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Winter Reading: Switch V - Simplifying and Motivating
Monday, February 18th, 2013
Robert Wechsler
Simplifying Self-Supervision
In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath note that self-control or, more accurately, self-supervision is an exhaustible resource. What looks like laziness or selfishness is often simply exhaustion. Self-supervision gets burned up by managing the impression we make on others, by coping with fears, and by trying to focus on complex instructions.
With respect to government ethics, officials have trouble following ethics rules, especially those with numerous exceptions. At best, they put all the ethics burden on their lawyers, that it, the city or county attorney. At worst, they ignore the rules altogether.
Neither solution is good. The best way to change the way officials deal with conflict situations is to keep the rules simple. This is consistent with another of the Heaths' "surprises" about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. If you want people to change, the directions have to be crystal clear.
Providing clarity means simplifying the rules. Does this mean that ethics rules should be cut down to one conflict provision or five clear prohibitions? No. What it means is letting officials focus on doing one simple thing that they're comfortable with: asking for professional advice. Only instead of having them ask the individual they're comfortable with — the city or county attorney — they ask a different professional, an ethics officer.
This limits ethical self-supervision to one act: seeking advice from the ethics officer. That's not too taxing.
Motivating Officials
Even when people know what they're supposed to do, and it isn't all that hard, they often need to be motivated or they'll do what they've always done. The typical government ethics approach to motivation is creating strong, often criminal penalties. But all this does is turn officials against the whole idea of an ethics program and make them try all sorts of ways to undermine it. The problem isn't motivating officials regarding government ethics. It's changing what they're motivated to do.
The best way to do this is through pride. Every official wants her government to be seen as incorruptible. It feels good and it's a good way to attract legitimate businesses to the city or county. And officials want to see themselves as the sort of people who know how to do things the right way, to responsibly handle their conflict situations. Think how an official would respond to a colleague who said, "Joe, you usually do such a professional job. Why aren't you seeking professional advice for this conflict you have?" This is what the Heaths call "appealing to identity."
Bright Spots
Those pushing for ethics reform can point out how, with the best government ethics program in the country, New York City has gone from being seen as extremely corrupt to being seen as pretty clean. The same is true of such cities as Atlanta and Los Angeles. Palm Beach County has recently done a great deal to change the reputation of its municipalities by creating a countywide ethics program. And the officials in these municipalities know that they are protected because they can call and get quick, professional advice, which will protect them from scandal.
Bright spots are sometimes hard to find, because it's the dark spots that get most of the publicity. Bright spots may include local or regional ethics programs that have worked. But the best "bright spots" are the officials in one's own government who correctly withdraw from matters when they have a possible conflict, who seek advice when they're not sure what to do about a possible conflict situation, and who try to openly discuss the ethical aspects of matters, whether their own or others' relationships are involved. It's valuable for those seeking ethics reform to talk to these individuals, ask them why they do what they do even without an adequate government ethics program, and why they think others are not doing what they do.
If an agency, board, or department head believes that the government's ethics program is providing insufficient requirements and support, it can turn itself into a bright spot by instituting its own ethics program. It can designate an ethics officer to provide better training and more timely, professional advice (someone outside the organization is best), require more (and more public) disclosure (including from those seeking benefits from the agency or board), and even set up a board to deal with violations. After a couple of years, the head can present the results to the local legislative body, recommending that the program be extended to all officials and employees.
Dark Spots
Too often, city and county attorneys don't look for bright spots, but instead use as a model the ethics code of a nearby city or county that lacks a real ethics program.
A different sort of dark spot is the creation of a display of hundreds of officials who have had their careers come to an ugly end because their city or county didn't have a good ethics program. This is the drivers ed approach. It hasn't seemed to work so far, because everyone believes he's different, that is, better in behavior or at not getting caught.
Another kind of dark spot to employ are scandals in local agencies and departments that do not subscribe to a government ethics program and do not participate in the government's ethics environment. This includes police departments, sheriff's offices, housing and public transit authorities, and the like. The scandals that come from these fiefdoms are usually big, but are insufficiently used to educate officials in the larger government about the importance of a strong ethics program and a healthy ethics environment.
