A few months ago, I struck up a conversation with a neighbor of mine who I had never met before. Soon into our first neighborly conversation, we learned that we were both employees of the City of Syracuse. I asked which department he worked in, and when he returned the question, I answered, “I’m a project manager with the i-team.” He nodded his head and said, “Can I be honest? I’m not really sure what you guys do over there. I mean, it seems like you guys are always working on a lot of stuff, but I just don’t know what it is that you DO.”
It’s a fair question because at first glance, our team is working on a multitude of different projects and initiatives that don’t always seem to relate to each other in terms of subject matter. We do try to choose projects or initiatives to work on that have sufficient data to detail or characterize the problem and to track and measure impact; have some level of ambiguity or will need some serious problem-solving; and will have a meaningful impact on city operations and Syracuse residents. That said, my neighbor was pretty spot on in his observation that it’s hard to define exactly what we do.
In thinking more about that interaction, I came to the realization that what makes our team unique is how we do our work rather than what project or initiative we’re specifically working on at the time.
The graphic below which Bloomberg Philanthropies uses to frame the work of i-teams, illustrates the general flow of how we work. I’ll explain the different components of this diagram in more detail later on, but there are some parts of the diagram that are worth explaining beforehand. As you’ll see, there are a few key processes highlighted by the red, blue, and green circles:
Image Provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies
Red = Understand. First, we work to understand the problem.
Blue = Generate. Second, we generate and test ideas or solutions that may help solve the problem.
Green = Deliver. Third, we deliver initiatives and measure their impact.
On the lefthand side of the graphic, there are five key mindsets that we incorporate into every part of our work from start to finish. Those mindsets will be explained next.
The Mindsets
In the graphic, the five key mindsets that are listed are:
Impact-Driven
Creative
People-Centered
Iterative
Collaborative
These terms are thrown around a lot in the innovation world, but as a human being, I don’t find myself using them in my everyday conversations. With that in mind, I’ve explained what those terms mean and how they impact the work we do.
Impact-Driven: As odd as it sounds, sometimes government spends time coming up with solutions to problems that don’t exist, or when we think we’ve solved a problem, there is no evidence to confirm that we did. That’s why we strive to use data (information that is either represented using numbers or words) to evaluate the extent of a particular problem and to measure the impact of our solution on solving it.
Creative: In every field, there are dreams of solutions that seem just too lofty to ever accomplish. In our office, we have a large sheet of poster paper hanging with a message written in Sharpie marker that reads, “If our success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps might you choose?” This message essentially gets at the point that for there to be meaningful change in local government, coming up with ideas that are lofty, creative, and maybe even a bit far-fetched, is the best starting place. The more ideas we generate, the more choices we have for how to solve hard problems at the end of the day.
People-Centered: Making our work people-centered means including the human perspective in each phase of our work. When problems impact residents or city departments, residents and city departments need to be engaged and involved at every step along the way to make sure that solutions will be effective in solving challenges that directly impact them.
Iterative: Iterative relates to the word repetitive. It means that in our work, we will often repeat and rethink portions of our work after learning something new or after experiencing failure in what we have designed. Iterations, or repetitions, allow and welcome change and new perspectives into the process of solving a challenge. Welcoming change through iterations also means that we welcome failure because it helps us learn and improve upon what we have already created.
Collaborative: A big part of what we do is working together. When there are more voices included in the work we do to solve city challenges, there is a much greater chance that we will deliver solutions that work for more people. Whether it’s having two or three team members look over our work to offer input, or having stakeholders from the public and community parter to launch a new program or initiative, collaboration has huge benefits in our work.
The Process
Incorporating the mindsets I mentioned above, our team follows the steps below when we work from problem to solution:
Step 1 - Understand the Problem: This is the first step we take when tasked with tackling a new challenge. In this step, we start off by understanding generally what the problem is all about, but after researching the problem more and seeing what the data tells us, we are able to reframe the problem in a way that will help us generate solutions and ideas about how to fix it. Having numbers that describe the problem, as well as stories of people who are impacted by the problem, help us see multiple sides of the problem and gives us a baseline measurement that we can refer back to later on to see if we have made any progress or not.
Step 2 - Generate & Test New Ideas: In this second step, we think of as many ideas as possible about how to solve the problem identified in the first step. In some cases, we’ll develop hundreds of ideas, even though we may only stick with a few of them. This is the step where we test those ideas to see if they work. At this stage, it’s helpful to get feedback from stakeholders too, because they will help let us know if we’re on track or if we need to make changes. Sometimes we will test ideas on a smaller scale, so if they don’t work well, it’s ok because we haven’t spent too much time or resources on them. If they do work well, we will figure out how to make them work on a larger scale. By the end of this step, we have a portfolio of initiatives that we believe will have a significant impact on solving the problem
Step 3 - Launch Initiatives: In this step, we partner with our stakeholders to launch the initiatives that we think will help solve the problem, and we measure the impact of the initiative on how effective it is at solving the problem.
Repeat?: Sometimes when we launch initiatives, we realize we still have more work to do in order to solve the problem, or we realize that maybe we didn’t understand a certain part of the problem as well as we should have. In that case, we go back to understanding the problem, generating and testing ideas, and launching initiatives. Because our work is cyclical in nature, we are able to work with stakeholders to continuously add or improve upon what we’ve already done to make sure that we do it right.
Hopefully I was able to explain a little more about how we do our work in the i-team and why. Amidst all of the data collecting, researching, ideating, and prototyping, though, it’s important to note that none of the other steps in this process will work unless we have the right voices at the table. Yes, iterating, brainstorming and crunching numbers will get us somewhere, but having diverse coalitions of partners who are equally empowered to contribute gives us a much better shot at getting it right.
In government and in the field of public sector innovation, inclusion, equity, and accessibility are the parts that are most imperative to our success as well as the parts that we have arguably the biggest problems with achieving. When government has historically played such a central role in excluding and harming communities of color, government now has the responsibility to take a central role in developing solutions to those problems, and as change-makers in city government, city innovators need to adopt that kind of ownership as well