Thinking about Product in the Public (Sector), 2024.1

(Full disclosure: I originally published this on LinkedIn and expect to post on this theme multiple times a year)

At the end of the 1996 movie NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN, Andy Garcia’s character, as the new NYC District Attorney, gives a speech to incoming DAs about what they are going to face. As a person whose 30 years of professional career has centered around service to the common good, there’s a theme in this speech that hit home with me the first time I heard it which I revisit multiple times a year: “it’ll break your heart – and when you stop caring, you need to get out.”

In my professional life as a public servant, I have found that that making a real difference to public sector outcomes requires:

1. Investing with all you’ve got in what you’re trying to accomplish

2. Weathering the heartbreak generated repeatedly by the multitude of ways that government's general bias for oversight of process compliance over outcomes generation means that you won't be able to do what you see needs to be done

3. Re-investing anyway

4. Accepting/celebrating microscopic gains (which is, often, in itself, heartbreaking)

5. Adjusting approach for the next pass at the windmill

6. Repeating, again, and again.

Long before I got into my current role, at every heartbreak I’ve had a moment where I had to check-in again. And I have had to leave jobs because the latest heartbreak was finally too much to sustain and come back tomorrow as invested as I was yesterday.

Recently, I woke up after just such a heartbreak and found, gratefully, I was even more invested than I had been the day before. And to be honest, it has a lot to do with how my focus now on product-thinking – i.e. focusing on delivering RESULTS as proof of solutions, rather than "deliverables" as proof of requirements met – is a powerful approach to getting things done in the public sector.

I've recently been a fangirl of Jennifer Pahlka's book RECODING AMERICA.

It’s been a hope infusion -- a reminder that in an organization led by commitments to producing the right and important outcomes, the essential tools of Product Thinking are deep assets:

1.   Understand and name what’s important to accomplish and what’s in the way of it

2.   Define Objectives and Key Results that would prove delivery of those outcomes

3.   Test ways to achieve them

4.   Measure the effectiveness of each approach

5.   Adjust approach as indicated

6.   Achieve outcomes.

7. Repeat.

I find my hope as a public servant today from practicing product thinking. My plan is to do that even here--not perfectly, but still, intentionally.

That NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN speech ends: “But if you’re ready to take that kind of risk… welcome.”

What keeps you ready and willing to take those risks?