High-performing Government

As a father, I’ve relearned how incredibly gifted, skilled, and virtuous human beings can be. There are so many good things that our older son does that we haven’t taught him explicitly. He makes jokes, he voluntarily shares dessert, he hugs his brother and watches over him. He figures out problems and makes inferences. He helps to wash dishes and tells the truth (most of the time).

It’s really quite amazing. And a big turning point for me was a realization that yes, I can expect a lot from him. So I do, even though he’s only two.

He is smart, capable, and motivated. There's a lot that he’ll figure out, I’ve come to realize, if I set high expectations for him and am willing to coach him up.

The interesting thing about high expectations for little kids is that they meet them, much more than we think is possible. They are growth and learning machines. My son regresses a lot when I don’t set high expectations for him.

It’s so easy in our lives to have low expectations. And then what results is thoroughly disappointing.

I feel this way so often about government.

It bothers me so deeply - it offends me down to my core - that we have such low expectations of government. Any of these sound familiar?:

• “It’s so inefficient”

• “They’re incompetent”

• “Every bureaucrat is lazy and dumb”

• “Government never accomplishes anything”

• “Every politician is corrupt”

• “Government is too slow to make this happen”

• “We should cut their budgets, they won’t use it well anyway”

• And it goes on and on

I think we’re getting the government we deserve. If we’re not willing to have high expectations, if we’re not willing to invest, if we’re not willing to make government reform a priority - the government we have is exactly the one we should expect.

And that’s partly - maybe even mostly - on us.

If we had higher expectations, and actually backed those expectations up with actions, we’d probably have a higher-performing Government.

What if what we expected was more like this:

• Our government (state / local / federal) will have a 10-year strategic plan that actually makes sense

• Our government will be filled with talented, competent people - truly the best and brightest

• Our government will administer services more efficiently than the private sector; because it is more important, it should

• Our government will truly represents the population it serves

• Our government will be honest, caring, fast-moving

• Our government will have effective leaders and managers

• Our government will be incredibly good at listening to the voice of the constituent

• Our government will set concrete goals and measure results

When I served in the Detroit City Government, I had the highest expectations I’ve ever been asked to deliver upon. This was because my chain of command (Residents, Mayor, Chief of Police, Assistant Chief, Director, me) had high expectations. And damn it, most of the time we hit them even though it seemed impossible to even try.

We met those expectations, more than we thought was possible.

As a citizen, I see how important those high expectations are. In Detroit we didn’t even have the basics 10-15 years ago. Streetlights, trash pickup with curbside recycling, timely 911 response. And even though Detroit has a long way to go to be considered high-performing Government, the difference the last few years has made is jaw dropping. In my opinion, it’s on a solid trajectory toward high performance.

We’re going to keep getting the government we deserve one way or the other. Let’s deserve a high-performing Government.