Defect Rate
One of the Heaths' case studies involves a hospital administration consultant who tried to bring down the "defect rate" involved in giving patients drugs. The death rate from drug errors was 1 in 1,000, which sounds low, but that still meant a lot of deaths every year. For change to even be considered, the hospital had to acknowledge that it had a defect rate, that is, that some people who were dying didn't have to be. "Hospital lawyers were not keen to put this admission on record."
That sounds very much like a local government. No one wants to acknowledge ethical misconduct, least of all government attorneys, who are in the best position to understand conflict situations when they see them, but are themselves conflicted due to their daily relationship with officials. The most that is usually acknowledged is that, every now and then, there is a bad apple, an acknowledgment that is immediately followed by the statement that bad apples can't be taught to be ethical and that everyone else is good.
How did things change at the hospitals? A guest at the consultant's speech, who happened to be chair of the state hospital association, said, "An awful lot of people for a long time have had their heads in the sand on this issue, and it's time to do the right thing." How many chairs of state municipal associations say something like this about government ethics?
Hating the Solution
Another case study in the book involves drug-related errors in a hospital. In this case, errors in medication occurred because doctors kept interrupting nurses on their way to administer medication. The chosen solution was having nurses don a "medication vest," which effectively told doctors not to bother them. The nurses and doctors both hated the solution, but it worked. "You know you've got a smart solution," the Heaths write, "when everyone hates it and it still works."
Officials hate going to an ethics adviser they don't know. They would much rather go to the city or county attorney, or the attorney who advises their board or works in their agency. But when this occurs, and there's a scandal, people question the advice of the friendly attorney with no expertise in government ethics. When the attorney defends her advice, things can get really ugly.
If officials are not permitted to seek advice from anyone but the ethics officer, they may hate it, but they will find that it works, not just for them (they may never believe that), but for their colleagues. A hateful solution may be hard to sell, but when it works, it will be accepted.
Click here to read the other six blog posts on Switch.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
In their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Crown, 2010), Chip and Dan Heath note that self-control or, more accurately, self-supervision is an exhaustible resource. What looks like laziness or selfishness is often simply exhaustion. Self-supervision gets burned up by managing the impression we make on others, by coping with fears, and by trying to focus on complex instructions.
With respect to government ethics, officials have trouble following ethics rules, especially those with numerous exceptions. At best, they put all the ethics burden on their lawyers, that it, the city or county attorney. At worst, they ignore the rules altogether.
Neither solution is good. The best way to change the way officials deal with conflict situations is to keep the rules simple. This is consistent with another of the Heaths' "surprises" about change: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. If you want people to change, the directions have to be crystal clear.
Providing clarity means simplifying the rules. Does this mean that ethics rules should be cut down to one conflict provision or five clear prohibitions? No. What it means is letting officials focus on doing one simple thing that they're comfortable with: asking for professional advice. Only instead of having them ask the individual they're comfortable with — the city or county attorney — they ask a different professional, an ethics officer.
This limits ethical self-supervision to one act: seeking advice from the ethics officer. That's not too taxing.
Motivating Officials
Even when people know what they're supposed to do, and it isn't all that hard, they often need to be motivated or they'll do what they've always done. The typical government ethics approach to motivation is creating strong, often criminal penalties. But all this does is turn officials against the whole idea of an ethics program and make them try all sorts of ways to undermine it. The problem isn't motivating officials regarding government ethics. It's changing what they're motivated to do.
The best way to do this is through pride. Every official wants her government to be seen as incorruptible. It feels good and it's a good way to attract legitimate businesses to the city or county. And officials want to see themselves as the sort of people who know how to do things the right way, to responsibly handle their conflict situations. Think how an official would respond to a colleague who said, "Joe, you usually do such a professional job. Why aren't you seeking professional advice for this conflict you have?" This is what the Heaths call "appealing to identity."
