The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government by Rosemary O'Leary

This book was recommended to me by Professor Hyde, who teaches my Intro to Public Administration course in the Master's in P.A. program that I started this Spring. Considering that Dr. Hyde is one of the few people I have ever met who reads more than I do, I was inclined to follow his suggestion, and am glad that I did! Though the book itself is really only a collection of anecdotes gathered from a career in the Public sector combined with a request for submissions, the stories themselves are so interesting that the reader is going to have some sort of a reaction - whether pro or con would depend on the reader.

My reaction to stories of public servant passive and active resistance was, WHAT??? YOU CAN DO THAT??? From my HR lady perspective, the news that my coworkers in the public sector are deliberately undermining their coworkers, are free to practice insubordination, and are committing gross acts of disloyalty is truly shocking. As a taxpayer, the news that a few government employees, through passive resistance, are able to scuttle an initiative painstakingly voted into law is just plain disheartening. This explains a lot about how government truly works.

When people talk about "the government", we tend to speak of it as an emotionless monolith that knows everything and follows one all-encompassing set of rules and regulations. Instead, government is a wide assortment of units, divisions and bureaus made up of hundreds of thousands of people with a vast assortment of educational backgrounds and personal beliefs. One passionate individual really can make a difference! The question is, is that a good thing? Personally, I'm inclined to say no.

Even the stories which were presented as positive examples of guerrilla government, such as the resistance to an EPA regional administrator, seemed more like examples of group dynamics gone wildly awry. Where is the loyalty that an employee is expected to show to an employer? Or is that expectation present when the employer is the people of the nation, including oneself? Are there cases where a higher loyalty supersedes that of the employer? What about the Forest Ranger who sued the Forest Service? Personally, I found that a case of poorly managed organizational dynamics. The fact that this guy used to be the head of the station and then voluntarily stepped down meant that he was extremely likely to resist the direction and vision of his replacement through completely natural feelings of competition and resentment. This employee should have been transferred to a new location when he was demoted. Also, the presence of the previous incumbent, who was slightly hostile, would of course polarize the new director and encourage him/her to dig in to his/her position to a greater extent that he/she would have without the presence of a critical and vocal former supervisor who still commanded the loyalty of the other employees. That was a recipe for disaster completely aside from the actual issue of whether recreational vehicles should be permitted on national park lands.

As you can see, I am one of the people who reacted strongly to this book. It also helped crystallize for me some general principles of recruiting. Namely, the dangers inherent in hiring a high potential employee who is passionate about the purpose of the organization. You want to hire someone who is at least willing to pretend to care about making sprockets, but do you really want a whole organization made up of people who desperately, sincerely care about every aspect of sprocket production, pricing and marketing? How many visionaries can one organization have?

I highly recommend this book to anyone working in the public sector, anyone working in a hostile organization (it has some excellent evil ideas), or anyone curious about how government policy is actually enacted at the ground level. I think that it'd also be a good book for a non-fiction book club, due to the strong reactions that it elicits.

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

Fantastic book that everyone interested in human thought should read! This extremely important concept seems to be unknown across society: namely, how an issue is phrased has a HUGE impact on how people will respond. For example, where a school cafeteria chooses to place high calorie food items has an effect on childhood obesity.
The scary thing is that many of the nudges that we receive in everyday life are unintentional. There is a paucity of Macchiavellis in business and government. For every supermarket which purposely designs the flow and placement of items to maximize sales of high ticket items, there is a corresponding set of poorly designed bodegas. The myriad opportunities to guide people's decisions are being poorly utilized.
This book also explores the ethics of using available knowledge regarding how people make choices to guide them toward the choice considered most desirable. Personally, I think that the authors err a little too much on the side of caution. How could it be unethical to place a picture of a duck in a men's urinal to increase accuracy? Could it possibly be a bad idea to try to reduce childhood obesity merely by deciding where to place the chocolate cake? If we know that people are likely to be affected by inertia to the point of letting their retirement money ride, how is it immoral to exercise great care in designing the default choices?

Those questions and more are why I loved this book. It is highly provocative and provides a great deal of food for thought. Hopefully, more people will examine the opportunities that they have in their own lives to provide beneficial nudges and will exercise great care to ensure that these nudges are not solely motivated by self-interest and do not have too strong of an effect on free-will. I definitely recommend this book!

A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter

Rather than urgency, I received a strong sense of need for a new boat, or want to create a 529 fund for my grandkid on the part of the author. This "book" read as a looong advertisement and collection of testimonials for John Kotter's other books, Leading Change and Our Iceberg is Melting. Actually, I think that I'll go out and pick up a copy of the second book, since it sounded pretty good from the testimonials.
I do not recommend this book. Being a Harvard Business School Professor is no reason to be allowed to shove horrible regurgitations of 12 year old theory onto the reading public. There is nothing new in this book, just a series of blurbs about how the author's previous work has changed the lives of people around the world. While this is an excellent testimonial for those interested in booking Dr. Kotter for a speaking engagement, it's not much use for those interested in creating a sense of urgency. My recommendation is, read the original book(s). That's what I am going to do!

Who's Your City? by Richard Florida

Richard Florida is the author of the highly provocative Rise of the Creative Class and the follow-up book Flight of the Creative Class. Who's Your City is not specifically tied to RF's earlier work, but does build upon the basic premise that the change to a post-industrial, service and tech economy affects where people choose to live, and that this choice will affect every aspect of their lives.

I loved this book. I actually had a hard time finishing it because I kept finding myself staring into space digesting chunks of thought. This is definitely a book to read, ponder, repeat; and like shampoo, you just keep doing it until it all sinks in.

One of the main reasons that I loved the book is the author's clear bias toward the SF Bay Area. It's always nice to have someone tell you that you live in the best area in the world and then prove it through statistical analysis.

The tone of the book had a nice blend of scholarly analysis and populistic spoon-feeding. It is a mostly easy-to-read book with the occasional patch of challenging material, which is one of the main things that I look for in my non-fiction reading.

I think that the whole concept of the creative class is such a huge pivotal point in modern life that everyone should read at least one book by RF to be prepared to discuss it with friends, family & coworkers. One of the bits that has been picked up by the press is RF's finding that the presence of a high percentage of homosexuals in a neighborhood will lead to an eventual rise in property value. RF offers a few possible theories to explain this association. Interesting.

Go forth, read, and then move to the Bay Area!