← GovLove - A Podcast About Local Government
GovLove - A Podcast About Local Government
#716 Building a People-Centered Workforce with Alex Lawrence, Boston, MA
00:57:44
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- [00:13]
A
Hey, I'm coming to you from Jacksonville, Florida. This is govlove, a podcast about local government brought to you by Engaging Local Government Leaders. I'm Ben Kittleson, manager, Raftelis and govlove co host for today's episode. We've got a great episode for you. We're talking with a friend of the pod and discussing, you know, trends of the last 10 years and also people operations. Before we get into that, the best way to support GovLove is to become an ELGL member. Engaging local Government Leaders is a professional association engaging the brightest minds in local government. And somehow we are celebrating 10 years of local government stories here on the podcast. I can't believe it. Still. I know this is like probably the umpteenth time I've said that on the podcast, but it's still pretty cool that we've been around that long. But as part of our celebration, we're opening up the Govlov hotline to our listeners, so you can call 720-282-1752, tell us what you think local government might be like in another 10 years and some of the trends or things you've seen impact the profession over the last 10 years. Now, let me introduce today's guest. Alex Lawrence is the Chief People officer for the city of Boston, Massachusetts, a position she's been in since 2022. In that role, she oversees the Office of Human Resources, the Office of Labor Relations, the registry and appropriations for health benefits, unemployment, and workers compensation. Prior to that, she held roles in the city's Department of Innovation and Technology and also roles as a consultant in the technology space and in the nonprofit world. And with that, welcome back to govlove. Alex, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.
- [01:46]
B
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah. So as you know, one of our traditions on the podcast is, is to get to know our guests a little better. Let you warm up with a lightning round. So my first question for you. What's the first concert that you went to?
- [02:01]
B
The first concert I ever went to was Brandy702 opened. I feel like that is maybe aging me a little bit, but if you know, you know, that's awesome.
- [02:14]
A
Very fun. I always love asking, does that still get Brandi, still get play in the rotation? Any playlists still feature?
- [02:22]
B
Yeah, I definitely have, like a nostalgia music taste. I did go to see the Backstreet Boys at the Sphere. Did you? Really like a couple weeks ago with my girlfriends from high school. So, yeah, I think nostalgia music listening too is something I'm pretty into.
- [02:38]
A
Oh, Backstreet Boys at the Sphere. That's gotta be. Yeah, that's gotta be something. I cannot imagine.
- [02:43]
B
It was like me and 20 other moms and it was great,
- [02:49]
A
but the whole crowd, I'm sure, was moms and daughters and.
- [02:51]
B
No, no, it was just moms. It was like I was a proto, like I was a prototype of the audience. Everyone was me just. Yeah. Anyway.
- [03:01]
A
Perfect. Oh my gosh, I love that. All right, the next lighting question for you. What book are you currently reading?
- [03:08]
B
Yeah, so I have like no non embarrassing answer to this question. I tend to read at like I have an incredibly crazy job. I am a mother of two, so reading is a bit of my escape. So I read thrillers generally as like the way that I, I escape. I'm currently reading the woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. Yeah. If anyone is interested in thrillers, I keep a notes app and my star ratings of them and I'm happy to share.
- [03:39]
A
Oh my gosh. Yeah, you might, you might have to share because I've done. This is with our second child is nine months and so I, I, I have yet to recover my, my reading habit and maybe a part of that is like I need to find something that a little more grabbing and yeah,
- [03:55]
B
this is the way I get my, this is the way I get reading in because like I can't, I cannot read something that is, that works my brain. I ha. It has to be escapism for me at this point in my career, I hope to get to another point where I like read, you know, interesting fiction or things about the world, but I'm not there.
- [04:11]
A
Yeah. Every time I pick up a book like that, I'm like, I don't know that I have the bandwidth for this right now, but a thriller. Oh, that's a mystery. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, last lightning question for you. Where do you go for inspiration?
- [04:26]
B
This is such a hard. I don't know. I found this an intimidating question because I think I don't spend probably enough time intentionally thinking about that. But I think that in local government, going, finding inspiration is like walking around your city and living your life.
- [04:48]
A
Yeah.
- [04:49]
B
It's like what it feels like right now. Taking my kids to school through a snowstorm when the bus isn't running. And I know that our city workers are doing like literally everything they possibly can and working crazy overtime to make the city function better in a time that's really, really hard. So for those of you who don't know in Boston right now, we the biggest storm in the. One of the 10th biggest storm in history in modern measurement, and then followed by just unprecedented cold and freezing. So we have a combo of just like a dumping of snow and then instead of typically what happens after a storm where the snow has the ability to melt, there is no ability to melt. We are in sub zero temperatures. So it's just, you know, I think walking around the street and seeing how hard everyone is working and people's neighbors are working to snow out their car and, you know, there's the occasional neighborhood fight that you see. But I think times like this where there's just an extreme thing that is happening from the outside. I take inspiration in just watching people realize that, like, getting around the city is a collective challenge that we all have to work together to, to complete.
- [05:57]
A
Yeah, no, that's well said. I'm seeing people, you know, it doesn't have to be an emergency event, but even just like seeing people come together to. For like an event, like a community event or an engagement thing, it's always, I, I agree with you. That always gives me inspiration and it's beautiful to see. So 10th biggest storm. How many inches of snow did that end up being?
- [06:21]
B
Like 19.
- [06:22]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [06:22]
B
And it dumped really fast and it was crazy. And so school was canceled for two days and my kids had a ton of fun. But from a logistical standpoint, it's a bit of a nightmare.
