Cartoon – Honesty as a Policy
Tag Archives: Policy
Data-Driven Policy Making In An Age Of Anecdotes: What Happens When A Foundation Creates A Policy Center?
Why would a health foundation create a public policy research center?
The Healing Trust, in Nashville, Tennessee, has funded a wide variety of health-related service and advocacy organizations in Middle Tennessee. But in 2014, we asked them what additional support we could give to these organizations engaged in policy and advocacy work. One priority quickly rose to the top: timely, high-quality, and nonpartisan research and analysis on public policy issues critical to our community.
Tennessee has several prominent academic institutions with respected researchers in this field, but an independent and nonpartisan public policy research center simply did not exist. We began to explore this idea, using research to vet different business models for similar centers in other states. Ultimately, we decided to incubate this new policy center inside our foundation before spinning it off into a separate and independent nonprofit organization.
Aiming to create a true community resource, The Healing Trust worked with the Nelson Andrews Leadership Center to engage eighty stakeholders in an intense, three-day, co-design process. A core group of participants then spent another three months hammering out the details. This collaborative process established community buy-in and developed the road map for everything from staffing needs and board composition to the policy center’s mission, name, and brand.
Inspired and encouraged by the community’s engagement, The Healing Trust board committed $2.5 million over five years as seed funding to launch the Sycamore Institute.
Lessons Learned Through Launching The Center
What has the foundation learned through launching the Sycamore Institute, and why should philanthropy think about supporting policy research?
Ability to respond quickly in a rapidly changing policy environment: The Sycamore Institute has only been fully staffed for about six months—a period that includes one full legislative session in Tennessee and months of head-spinning debate in Congress over health reform. Yet, in that short time, our foundation’s investment has shown a solid return in the form of more than thirty reports, policy briefs, and blog posts about health policy and budget issues affecting Tennessee. As an independent public policy research center, the Sycamore Institute has the ability and agility to weigh in on rapidly evolving topics like how health reform efforts in Congress could affect our state.
Educating policy makers, the public, the media, and nonprofit partners: No matter where one stands on the political spectrum, we can all agree on the value of helping public officials make better-informed decisions. “Public Policy 101s” like how health insurance markets work and the nuts and bolts of Medicaid are just as important as analysis of specific legislation like the American Health Care Act. Our governor, administrative agencies, and legislators at the state and federal levels have already used the Sycamore Institute’s work to better understand key issues and communicate with their constituents.
These resources are equally valued by our foundation’s other grantees, who have become (1) even more knowledgeable about policy issues that affect their missions and (2) better equipped to engage with policy makers, the public, and other potential funders.
And in an era of shrinking newsrooms, the Sycamore Institute also provides important context and unbiased information to journalists covering health and fiscal policy. In very short order, the institute has become a trusted source for media outlets across Tennessee.
Unexpected Challenges
What were some of the unexpected challenges faced in launching a nonpartisan policy center?
Hiring the right leader: Hiring the right person to lead the Sycamore Institute proved more challenging than expected. The Healing Trust initially focused on candidates with backgrounds in policy research, but the collaborative design process we used shifted our focus to people with leadership experience who could launch a start-up and cultivate a diverse board. (Political, professional, geographic, and cultural diversity were all important criteria for the board.) Going back to the drawing board, our hiring committee interviewed new candidates and ultimately hired an experienced nonprofit executive director with an advanced degree in public policy.
Hiring the right staff: Building a staff with the ability to conduct high-quality research and analysis in-house and communicate about it to interested stakeholders was another challenge. Fully staffing the Sycamore Institute with an executive director, policy director, research analyst, and communications director took fourteen months—just in time to hit the ground running for the 2017 session of the Tennessee state legislature.
Recruiting a bipartisan board: To maximize and broaden the Sycamore Institute’s impact, the design shop showed we needed a bipartisan board committed to supporting nonpartisan work. The board’s balance of Republicans, Democrats, and political independents has been critical to building relationships with policy makers on both sides of the aisle. A balance of skill sets, diversity, and leadership potential is also key. With both the Sycamore Institute and its original board members based in the state capital, Nashville, recruiting additional board members from other regions of Tennessee remains a top priority.
Advocacy or analysis? Another question we wrestled with early on was where to draw the line. The primary goal of founding the Sycamore Institute was to fill a void of credible, independent, and nonpartisan analysis of policy issues in Tennessee. But should the organization go a step further to offer conclusions and recommend specific policies? Ultimately, the board and executive director decided that the Sycamore Institute would not advocate for specific policies, reasoning that doing so could hurt its credibility as a trustworthy source of politically neutral information.