Bright Spots
Those pushing for ethics reform can point out how, with the best government ethics program in the country, New York City has gone from being seen as extremely corrupt to being seen as pretty clean. The same is true of such cities as Atlanta and Los Angeles. Palm Beach County has recently done a great deal to change the reputation of its municipalities by creating a countywide ethics program. And the officials in these municipalities know that they are protected because they can call and get quick, professional advice, which will protect them from scandal.
Bright spots are sometimes hard to find, because it's the dark spots that get most of the publicity. Bright spots may include local or regional ethics programs that have worked. But the best "bright spots" are the officials in one's own government who correctly withdraw from matters when they have a possible conflict, who seek advice when they're not sure what to do about a possible conflict situation, and who try to openly discuss the ethical aspects of matters, whether their own or others' relationships are involved. It's valuable for those seeking ethics reform to talk to these individuals, ask them why they do what they do even without an adequate government ethics program, and why they think others are not doing what they do.
If an agency, board, or department head believes that the government's ethics program is providing insufficient requirements and support, it can turn itself into a bright spot by instituting its own ethics program. It can designate an ethics officer to provide better training and more timely, professional advice (someone outside the organization is best), require more (and more public) disclosure (including from those seeking benefits from the agency or board), and even set up a board to deal with violations. After a couple of years, the head can present the results to the local legislative body, recommending that the program be extended to all officials and employees.
Dark Spots
Too often, city and county attorneys don't look for bright spots, but instead use as a model the ethics code of a nearby city or county that lacks a real ethics program.
A different sort of dark spot is the creation of a display of hundreds of officials who have had their careers come to an ugly end because their city or county didn't have a good ethics program. This is the drivers ed approach. It hasn't seemed to work so far, because everyone believes he's different, that is, better in behavior or at not getting caught.
Another kind of dark spot to employ are scandals in local agencies and departments that do not subscribe to a government ethics program and do not participate in the government's ethics environment. This includes police departments, sheriff's offices, housing and public transit authorities, and the like. The scandals that come from these fiefdoms are usually big, but are insufficiently used to educate officials in the larger government about the importance of a strong ethics program and a healthy ethics environment.
Defect Rate
One of the Heaths' case studies involves a hospital administration consultant who tried to bring down the "defect rate" involved in giving patients drugs. The death rate from drug errors was 1 in 1,000, which sounds low, but that still meant a lot of deaths every year. For change to even be considered, the hospital had to acknowledge that it had a defect rate, that is, that some people who were dying didn't have to be. "Hospital lawyers were not keen to put this admission on record."
That sounds very much like a local government. No one wants to acknowledge ethical misconduct, least of all government attorneys, who are in the best position to understand conflict situations when they see them, but are themselves conflicted due to their daily relationship with officials. The most that is usually acknowledged is that, every now and then, there is a bad apple, an acknowledgment that is immediately followed by the statement that bad apples can't be taught to be ethical and that everyone else is good.
How did things change at the hospitals? A guest at the consultant's speech, who happened to be chair of the state hospital association, said, "An awful lot of people for a long time have had their heads in the sand on this issue, and it's time to do the right thing." How many chairs of state municipal associations say something like this about government ethics?
Hating the Solution
Another case study in the book involves drug-related errors in a hospital. In this case, errors in medication occurred because doctors kept interrupting nurses on their way to administer medication. The chosen solution was having nurses don a "medication vest," which effectively told doctors not to bother them. The nurses and doctors both hated the solution, but it worked. "You know you've got a smart solution," the Heaths write, "when everyone hates it and it still works."
Officials hate going to an ethics adviser they don't know. They would much rather go to the city or county attorney, or the attorney who advises their board or works in their agency. But when this occurs, and there's a scandal, people question the advice of the friendly attorney with no expertise in government ethics. When the attorney defends her advice, things can get really ugly.
If officials are not permitted to seek advice from anyone but the ethics officer, they may hate it, but they will find that it works, not just for them (they may never believe that), but for their colleagues. A hateful solution may be hard to sell, but when it works, it will be accepted.
Click here to read the other six blog posts on Switch.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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