- [06:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For our listeners. We had to reschedule because you saw this coming and we're like, I'm going to be at home with children on a snow day. This will be.
- [06:44]
B
Yeah. While working to figure out how everyone is going to report to work and communicate to the entire workforce about when their shift starts and when there's snow compensation time starts. And it was not a time that I could take to podcast.
- [06:56]
A
That's the other thing is like, as a local government staffer, like, the, the beauty of a snow day is no longer applies to you because you're like, I got to figure out how people are going to get to work and clear roads and like, pick up trash despite these conditions. It's not just like, let's go find a hill and slide down it.
- [07:13]
B
Yeah. My kids got to hang out with neighbors and who I'm very, very grateful for and ghost while I, I'm sure they had fun to figure out other things. Yeah.
- [07:24]
A
Awesome. Well, we're going to. Today we'll. We'll talk more kind of about your work and, and what's going on at the city of Austin. But this is interview doing as part of a series where reflecting on 10 years of gov love and asking some of our, you know, favorite guests to come back and chat again. And one of the things I've been starting these conversations with is, you know, local government has changed a lot in that time, you know, and I want to get your perspective on what you think some of the biggest changes are that you've seen at the city or at the organizations you've dealt with and then what you kind of, you see them still dealing with. So like what are some of those takeaways for you over the last 10 years and kind of how the profession's changed or the work of local government might have changed?
- [08:07]
B
Yeah, so it's such an interesting question. I think specifically in the government workforce space. I think in the last podcast time I was really sort of developing the theory that coming out of COVID it became just so obvious that we needed to, as a sort of industry, deal with our workforce challenges. And I still think that that theory very true. And that there's still a ton of work to do in this space. You know, I think things like procurement and government technology, those are, you know, I started in civic tech right before healthcare.gov failed. And now you have these very strong, robust ecosystems and organizations that are devoted to solving the problems of civic technology. I think procurement sort of saw a slight wave after that. And you have these amazing organizations out there, you know, thinking about how to solve challenges in the government procurement space. I think the government talent space is an ecosystem that is still developing. You know, the nonprofits are still growing. I want to shout out Work for America who's doing amazing work in this space and I think getting a lot of traction. But I do think that they're sort of developing and you know, there are folks at the Kennedy School and professors like Elizabeth Linos who are now studying this space in ways that are really helpful. But it still just feels a little bit like I'm doing this work a tiny bit as a pioneer. That is what both of those organizations have told me. And I'm just like, what? I'm not a pioneer. I'm just doing normal organizational work. But I do think in this weird way, we are a little bit at the vanguard in thinking about workforce challenges at the local level. There isn't a robust set of well defined best practices that are clear and obvious and long term tested. And I think part of that happened as a result of COVID and how Covid changed things. I also think, and you know, Happy to sort of dig into that and talk about how I think Covid just sort of brought to bear, you know, everybody there was the great resignation. Like, people saw this across all different sectors about why investing in your workforce and workplace culture matters. But I think, like, government, you know, we're not cutting edge, so it takes us a little longer for. For good reason or not bleeding edge, I should say. We can do really innovative things, but there's a reason you want government to be stable. And so you don't always want it to be the place where you're trying something totally brand new. You want it. There's a good reason why you do things that are a little bit more tested. And so I think that that is something that we've really been thinking a lot about in this, in the government workforce space. And then I also think that, you know, you had, you had a set of both through what happened in Covid. And then I also think, just like as particularly baby boomers aged, there were a lot of retirements that happened around the same time. And I think every time a person who is like an institution who holds a place together in glue, tape and scissors, and everyone knows who that is in their organization, right? Like those people who just by force of will and personality and sheer talent and passion for the work just like hold so much. And I think you saw, and I don't think this is a Boston unique thing. I've talked to other people at other local governments. A lot of those people left the workforce at a similar time, you know, again, because of reasons like Covid. They're like, I just can't do this anymore. Or just because again, the way that the workforce aids. And in government, local government, we're always doing things that are super lean. I always joke that, like, what I do, I balance on my pinky, you know, Liberty Mutual, no knock to them. Amazing. Well, resourced organization has 14 people who are like, thinking about how they might do a thing, right? I'm just like, oh, I like, took one meeting about this once, but, like, I forgot to follow up because I just didn't like, I don't have the capacity. And so all this to say we don't spend a ton of time. I think we were going to talk about this later, but, like, being able to invest in things like succession planning and things like documenting how work happens. I mean, though, it's not because we don't know those things are important. Of course we do. We simply just can't prioritize it over the, like, deluge of Things that are coming across our desk just to keep up with the world, let alone new policy ideas. Like, there's just so much to do. And so it's not like, oh, nobody's thought of, oh, succession planning is important, of course we have. But it's just really fundamentally, practically a challenging thing to focus on. And so I think that being able to gear up for those challenges and build institutional ways of dealing with like what happens when that institution leaves, like of a person leaves their job is I think just a frankly huge challenge. That we're not a particularly mature government, local government is not a particularly mature set of organizations well structured to deliver and think about those kinds of things.