Concluding Words
Building and maintaining health and well-being, which are complex issues, demand significant public and private resources. In Tennessee, as in most states, health care and education are the state’s top two budget priorities. The Sycamore Institute is dedicated to understanding and explaining the state budget and existing and proposed laws that affect the health and well-being of Tennesseans. Its information has already enabled citizens, policy makers, nonprofit agencies, foundations, media outlets, service providers, and others to understand better the fiscal and human impact of pending policies, giving stakeholders a nonpartisan and informed stake in the process and the outcomes.
7 Barnacles Creating Drag On Your Leadership Effectiveness
As a natural process of a ship being in the water for extended periods of time, barnacles and other marine life grow and attach themselves to the ship’s hull. If left unattended, the barnacles can increase drag up to 60%. This can decrease speed by 10% and result in the ship using 40% more fuel. In essence, the ship works harder, spends more energy, and performs worse over time.
The same principle applies in our leadership journey. Over the course of time we accumulate habits and practices that increase drag on our performance. Everything seems to take more time and energy than it should require. It builds up almost imperceptibly until one day we wake up and feel like we’re burned out. Just like ships are periodically removed from the water to have their hulls cleaned, leaders need to regularly remove the barnacles that are holding them back from performing at their best. Here are six common barnacles that weigh you down over time:
1. Meetings — Let’s face it, even though meetings are the bane of our existence, they serve a vital purpose in organizational life. It’s a primary way information is shared, relationships built, and work is accomplished. However, we too often let meetings run us instead of us running meetings. Review your calendar and examine each of your regular meetings. Are they still serving the purpose for which they were created? Do the meetings have specific agendas with desired outcomes identified? Are the right people involved to make decisions? Are there alternative ways to accomplish the goal of the meeting without bringing everyone together? Those are all valuable questions to ask. If the meetings aren’t providing the return on investment that makes them worth your time, cancel them or reshape them to be more productive.
2. Policies, Procedures, Processes — We institute policies, procedures, or processes to handle new activities that arise over the course of time. When money, staffing, and time isn’t an issue, we don’t give much thought to adding new work into the system. But when resources become scarce, it can prove very difficult to reduce or eliminate activities or services that have become the norm. It can be helpful to apply the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, to your leadership practices. What are the 20% of your activities that produce 80% of your results? Focus on the 20% and remove the 80% that are barnacles.
3. Committees — Collaboration is an important and valuable practice but sometimes we take it a bit too far by trying to do everything by committee. It slows down the process and frustrates everyone involved. If a committee is truly needed, make sure it has a clear purpose, goals, and clear decision-making authority. If you’re a member of a committee that doesn’t have a clear purpose and goals, reevaluate your membership. Maybe it’s time to remove this barnacle.
4. No-No People — Every organization has naysayers; it’s a fact of life. However, there is a big difference between people who express doubts or ask questions in a genuine effort to understand the proposed change and make the best decision possible, versus those who are No-No’s—their answer will always be “no,” no matter what. No-No’s are huge barnacles that cause tremendous drag on your leadership. They require enormous amounts of emotional and mental energy that distract you from more important priorities. Removing this barnacle will dramatically increase your productivity and personal satisfaction of being a leader.
5. No Vision or Goals — In a paradoxical sort of way, the lack of something, in this case vision and goals, can actually be something that weighs you down. A clear vision and specific goals help to focus your energy and streamline your efforts. When you know what you’re striving for, you can pare away all the non-essentials that get in your way. Without a clear vision or goals, your leadership energies are widely dispersed and less effective. If you feel like your days are consumed with fighting fires and you go to bed at night exhausted from chasing every squirrel that crosses your path, then chances are you don’t have a clear vision or goals driving your actions.
6. Seeking the Approval of Others — You will always be unfulfilled as a leader (or person) if your self-worth is determined by the approval of others. Striving to please all people in all circumstances is a barnacle that will slow you down to a crawl. Leaders sometimes have to make decisions that benefit one group of people over another and that inevitably leads to conflict. The best thing you can do as a leader to remove this barnacle is to act with integrity in all circumstances. Not every decision you make will be a popular one, but as long as you consistently live your values you will earn the respect and trust of your colleagues.
7. Lack of Self-Care — Imagine your leadership capacity as a large pitcher of water. The water represents your time, energy, and abilities as a leader to influence others. If all you do is pour yourself into others, without periodically refilling your own reserves, you’ll eventually run dry. To maintain your leadership effectiveness, it’s important to nurture yourself through reading, sharing experiences with other leaders, and having mentors or coaches who stretch you and cause you to grow in your own leadership journey.
The buildup of these different leadership barnacles is inevitable but it doesn’t have to be final. Perform a regular cleansing to remove the barnacles and restore your leadership performance to its full potential.
Cartoon – Honesty as a Policy
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The Strategy That Will Fix Health Care
http://hbr.org/2013/10/the-strategy-that-will-fix-health-care/
HENRY KOTULA 