Book Review: We the Possibility by Mitchell Weiss
I started the Bettering Communities Book Club in 2024 with the goal of creating stronger, intentional community with folks who love reading and learning. Our 2024 cohort consists of a dozen public leaders from around the U.S. We reviewed our third book of the year this month, We The Possibility: Harnessing Public Entrepreneurship to Solve Our Most Urgent Problems by Mitchell Weiss.
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Reactions to the Book:
We had a lot of medium reactions to the book in our group – not a huge amount of love or hate. It was a short and easy read, but many of us felt that it could have been shorter. The writing style was a bit hard to get through, too. The major takeaway we struggled with was the insinuation that local governments need to do more! Be more innovative! Open more doors! It’s a little hard to hear that message when you work day in and day out to deliver services to hear that you aren’t doing enough.
Quick Summary:
Author Weiss shares a variety of examples of local government organizations behaving more like startups or entrepreneurial organizations. He shares his personal experiences working for the City of Boston in deploying brand new crowdfunding resources to route funds quickly to victims and survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing terrorist attacks in 2013. The book provides real life examples of cities successes, failures, and most valuably, “pilots” to collaborate with emerging tech companies, ranging from Airbnb to Uber, autonomous vehicles, and even contact tracing technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weiss analyzes why governments tend to behave so cautiously compared to startups and what local governments can do to be more innovative and less risk-averse.
Chicken or the Egg? Resources vs. Opportunities
One part of the book that stuck with me right out the gate was the discussion of how “entrepreneurs look at an opportunity and worry later about resources”, whereas “trustees” (Weiss’ terminology) “look at their resources and then worry about opportunities. As a result, Weiss claims that trustees take longer to commit to opportunities, but then stick with their decisions longer. This inability to quickly adapt and give opportunities a trial run is a serious disadvantage that governments face over entrepreneurial organizations.
Unfortunately, local governments (especially where I work in Wisconsin) are forced to start with resources because they are so scarce. I do believe that innovation offers organizations the chance to be nimbler with the limited resources they have, but it’s challenging to hear an outsider critique the sector with a broad brush when I know of organizations that are barely able to balance their budgets or fund infrastructure replacement or public services.
I think that rather than these two ingredients being separate and binary, we should look at how these two ingredients can stretch resources further.
How Experimental and Innovative is YOUR Organization?
We talked about the local governments we have worked in and how they experiment or embrace new technology? There were widely different experiences across organizations. Some have seen new technologies invest in their communities, which has meant that staff AND elected officials have some homework to do in terms of educating themselves on these fields (for example: cryptocurrency mining.) We discussed how fiscal conservatism and risk aversion in a local government is not a bad thing, as Weiss semi implies, but rather it shows smart stewardship of public resources. One member discussed the idea of 95/5. 95% of your funds should be spent conservatively, invested in “sure fire”, known programs and outcomes. The other 5% can be your experimental funds where you try new things.
Organizations have adapted AI tools in different capacities, and some have noted that there isn’t the luxury of “time” like there used to be to develop policies for every emerging solution. Rather, it makes more sense to adopt guidelines and guard rails to not hinder innovation or delay implementation of new technologies. All are hopeful that use of AI in local government will allow for employees to focus less on automated, low-value tasks and more on the “human connection” functions of their work.
How Can Governments Hire to Be More Innovative?
Lastly, we discussed how folks drawn to a career in the public sector may be wired to be more risk averse. As a result, perhaps governments should look to develop an in-house futurist or innovation role that can consult with government departments as a starting point. To be clear: AS THE STARTING POINT. Just as creating a sustainability department or a DEI coordinator role cannot be the first and last step in an organization, it’s important to hire with a cohort – bringing folks with a more innovative, risk-forward personality across the organization to work to implement change en masse. One person can begin to make change, but it will likely stop if it is all on the back of one person.