- [12:57]
A
Yeah, no, I think you're right on. Because, you know, it's funny, I'm a consultant and I work with local governments all across the country and anytime we do a project and we engage with staff, like there is that person in a department who's been there, you know, sometimes it's 10, 30, 40, 50 years that you're right. It's kind of holding it all together through sheer force of will or, you know, they're doing the jobs of three people instead of one or more sometimes. And it's not so much that, like, you know, that, that you wouldn't ever be able to find the people to do that work. It's just that you're not going to find that specific person that can do all of those three unique things in this environment and know all the right people to talk to. Like, you can't replace that one to one. And so you might have to get two or three FTEs or new hires to replace the work that they're leaving behind. But you know, I think you're totally right. Like those. That is such a challenge for organizations like that. That is a. And it's hard to like document or even quantify because you can't. It's hard to even, you know, say this is a. We think this is the person that, that might apply to. But until you kind of really dig into the work that they're doing that's outside of their job description, like you're, you're totally right. Like that figuring out how to replace that is a, is a challenge.
- [14:20]
B
Yeah.
- [14:22]
A
And I want to come back to the COVID thing you said, but the. I'm, you're right. The, the other piece that is interesting that you said there, you feel like you're at the vanguard of some of this like workforce stuff. You know, even 10 years, I think in the 10 year horizon, the you know, the. The silver tsunami has been a buzzword that whole time, but it seemed like it finally did come to pass. And so I don't know if, like, in that time period, at some point we were like, you know, that there's the boy who cried wolf. And so we stopped preparing for it. But it seems like it is actually, you know, has occurred. Is occurring in organizations, and you're seeing those retirements of some of those people that you talked about or just kind of your everyday positions that are decided it's time. I'm curious. Yeah. What do you think of that kind of phase? Like, it does seem like it's actually come to pass, which maybe it, you know, for a long time, you know, millennials were told it was going to, and it never really did.
- [15:18]
B
Yeah, no, it's so interesting. And I mean, I think I see the impacts of it every day, and I think it's. Those are the kinds of things where you think somebody's going to leave and then things are going to fall apart. And that's never how it goes. It actually takes years to feel the impact of those kinds of things because they are like. Like the things they would catch are these, like, small details or things they just sort of knew how to do. It was so interesting when our head of basic city services was talking about this snowstorm, he specifically said, like, you know, because massive storms are a thing that have a much longer time horizon. They only happen every. Knock on wood. Knock on all the wood.
- [15:57]
A
Yeah.
- [15:58]
B
You know, these snow seasons happen in cycles. So it had been a few years, four years since we had had, like a real major storm. And he was like, yeah, you know, it's actually like there's a bunch of new people doing this that haven't done this specific thing before. Also, just because of, like, the way the city changed, the part of the city where a lot of the snow farms used to be has, like. Used to be sort of industrial wasteland. It now has buildings on it, so we can't put the snow. And so just sort of like the passage of time means. And when these things have, like, longer cycle horizons, it's like all of a sudden you go to do the thing and you realize, like, okay, it's a different crew, it's different people. Don't get me wrong, they're all doing an amazing job out there. We are like. Like, it's just sort of like it's. You're a little rusty, and the crew is a little different. And the people leading it haven't necessarily experienced this exact same thing. And they. So they can't pull from the same experience. So, you know, and I think this happens too, with like, it's like, you know, payroll things or, you know, again, we're still making payroll. It's fine. Like, these are not crises. They're just these sort of like, little things that a person might catch that you now have to just put in more controls into place because they. It's like. It's just not a person who, like, knows exactly how this thing works because they built it.
- [17:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. Or how to handle that one exception that occurs, you know, with every, you know, three to five when you write
- [17:16]
B
a new union contract that only has this one kind of thing, you know.
- [17:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you're right, because it's the people that have been there that long time have those, like, they've done it, you know, over the course of their career. But, like, you gotta be able to write those things down at some point to be able to capture it. But so why that paper where it was written on. Yeah, exactly. Or the sticky note. Yeah. I do want to go back to Covid because you're right, it is kind of this. This huge, like, turning point, especially I would. Especially for workforce, I would imagine, over this kind of like, you know, gufflo. Of 10 years of, like, what. How the kind of profession has changed. So, like, what. Can you maybe talk a little more about how you've seen, you know, the work of, you know, people, operations or the work of workforce, like, development and management? Like, how is that kind of. How is that impacted by the pandemic and maybe how is it still being impacted by some of the things coming out of the pandemic?
- [18:13]
B
Yeah. So I think there were a couple of realizations and I should have listened to my episode so that I don't say the same thing that I. Exactly the same thing that I said last time. But I think that I talked about the fact that I had restructured the people operations cabinet and launched a new cabinet. And I often joke that the organizational change around doing that was easier than the time I moved. Moved the timesheets from the first floor to the seventh floor because it was that obvious of a thing that everybody agreed needed to happen. I think that, like, everyone saw that through Covid we needed to focus on the workforce and that our workers, like, needed to have a seat at the table. And how policies worked like that is just a thing Covid did. I think it also just fundamentally helped people see that, like, we could do work differently and we could do work more flexibly in a way that, you know, I genuinely. A sentence I say a lot of the time is like, if you treat people like adults, they'll act like adults. And you need to have guardrails. Don't get me wrong. But like, those things can be the guardrails and be the exception. And your policies can lead with the fact that human beings largely are responsible, that employees largely want to come in and do their work. And if you approach policy and communications assuming good intent from everyone and then put parameters that govern those edge cases when people don't behave that way, I think Covid taught us that that could happen for the most part. Things like, you had to do things radically different and people, you know, there were lots of things that were horrible, but for the, like, government still existed and it still delivered services. And it delivered services in ways that people couldn't even imagine. Right. People who, Whose job it was. I'll never forget to be the assistant for the head of the planning department was in charge of ppe, right. And did an amazing job. And so, like, you sort of saw that, like, if you give people challenges, they will rise to the occasion. And these structures that we use that again, govern for the. Use the edge cases of an occasional bad actor don't have to be how we. How we lead. I think that I really took from that. And people rise to the occasion if you give them the opportunity. And so I think that that that's really the mission of our cabinet is to give people that guidance and structure on, like, what good looks like and what. Like what. And give them that opportunity to, like, be empowered and come in here and do a good job. And again, I always want to say that with a caveat, like, we have, like, public. Public service is a privilege. And, you know, taxpayers pay our salaries and it's incredibly important that our employees continue to instill public trust. And we do need guidelines and parameters for when they break that trust that they're able to be held accountable. And, you know, discipline is real and I believe in it and all of those things. I just don't see them as fundamentally incompatible with, in any way with writing policies that, like, lead with good intent and assume people are going to. Are here to do their jobs.
