Winter Reading: Switch V - Simplifying and Motivating

Anonymous

Mon, 02/18/2013 - 05:18

Advisory Opinions

Simplifying Self-Supervision 
In their book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752/" target="”_blank”">Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard</a> (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. 
 
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/search/node/switch%20heaths">Click here to read the other six blog posts on Switch.</a> 
 
Robert Wechsler 
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics 
 
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Winter Reading: Switch V - Simplifying and Motivating

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