Winter Reading: Switch I - Situational Forces
There is a great deal of thought-provoking material in Chip and Dan
Heath's book <i><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></i>
(Crown, 2010). Change has proved hard in every single city and
county in the United States. Those seeking government ethics reform
can learn a lot from this book.<br>
<br>
There are two different types of change involved in government
ethics. One involves ethics reform, a local government's change
toward instituting an effective, independent ethics program. The
second type of change is each official's movement toward dealing
responsibly with his and his colleagues' conflict situations.<br>
<br>
In the next several blog posts, I will apply some of the Heaths'
ideas to both types of change.<br>
<br>
<b>Changing the Situation, Not the Person</b><br>
One of the most valuable aspects of this book for government ethics
is its authors' recognition of how important situational factors are
to how people act. "What looks like a person problem is often a
situation problem," the Heaths write. It's almost as if the Heaths
were talking about how local officials view government ethics, that
is, as a person rather than a situation problem. They talk in terms
of character and integrity, and they focus on ethics enforcement
against individuals, not changing the government's culture.<br>
<br>
The tendency of Americans especially to see things as a person
problem can be seen everywhere in our culture. A person who is given
a huge bucket of popcorn becomes gluttonous, but it is not useful to
call him a glutton. Someone who is late for an appointment drives
crazily, but is not a crazy driver. If you try to change the person
rather than the situation, you will fail.<br>
<br>
You may laugh at the thought that government ethics violations are a
form of overeating based on there being too much money to spread
around to contractors and grantees. Although this is true, this is
not something that can be changed. What you can do, however, is
create an environment where ethics issues are discussed just like
financial issues, and where everyone, from subordinates to attorneys
to contractors, feels responsible for disclosing relationships and
ownership interests (and where they don't fear retaliation
when they disclose something about somebody else). What you can do
is create an ethics program that provides professional ethics
training and advice. And then, guess what? Without changing
government officials at all, from just changing their environment,
they'll stop overeating ... I mean, there won't be more than the
rare ethics violation.<br>
<br>
<b>The Fundamental Attribution Error</b><br>
Lee Ross, in his book <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Person-Situation-Perspectives-Social-Psychology/d…; target="”_blank”">The
Person and the Situation</a></i>, calls our tendency to ignore
situational forces "the Fundamental Attribution Error." "The error
lies in our inclination to attribute people's behavior to the way
they are rather than to the situation they are in," write the
Heaths. And understanding this, they recommend changing the
situation to make change work. They call this "shaping the path,"
removing the friction from the path toward the destination of the
change.<br>
<br>
The Fundamental Attribution Error is one of the biggest obstacles to
creating a good government ethics program. When you think of
everything in terms of an official's character, then the only thing
you can do is punish the bad apples.<br>
<br>
<b>Ethics Environments</b><br>
When you recognize that people look to their environment for cues
about how to act, and you think in terms of changing the cues from
the environment, the choices open up. You can train officials,
because they're not simply good or bad, but individuals who aren't getting the right cues about handling conflict situations. You can provide them with
advice, so they'll be able to do the right thing. You can have
department heads and board chairs ask whether anyone has a conflict
whenever there is a new matter. And most of all, you can try to
create a healthy ethics environment, where ethics issues are
discussed openly at meetings, where everyone realizes that it is his
responsibility to the community to prevent ethical misconduct, where
every department looks at its processes to find places where
discretion, loopholes, and lack of oversight create temptations for
ethical misconduct, and where leaders come down hard on any sign of
intimidation. In this sort of ethics environment, it's hard not to
do the right thing.<br>
<br>
The Heaths quote former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner as saying, "I came to
see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the
game—it <i>is</i> the game." Every local government has an ethics
environment, and that environment plays a larger role than anything
else in how each official and employee handles conflict situations.
To change the way officials act and to bring about government ethics
reform, the ethics environment must be taken into account. An ethics
program that is imposed on a poor ethics environment is not likely
to be effective. A program has to be comprehensive and powerful
enough, and have the support of both high-level leadership and the
leadership of boards and agencies, to change the ethics environment
for the better.<br>
<br>
<b>Tradition and Social Status</b><br>
One of the Heaths' case studies deals with the problem of interns
working such long hours that they make mistakes and are inefficient.
Even when they are prohibited from working such long hours, they
continue to do so. Why? Because of the environment they work in. One
intern is quoted as saying, "It sounds sick, but these people are
like my family. The worst thing would be not to be respected by
these guys." Interns also note that, since the residents and doctors
put in the time as interns, it would be unfair for them not to. It's
a matter of tradition and social status. These are powerful elements
indeed, elements that few government ethics programs are designed to
change.<br>
<br>
In a local government with a poor ethics environment, loyalty is the
most powerful feeling. This too involves social status and
tradition. If officials have in the past said and done nothing about
officials who misuse their office for their own benefit (except after a scandal), then it's
almost impossible for new officials to do so. A young official who
thinks of speaking about another official's conflict situation worries
about breaking from tradition and about being ostracized. Her career
may even be over. And all by sticking her nose in where it doesn't
belong (as people say when loyalty overrides one's fiduciary duty to
the public and one's responsibility to preserve the government's
reputation).<br>
<br>
The unspoken rules have to be changed in order to change an ethics
environment. The Heaths have a wonderful term for what needs to
happen: "organizational molting." Officials and employees need
to know that they are required to report ethical misconduct and
expected to speak up when it appears a colleague or even a
supervisor is about to mishandle a conflict situation.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/search/node/switch%20heaths">Click here to read the other six blog posts on <i>Switch.</i></a><br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
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