Catalytic Government: Steering Rather Than Rowing

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Catalytic Government Steering Rather Than Rowing

• PADM 282-801
• Drake University, MPA
• Presenters Betsy Pratt Scott J. VanDeWoestyne

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The word government is from a Greek word, which
means to steer. The job of government is to
steer, not to row the boat. Delivering services
is rowing, and government is not very good at
rowing. - E.S. Savas
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Redefining Governance

• Traditional mayors, governors, city managers view
  their role as collecting taxes and delivering
  services.
  
• Redefining the role of the city as a catalyst and
  facilitator.
  
• Government increasingly finding itself in the
  role of defining problems and then assembling
  resources for others to use in addressing those
  problems.

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Redefining Governance

• With dwindling budgets, state and local
  governments learn how to bring community groups
  and foundations together to build low-income
  housing how to bring business, labor, and
  academia together to stimulate economic
  innovation and job creation how to bring
  neighborhood groups and police departments
  together to solve the problems that underlay
  crime.

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Redefining Governance

• In other words, they learn how to facilitate
  problem solving by catalyzing action throughout
  the community how to steer rather than row.

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Redefining Governance

• Bill Hudnut, former Indianapolis Mayor,
  explained
  
• The mayor is more than a deliverer of services.
  Thats become clear in the 1980s. A mayor is a
  deal maker, who pulls the public and private
  sectors together.

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Redefining Governance

• It is not governments obligation to provide
  services, but to see that they are provided.
  
• -Mario Cuomo, former Governor of NY.

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Smaller But Stronger

• Entrepreneurial leaders know that communities are
  healthy when their families, neighborhoods,
  schools, voluntary organizations, and businesses
  are healthy and that governments most profound
  role is to steer these institutions to health.

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Smaller But Stronger

• Former Gov. of Florida Lawton Chiles said We
  believe the central purpose of state government
  is to be the catalyst which assists communities
  in strengthening their civic infrastructure. In
  this way we hope to empower communities to solve
  their own problems.

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Smaller But Stronger

• What this is leading towards is the unhooking of
  the tax-and-service wagon.
  
• Realization that you can steer more effectively
  if you let others do more of the rowing.
  
• Steering is very difficult if an organizations
  best energies and brains are devoted to rowing.

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Smaller But Stronger

• If government does less, is that not a weaker
  government?
  
• Are we not talking about undermining the power of
  the public sector?

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Smaller But Stronger

• Authors concluded that no, the governments they
  studied that steered more and rowed less were
  clearly stronger governments.
  
• After all, those who steer the boat have far more
  power over its destination than those who row it.

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Smaller But Stronger

• Governments that focus on steering actively shape
  their communities, states, and nations. They make
  more policy decisions. They put more social and
  economic institutions into motion. Some even do
  more regulating. Rather than hiring more public
  employees, they make sure other institutions are
  delivering services and meeting the communitys
  needs.

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Separating Steering From Rowing

• Steering requires people who see the entire
  universe of issues and possibilities and can
  balance competing demands for resources.
  
• Rowing requires people who focus intently on one
  mission and perform it well.

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Separating Steering From Rowing

• Steering organizations need to find the best
  methods to achieve their goals.
  
• Rowing organizations tend to defend their
  method at all costs.

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Separating Steering From Rowing

• Contracting with private vendors is cheaper, more
  efficient, more authentic, more flexible, more
  adaptive. Contracts are rewritten every year, you
  can change.
• Change is more complex with state employees who
  have all sorts of vested rights and privileges.

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Separating Steering From Rowing

• Steering allows for greater specialization of
  service providers, promotion of experimentation,
  and more comprehensive solutions to problems.

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Public Employees Victims or Beneficiaries?

• The great fear of using non-government
  institutions to row is, of course, that it will
  cost many public employees their jobs. This fear
  is legitimate. In fact, the prospect of massive
  layoffs is one of the barriers that keeps
  governments from moving into a more catalytic
  mode.

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Public Employees Victims or Beneficiaries?

• Solutions to this?
• Typical Govt. attrition is 10 year.
• Shift employees to other departments.
• Require contractors to hire them at
  comparable wages.

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Public Employees Victims or Beneficiaries?

• Governments that move from rowing to steering
  have fewer line workers but more policy managers,
  catalysts, and brokers. They have fewer paper
  pushers and more knowledge workers.

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Public Employees Victims or Beneficiaries?

• The answer to cuts in federal funds is not to cut
  services, but to find new ways of doing things.

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Creating Steering Organizations

• Steering organizations set policy, deliver funds
  to operational bodies (public and private), and
  evaluate performance-but they seldom play an
  operational role themselves.
• They often cut across traditional bureaucratic
  boundaries in fact, their members are sometimes
  drawn from both the public and private sectors.

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Public Sector, Private Sector, or Third Sector?

• There are very few services traditionally
  provided by the public sector that are not today
  provided somewhere by the private sector and
  vice versa.

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Public Sector, Private Sector, or Third Sector?

• When people ask themselves which sector can best
  handle a particular task, they also tend to think
  only of two sectors, public or private.
  
• Non-profit organizations are often quite
  different from both public organizations and
  private, for-profit businesses.

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Public Sector, Private Sector, or Third Sector?

• This third sector is made up of organizations
  that are privately owned and controlled, but that
  exist to meet public or social needs, not to
  accumulate private wealth.

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Privatization is One Answer, Not The Answer

• Privatization is simply the wrong starting point
  for a discussion of the role of government.
  Services can be contracted out or turned over to
  the private sector.
• But governance cannot.

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Privatization is One Answer, Not The Answer

• Business does some things better than government,
  but government does some things better than
  business.
  
• The public sector tends to be better at policy
  management, regulation, ensuring equity,
  preventing discrimination or exploitation,
  ensuring continuity and stability of services,
  and ensuring social cohesion.

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Privatization is One Answer, Not The Answer

• Business tends to be better at performing
  economic tasks, innovating, replicating
  successful experiments, adapting to rapid change,
  abandoning unsuccessful or obsolete activities,
  and performing complex or technical tasks.

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Privatization is One Answer, Not The Answer

• The Third Sector tends to be best at performing
  tasks that generate little or no profit, demand
  compassion and commitment to individuals, require
  extensive trust on the part of customers and
  clients, need hands-on, personal attention, and
  involve the enforcement of moral codes and
  individual responsibility for behavior.

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In conclusion

• Author Peter Drucker summed it up
• We do not face a withering away of the state.
  On the contrary, we need a vigorous, a strong,
  and a very active government. But we do face a
  choice between big but impotent government and a
  government that is strong because it confines
  itself to decision and direction and leaves the
  doing to others. We need a government that can
  and does govern. This is not a government that
  does it is not a government that
  administers it is a government that governs.