- [21:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that sentiment. And you're so. I'm curious though, like, and maybe it is a little bit on the policies thing that you, You. You touched on there. It's one thing to, like, ask someone to kind of rise to the occasion and, you know, a World pandemic that hasn't happened in 100 years. It's another to be like, how do you make this, you know, a part of the institution or a part of the day to day of how we kind of do our work? So like, how do you think about that in terms of like, we want people to, to, you know, do more or rise to the occ? There's not a world changing event that is forcing us to do that. So how does that kind of get, I don't know. Or how are you thinking about implementing that into the practices of the organization?
- [22:02]
B
Great. So I think this was a really interesting example of how you can change specifically bargaining with unions. So we have an incredibly complex collective bargaining environment in the city of Boston. Across the entire organization, we have 38 different units. And so if you're changing workplace conditions, rewriting a policy, you know, there's a lot of cooks, a lot of cooks in the kitchen and strong opinions, strong opinions. And who represent completely different aims. And that's important. And that's their job. Right? Like, that doesn't, that doesn't mean they're doing it wrong. It means they're doing it right. But like what the firefighters want and what the teachers want and what like a person who sits at a desk wants and what a person who sweeps the streets wants, like those are going to be different things and that's why they're represented by different people who represent their interests. And so that can mean making changes that impact everyone can be pretty hard again for good reason with well, well intentioned people reflecting like a diversity of opinions. So I think that the way that we implemented a hybrid policy coming out of COVID is a really good example of like how, how we can do that. The city had no telework policy of any kind prior to Covid. People got sent home. A lot of people worked from their computers. You know, I think, think the world changed in terms of how they viewed hybrid work. You now sort of see that sometimes swinging back the other way with people feeling like downtowns need people sitting in downtowns, like it's a, you know, becomes a thing that is a practical issue. But people have a lot of feelings about it. There's also a lot of feelings that people who have valid feelings that, you know, some people get to sit and do their laundry and other people have to come into an office building. You can't shovel snow from your, from your couch. And so, you know, I think. But also flexibility is important and different jobs have different, like, are different and, and so, like, how do you. How do you take things that sort of balance all of those complex different interests into play? And so what we did specifically with our hybrid policy is rather than being like, here's what we want the policy to be unions, here's the policy. Tell us things you like or don't like, and then we're going to implement it. We thought about it a little differently. We thought, what if we did a pilot policy that explicitly wrote in that it was a pilot? We're going to write this policy for six months, we're going to implement it for six months. And at that time, towards the end of those six months, we're going to do a survey for managers and employees about what's working about this and what's not working about this, and we're going to take those and incorporate those changes into the policy before we make it live. So, like, if you're worried about this, you can tell us your worries up front. But, like, let's not get too worried about that. If this doesn't work and managers and employees don't like it or there's serious problems, it'll just go away. And we'll write that into this negotiation. And then likewise, we're giving flexibility to a certain subset of workers. So if you're in a collective bargaining unit where this kind of flexibility doesn't apply to you, are there things where you think in other policies you like you could have more flexibility? And so that was a really helpful way that expanded the pie of what was possible and got rid of some of the institutional resistance to doing work like this. So we implemented the policy for the large. Largely, it was successful. It was a small population, right? Like, people still came in the building, a lot of people still came in the building and ate lunch in downtown. And it's a pretty small fraction of the workhorse that takes it. But for jobs like in the technology space, it's really important for us to have that flexibility, because any other loc where they're going to take a job, they're going to have that flexibility. And so for the specific jobs where it was relevant, it went pretty well. There were a couple of tweaks that we needed to make the policy about, like how people could file their changes in reporting changes in which day they worked, a couple of places where managers wanted a little bit more discretion if they felt like they couldn't make sure that somebody was still getting their work done. So we made a few tweaks according to that. We also talked to, for example, our inspectors Union and said, and they came to us and said, hey, we'd like to not have to check in in person at the end of every day. That was a kind of example of flexibility that they felt Covid showed. Like they didn't actually have to just come in and check every day. They could check in in the mornings, but the end of the day check in just wasn't required. So again, sort of getting back to the intent and the feelings and not doing it all at once allowed us to get this thing that like, had sort of been a thing that everyone kind of felt like we were never going to be able to get done and formalized in a way that I think for the most part worked for everyone. I know there are some people who still don't love it as a policy, but I think it allows us to use, what do you say, like a scalpel instead of a hatchet.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah, yeah, well, and I love that. I love the idea of a pilot policy because I imagine a lot of the pushback, especially in a heavily union environment you get when you want to update a policy is that like, this will be the thing and there's no changing it, but going into a change with like, hey, we want to test this and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And if it does, we can, we can implement it or not. And that kind of takes the pressure off too, I would imagine, if some of those policy updates.
