problem we saw, some neighborhood, community, town, city, state, tribe, or region had figured out the answer. For every problem—from hunger to health, housing to education, crime reduction to lifelong learning—every element of every solution was in place, just not all in the same place. The solutions abounded, yet the overarching culture of the federal government had no faith in success, no policies to bring local success to a national scale, and no ability to articulate what worked and why.

The crux of the problem was, and remains, the design and culture of government. Structural barriers that prevent collaboration across agencies block progress in every Cabinet department and every domain of democracy. The lack of structures that communicate and coordinate across traditional agency barriers combines with an organizational culture that resists change, does not truly take citizen priorities into account, has long-established traditions of hierarchical firewalls, and acts as if bold goals cannot possibly be attained.

My intent in this book is not to duplicate reinvention as the strategy for transforming today’s government. Some elements of reinvention certainly need to be re-established. The list includes setting customer service standards, defining clearer performance measures, cutting red tape, translating government documents into plain language, encouraging citizen dialog, and harnessing the rich and deep knowledge of federal employees to streamline the bureaucracy and cut the costs of government. Today’s solutions, however, have moved beyond those crucial reinvention strategies, driven by new technologies, new generational values, and heightened expectations for participation from citizens who have participated in town hall meetings, community summits, and internet discussions.

Governance in a digital environment has tools for coordinating, communicating, and learning across traditional boundaries that were barely visible even a few years ago. E-mail is now a way of life in government, and every federal agency has access to video-conferencing, knowledge-sharing websites, internal blogs, and “wikis,” along with an internet- or satellite-based capacity that can bring together tens—or tens of thousands—of employees for presentations and interactive discussions that are posted or “streamed” on agency websites.

In addition to new technologies, the strategies for transforming government through partnerships and networks must take into account what Morley Winograd and Michael Hais describe in Millennial Makeover, in which they clearly predicted the impact of the millennials, those born between 1982 and 2003, on American politics.Oriented toward social networking and digital communication, the everyday life of this new generation is changing assumptions about how government will hire, train, and put in place the workforce that is replacing the wave of retiring baby boomers.

Perhaps even more important, Winograd and Hais conclude that the millennial generation has a level of comfort with diversity and an expectation of collaboration that are unprecedented in our nation’s history. The 2008 election has been called by many a generational victory, and the values of collaboration and networking are beginning to infuse the culture at all levels of government. This trend reinforces the growing demands of citizens for a stronger voice in deciding how government budgets and taxpayer monies are spent.

This mental landscape of lessons from reinvention, new technologies, town hall meetings, satellite broadcast conferences, and millennial expectations permeated my efforts to rethink government reform. The single insight that brought together individual, conceptual threads was a shift in perspective. The only way to understand government reform and performance networks is from multiple points of view.

I did not create the model that considers networks from different perspectives. As described in the Introduction, I borrowed the model from the Department of Defense Architecture Framework, as expanded by the FAA Enterprise Architecture. These architectures, or blueprints, are being built by the partners and systems engineers who are delivering the Next Generation Air Transportation System, NextGen, a transformation that can occur only through the coordination of multiple perspectives.

Why does this one model work so well? From 1984 to 1992, I worked as an internal organizational development specialist for the IRS. My duties included leading team-building sessions for new executives, developing an intervention model that reduced absenteeism and improved work quality, researching threats and assaults against IRS employees, and helping put in place a post-traumatic stress program borrowed from the Secret Service. I supported collaborative labor-management efforts and several activities intended to guide the IRS culture toward a greater emphasis on customer service.

In 1992 I moved to the FAA. In my first few weeks there, I interviewed many managers and executives, a few air traffic controllers, and numerous system engineers. I was struck by how many people said they “loved” flying or the idea of flight, or had been “fascinated” by airplanes since they were children. I had entered a workforce where enthusiasm, pride, and a positive emotional connection to the agency’s mission were organic components of the organizational culture.

These positive emotional connections are deeply rooted in the history of American aviation, which began on the morning of December 17, 1903, when Orville Wright took off on a 12-second flight that launched a new era in transportation. In 2008, 821 billion passenger miles were flown in American airspace, and the FAA forecasts that more than one billion passengers will fly annually by 2021. The aviation industry is an integral part of our way of life and contributes $1.2 trillion annually to the American economy, about 5 percent of the gross domestic product.

The aviation community can leverage a 100-year history of partnerships, communication channels, technology interdependencies, and cross-boundary engineering teams that deliver visible results. The modern lessons of this history of partnership have led to NextGen, a cross-boundary effort that contains what I believe to be the best existing organizing structure for multi-agency initiatives. It’s not that the FAA never makes mistakes. It’s that the FAA’s structures deliver results, the workforce is addressing the challenges of change and collaboration, and leadership is shaping a management culture that values accountability, adaptability, flexibility, connectivity, and continuous learning. Above all, the driving force of collaborative behavior is embedded in the mission of delivering safe and secure air traffic services for the tens of thousands of passengers who fly in American airspace every day.

More than the concept of multiple views of networks, NextGen leverages resources and best practices through solution sets that deliver results through cross-boundary teams. The sum of multiple views and cross-boundary solution sets provides a blueprint for transforming governance to meet the needs of the 21st century.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

The intent of this book is pragmatic: to provide roadmaps and guidelines to executives, managers, and team leaders accountable for results in the evolving world of networks and conflicting cultures.

The Introduction presents a brief history of government-based networks with highlights from recent studies. Part I, the core of the book, presents the Ten Views of Performance Networks: Leadership, Geography, Communication, Learning, Activities, Structure, Management, Services, Customers, and Performance Measures. Each view serves as a different lens on the challenges of solving complex problems by coordinating across traditional boundaries. Each has its own purpose, perspective, observations, and lessons.

Following the ten views, Part II provides specific guidance on Transformational Strategic Planning. Traditional planning documents are organized around independent projects in isolated offices. Strategic planning that assumes networks will leverage resources and best practices are focused on solution sets that deliver results through cross-boundary teams where progress is tracked along transparent milestones. Coordination also includes multi-agency leadership “boards” and mechanisms for citizen discussion at all levels of governance.

Final Thoughts first steps back to consider performance networks as living systems that exhibit the characteristics of adaptability, flexibility, interdependence, and emergence of new forms. Although intellectual curiosity about system characteristics is not particularly useful in the heat of a crisis, when agency leaders have the time to step back and think about the state of their organization, systems thinking provides a window on transformation that may lead to significant next-day changes and clearer long-range intentions.

The final comments consider the importance and strength of face-to-face dialog, the trust that is built though inclusion and coordination, and the difficult roles of leadership tasked with implementing complex solution sets. The key is looking at the network from different perspectives and carrying clear intentions into every discussion.

The new shape of democracy is a weaving of multi-agency, cross-boundary teams and partnerships. This book is intended to build and improve performance networks as we transition from isolated islands of bureaucracy to the network-based governance that will deliver better results for more of us.

Lynn Sandra Kahn, Ph.D.
May 2009