- [27:19]
B
Totally. And I actually think that it's like I have this weird background where I came from the civic technology space to the people operations space, but I actually take a lot from that, which is when you don't have to do a big giant thing that changes things forever, but you can do a little thing and then get input on it. It produces better outcomes. That's why Agile exists. Like, that's why people in the technology space have learned that this is a method that produces better outcomes. So why couldn't we approach policy making in that same way? I think we can. Not in every context, but when we can, we should do it.
- [27:49]
A
Yeah, well, you know, and actually I was going to ask this later, but it kind of makes sense in the sweep of kind of reflecting on 10 years too. Like, when I was prepping for this, I saw that you started as an intern in the office of Newer Room Mechanics, and obviously you worked in IT doing some of this human centered design stuff as well. But like, that was like one of the first, like innovation groups in the country in local government. And I'm just curious, like like how you think, I mean, I mean you already touched on a little bit, but like how you think that's impacted your career and like, and kind of your approach to public service, like. Cause like that is one of, that was one of the early ones and like it's, it's had these like, you know, alumni that are out all over the profession now and I'm sure all across the city too.
- [28:30]
B
Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that first of all, the fact that I'm here is because of the mayor's office of Nuremberg Mechanics. Like, I think really early on one of the goals of Monam was to be a talent development shop. And that I think has been a big piece of its legacy. They posted a fellowship and when I was at the Kennedy School, you know, I didn't like, I didn't know what I wanted to do next. When I graduated, I didn't even know what I wanted to do for the summer. And I saw a cool job posting and it sounded interesting, interesting. And I knew I, you know, cared deeply about my city and I knew I cared about like access to resources and public service. And so I was just like, sure. Like I had, I had, my early career was all big, big, not was in the non profit space. And so, you know, they. For the, the main answer is like, it got me here, you know, I got to see local government from the inside, fell in love with it and thought, wow, there's like no place I think I could have a greater impact on serving my own community. I totally got the local government bug from that summer fellowship. And then, and so I think that that, that's had a huge influence. And then I think sort of like thinking about how can government take on risk, how can we do things differently? You know, all of that, how do we pilot before we scale? All of that, you know, deeply comes from the modem ethos that Mayor's office of New Room Mechanics Monam is often known. I think it's been really interesting to also just if the theme of this is like reflecting on the passage of time. It's funny. I often joke, like, start as an innovator, live long enough to become the crusty bureaucrat. Yeah, it's like a little bit of what it feels like is sometimes my arc, and I mean that in the best way possible, like truly and love actually sometimes I actually affectionately love referring to myself as a crusty bureaucrat. I see it as a compliment because I'm like valuing the concept of what government is here to protect genuinely. But I think I say this to mean that we don't, like, in this particular administration with our, I think Michelle Wu, a mayor who's also a brilliant innovator who thinks about imagining the possibilities for Boston and thinks differently is sort of like, what does innovation mean in a government where everyone is innovating? It's a really interesting set of questions. And so I think it means that we really need to have a balance between those who are trying to think differently about what we're trying to do and also be like, okay, but we still got to deliver the like. And we have to still deliver all of the. The basic things and not, you know, just because it's new doesn't mean it's new and shiny doesn't mean it's good or that it's a good idea. And like, we still have, like, we've got a. We've got to still, you know, get the small things right to do the big things. And so I think that it's just been a really interesting question of, like, I think we see it around us all the time. Sort of like, I think we've evolved from, like, modem is the place where, like, the new ideas has to happen to, like, innovation can mean how do we, like, we're in this much more mature place of scale. How do we actually bring these new ideas and embed them in our operations? How do we create a culture of continuous improvement where everyone's sees it's their job to, like, take their piece of the puzzle and, like, make that thing. Make that thing better? It actually feels like this. Like, you know, people are like, wait, is it. Is it relevant anymore? It's like, no, it's. It's the most relevant because it's. It's like, it's actually just the air we breathe. Like, that's what. That's what. That's what being successful looks like is like, people just take it for granted that this is how government can operate.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah, no, that. I love that. That's a lovely sentiment because you're right. Like, it. I would imagine early on and back then with. With the office that, like, you know, it was. You were. You. You were the outcast, maybe, or, you know, you were the people trying to do things a new way. And when that, like, culture spreads through a whole organization, all of a sudden it's kind of. It is the norm. And like, and. And that's good like, that. I mean, that has the. That's the impact that those kind of offices were trying to have in organizations. So, like, like, that's really inspiring.
- [32:36]
B
Right. And so I think people, like, I just say, you know, for listeners who are interested in government innovation, like, I'd say that, like, I think we're at a place of sort of maturity and maybe Boston is like a privileged position, but, like, where you don't, if you want to innovate in government, you don't just have to look at the jobs and the innovation teams. Like, you can do that at any job in government. And so, like, I hope we're at the place where that is true across a lot of different local governments where, where like, you're going to find lots of people who want to do these things differently. And it's really about the approach, like, coming in and being a critical listener and understanding, you know, what came before you and understanding, like, you know, what are the rules, what are the goals and how are you going to do what's in between those two things?
- [33:14]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's expected more, I would say, of positions where, like, hey, you're going to come in and be a leader. And we also expect you to know, at least have awareness of some of these innovation principles so that you can help us from every role. Yeah, that's a great point. So that, you know, you touched on this a little bit. But I do want to kind of maybe talk about some more in more detail. But, you know, we mentioned, like, the last time you were on the people Operations cabinet was sort of a new restructuring. And I know when you talked with Gutflove last, you talked about some of the big structural changes that were maybe opportunities for you guys to tackle in this new, this new kind of role or this new structure. But I just wanted to kind of ask you to reflect on what are some of those, how have some of those big changes gone? Are, you know, are there still things that, you know, you're. That I'm sure there are still things on your list, but are there things that you thought maybe.
- [34:11]
B
No, I fixed it all. It's perfect now.
- [34:14]
A
But are there things they thought, hey, maybe we can knock this out, and now it's turned into a much larger engagement. Or like, what are. How have some of those, you know, hey, you had this big dream as a new restructured cabinet, like, what is. How has it gone in the time sense?
- [34:28]
B
Yeah. So I think a couple of reflections on this. I think the first thing I'll say is, like, I think how we do the work sometimes matters so much more than what we're doing. So I would say that most of the changes we've made really have to do with the. How we get it done because I think that's what sort of like wins hearts and minds and makes people feel like the change sticks much more than like, what is the specific policy we rewrote? Or like, what is the project that we took on. I think that some of the stuff that I'm most proud of, and it's because I have brought on some like, or worked with some really amazing professionals, some of whom we've brought on, some of whom we're here before. I don't want to say these are just new people that we brought on, but we've done a bunch of work, I think, really just improving the employee relations and training functions of our organization. I feel like early on I was one myself, but I talked to managers who had been here for 17 years and had barely received any management training. We had one program that was, you know, a perfectly good program for what it was resourced to be, but like, you know, people had been here for years and barely knew where our policies were, where what they are and how they're supposed to access them or even how to think of them. But also just like, had barely had any management training or support of any kind. And so we were able to launch some really great programs that don't reach nearly as enough people and, you know, don't have. It's. It don't have nearly the amount of resources I, you know, I wish and envision for them. But the feedback we've gotten from those has been truly amazing. I mean, people, like, the feedback we get is like, I needed this 17 years ago and I just want more of it. And that's, you know, some of it is specific manager training and training on our context, I mean, training on our policies. But some of it is also just like, how do I think about this work? Like, how does the fact, like, how does public records law, law intersect with my work? Like, what does a strong mayor system and city council, and how does that impact what we're able to get done? You know, a lot of the time we just sort of assume that people come here and they know how government works. And even if folks are extremely downstream from some of these other things, like I say it's not political to say that the fact that we're a political institution impacts everybody. Like, that's just, that's how our rules are made. And so everybody kind of needs to understand that it's not about who are you going to vote for, but it still like impacts the way the work happens. Yeah, so that's one piece of it, I think just another piece on the more like, employee relations side is, you know, I think we were, like, really behind on being able to respond to organizational complaints. And, like, when people feel like these processes, like, you, you know, something happens in the workplace that shouldn't have happened and that it takes them years to get back any sort of like. Like, resolution or action, that sort of thing can really degrade a culture over time. So having the resources to just be responsive when things happen because conflict is going to happen in the workplace, people are always like, we shouldn't advertise how many complaints we got. Those statistics are going to make us look bad. Or like a toxic work environment. It's like, okay, but, like, find me a workplace where conflict doesn't happen. Like, that is just a workplace that is acting like, like, conflict doesn't happen. Right. Like, it's not like humans are going to human. And so. But I think being responsive to those things is super important. I think another sort of, like, on the, like, smaller scale, but it actually took a lot of work to get here. Thing that I'm so proud of is our, like, communications arm. And I know that was a thing you were planning on asking about, but, like, being able to write emails that translate complex policy into plain language. I think a moment that happens, and I'm obviously focused on sort of like this snow week that happened that made me, like, the most proud, I think I've been, was actually a email that came from one of our unions to their members. And it was about this email that we wrote explaining to people how to use their time based on when the snow emergency was called and how they were supposed to report to work. Right. It's the email I wrote instead of doing the podcast on the day I was supposed to do the podcast with you.
- [38:46]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:47]
B
But we did it in collaboration with not just the folks who are planning for the snow removal, but with our labor relations folks, with our HR folks, and with our internal comms team who are just so good at figuring out how you translate complicated rules into emails that people can read and getting those out in a timely way. Like, I just. It makes such a difference. It saves us from actual liability in the form of grievances. But to go back to this email that we're seeing from one of our union partners, they were just like, please see this timely and clearly written communication from the chief people officer. Like, you should read how well you can. Like, your expectations are super clear in this email. Now everyone knows what they are. And so we're not going to have conflict later that we disagreed about it. You know, everybody knows when like what they're going to anticipate in their paychecks and, and those getting those sorts of things right in a timely way like, like truly like that that restores employees faith that the institution is there to look after them. And, and those kind of details just, they matter so much more I think than like you know, bringing in a massage chair, having cereal on the walls or I don't know, I don't tell. I don't work in a startup. I don't know if those are real things that people do. They probably like, people are probably listening to me being like, of course my workplace has those things. They sound to me. But I know don't. I've worked in local government too long. But my point here is like I think that that's fundamentally people come in government and they don't expect those kinds of bonuses. They don't expect a ping pong table in their lounge exactly. To be treated like a human. They expect to be paid when they work in like in compliance with their contract and they expect to have clear communications set. So you know, sometimes it's really not those big structures, structural things, it's just sort of like how, how we are doing, how we are doing this work. And I think our, our biggest project that we've taken on that of course takes longer than we thought we were is replacing our talent acquisition management system. Our.
- [40:44]
A
Oh my gosh. Yeah. HRIs.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah. So it's not our whole HRIs. No, I mean just the, just the part where that, that applicants are interacting with as well as our onboarding technology. And I think that it's, it's both the what? And I don't want to take success for this project yet because it's not live. And so I'm going to also knock on wood and not jinx it. Yeah, not jinx any of it. But I think our approach has really, it really comes from this sort of like human centered design ethos again that I sort of learned from brilliant folks in the civic technology space where we did a bunch of like both. We did two different kinds of user research. One where we worked with a couple of our biggest and most unique departments. So you know, police hiring is totally different than hiring in the property management context is totally different than hiring in the HR context. And so you know, like we have to build something that works for all of those use cases. So we did a bunch of deep user research with Our departments early on to be like, what works about your system today? What doesn't work? And that's helped us be a lot more flexible in how we can think about the requirements of a project. And then we've also done a bunch of user research. We partnered with bloomworks, an amazing civic technology company, to help us do user research with potential applicants as well as new hires to hear what went like, what went well, what are expectations when they apply for a job, and also what we could do better once they were hired and onboarded. And we're really using all of that feedback, not just meeting with the internal stakeholders and be like, like, what is your process? But talking to some of those voices that are often missing from these processes, which are the people at Impacts, because otherwise you're just gathering business requirements from people who know the way you currently do it.
- [42:29]
A
Yeah. Or the people that successfully made it through that process, or the people, like
- [42:34]
B
you said, who navigated whatever the hell that was. And so. So getting at those people who didn't make it through and thinking about that has been super, super valuable. So, you know, we'll see how that actually relates to the impact of the project fundamentally. But, you know, people are always asking me, like, what, you know, what platform are you using and is it good? And I'm like, you know, no offense to any particular company that does this work. I'm sure some are better than others, but I think that how you do the project, who you talk to, and how you get that work done is a million times more important than what platform you choose.
- [43:05]
A
Yeah, no, well said. Yeah. And the importance throughout what you're just talking about, like, of process over what the particular outcome is. I just wanted to underline that I'm sure you could replicate that in every organization, that how you actually go about doing something is more important than the ultimate outcome. Because especially from an HR context, how you engage your staff, how you communicate it, that all adds up to how an organization feels about a change or feels about the ultimate thing that gets decided. So you're right. I do want to come back to comms, but there was one thing you said that I just wanted to emphasize that I'm sure you can maybe relate to is organizations have such long memories and so leaving those unresolved conflicts or things that HR address but never followed up on, or maybe they addressed it with the employee, but they never communicated back that this conflict was addressed in what way? It's amazing. We go to organizations and they're like, there's something that happened 10, 15 years ago, that staff who weren't even there at the time, so like still is a little lower. And so like being able to like be, you know, transparent and proactive about like, hey, this is, you know, as much as you can like talk about, like, this is how we addressed it and this is what, what the result was. Like, I can't imagine the impact that that's going to have over time.
- [44:22]
B
It's funny that you bring that up. So I always would. So I started when I started my career at the city, I started working on permitting stuff. And there is a building that most of the folks in our Inspectional Services department work out of. It's a building in, in a place called 1010 Mass Ave. You know, it's, it's several miles from City Hall. It's not located in the central downtown. That gives it a bunch of advantages. People can park there, etc, but it's pretty disparate from City hall. And that can be a pretty big cultural gap. Right? Like people who actually work out of City hall versus people who work at a different building. And every time when I started Inspectional Services, I would ask people sort of like about a thing that was going on. It always started in 1986. The Inspectional Services Division moved to 1010 Mass Ave. And I would never follow up with, oh, I was born in 1986. I didn't think anyone would appreciate that. People don't love that. But I'm saying it now because that now sounds less young than it did then. Although probably, you know, might sound still young to some people and old to others. But you know, in 1986, 39 years ago, they moved to that building. And you could tell it didn't matter if you were there at the time, but that sort of decision to move them physically to this disparate location still just so deeply impacted the ethos and how people felt and how people, you know, underlied how they, how they saw every decision as like City hall is a them and we are in us and they feel view us as a them and you know, it like it just, it. It didn't matter what you were doing, that cultural feeling still impacted how the work happened. And so like if you're making change in an organization, whether it's changing a policy or communicating a thing, like those are very real feelings and they still exist and like you can ignore them to. At your own peril.
- [46:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Well then, so yeah, to come back to communication. So you mentioned, and I think you've emphasized guys of the importance of it, but maybe like, practically or kind of in nuts and bolts wise, like, how. How do you guys kind of approach that in terms of, like, what are the resources you're throwing at, like, internal comms as an HR department? Like, how. How do you guys think about, like, you know, communicating some of the, like, more technical stuff that HR has to get out and then like, yeah, I guess. Like, what does that look like? Maybe on a more practical level in terms of how you guys approach it?
- [46:44]
B
Yeah, I mean, so first of all, we have a person. Like, we have two people whose jobs are largely communications in our HR department. I think that's probably pretty unique. But it's amazing what like, one talented person with Canva and being a really good writer. And like, frankly, sometimes it's like, actually helpful that they don't know a lot about HR policy, because sometimes if you know a thing too well, it's like, like, too difficult to communicate about it because you're like, the leave buyback. It happens when the blah, blah, blah. I honestly barely still understand leave buyback. Sickly buyback. It's like a thing that confuses me. I don't know, it just doesn't fit with my brain. But, like, there are these, like, you know, sick leave donations or just like, these different structural things that are built into our contracts that. That can be like, you know, either it's a concept that you fully understand and you understand how it impacts you, or especially if you're new to the workforce, like, understanding your retirement plan. And, like, what does that even mean? And, like, why do I care about it? Those are things that are. That can be pretty foreign to people. And I think it's like, it may not be our job to explain it to people. Like, you could view it that way, but I certainly think that it is, like, if we put that onus on people, you know, you could say it's their responsibility to understand it, but we're going to deal with the impacts of them not having understood it. So therefore, it might as well be our problem. And so. So I think just tactically, first of all, it is, yeah, it is resourcing it. It is thinking about how every communication that you write is going to a pretty broad, wide audience. Simple things, you know, and none of these are my ideas. They're all things I learned from other people. But when we launched Boston.gov, our brilliant chief Digital officer, Lauren Lockwood at the time and working with ideo, they, they. They made the decision that everything should be below an 8th grade reading level. And they use an app, a free online app called the Hemingway App, and like, put the text in and that will tell you what the reading level is. And like, when you have a policy that was written largely by lawyers and you put it in the Hemingway act, you are not going to find an 8th grade reasoning level.
- [48:49]
A
No.
- [48:49]
B
And I love my lawyers, to be very clear. They do an amazing job and they are protecting very important things when they write. But like, if people can't understand them, then like, it's probably not actually super protecting us against the liability or it might be, but it's not helping people understand. And so like, there's, I feel like there's almost always a way where you can say the same thing and protect that same thing that your lawyer cares about while writing in words that humans can understand. And so that has been, you know, that has been a huge piece of the sort of like content creation movement in the digital space. And I think it should 100%. Like, is just as it's important for all municipal services, it's important for language access and translation, and it's certainly important for policies that are going to apply to people with vastly different education levels and backgrounds.
- [49:38]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great point because like, you're having to communicate with the people that are, you know, on the back of a solid waste truck or but also, you know, our accountants in the finance office. So like, you have a huge range of folks that you have to communicate the same, you know, often sometimes the same policies too. And so being able to speak to everybody is important. And you're right. Or I like the perspective that like, maybe having a comms person that doesn't know HR is better.
- [50:04]
B
I think that there is so much room for, for generalists and that honestly, it. Yeah, that, that I think that sometimes you actually need a person who doesn't perfectly understand a thing to be like, they have to be able to. They have to have the capability of understanding it, but not knowing it from the outset is sometimes a feature and not a bug.
- [50:24]
A
Yeah, well said. All right. The only other thing I wanted to touch on, just because I know it came up in the last time you were on govlove and it's something I see HR departments dealing with all over the country. But how are you guys kind of thinking. And you may have mentioned this already a little bit, but how are you guys thinking about succession planning? Or is that. And like, how is that. How have you guys kind of approached that in the city?
- [50:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, I wish I could tell you that we've done like a great.
- [50:53]
A
Solved it.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah. Strategy for it. But I think that just being focused on documentation and on training and thinking about it and every time that we fill a job, like who can do this job and who's the next. Next person who can do this job and just asking departments to think in that way all the time is so important. Right. Like, we can't just be finding a person who can do this today, we need to be finding a person who can do this tomorrow. And like the, like, I think that that just, it's like embedded in so many decisions that, that we make. And like, you know, I think that to go back to sort of like the overall high level trends thing here, it's not just, just the silver tsunami, it's a change in how people approach jobs. I think that like different generations often don't see their this. The younger generation does not see, I want to go do a job and I'm going to do that thing for the rest of my career. That just tends to not be how people view work anymore and so not
- [51:59]
A
how institutions treat new employees, you know.
- [52:02]
B
Sure, exactly. And so like people have to be realistic and realize that, that, that sort of like idea that people are going to come here and stay forever. But like everything is baked into not doing it that way. Right. Like the city, the state, like we participate in the state pension program. You don't vest for 10 years. You don't like, you know, there are these big, like changing. The fact that people are going to come in and out is like a very long term structural change. And so I think it's just, you know, like, it is so simple, but it's just like working on having standard templates of how you write things down and how you write processes down. And like, you know, we had an amazing woman who was an institution in our organization, one of these people I was saying, you know, retire recently. Jackie, she was the greatest. And she was our director. She's still alive. She just recently retired, but director of shared services. But basically like the person whose job it is to make sure that everybody's job record is 100% accurate. And when we, like when we have a new collective bargaining agreement passed or we make a change in how people are compensated, making sure the system does that thing. And so like so much of that is institutional knowledge. It's like when you have this like our complicated contracts and payroll as complicated as us. Like, so much of that is institutional knowledge. And so, you know, we knew we had a few years left of Jackie and spent, you know, a bunch of time both creating a deputy position in that role so that she could spend like as she was doing all of her work, training the next person to do that work and also just having a bunch of like, it couldn't be just on her to write it down. So bringing other people to shadow her, create documentation and duplication was something we were, you know, probably not as intentional as we could be, but certainly more intentional, like super intentional about it as to the degree that we could be because like, you know, everybody, that day is going to come for everybody. So just being super practical about it is, is really important.
- [53:58]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also like your, your point about like pushing this onto, you know, departments to think about too. So it's not just something that HR owns, but it's changing that mindset of like how do we prepare for the future and prepare, you know, you know, who can do this now and who, who can, who do we need to start thinking about, you know, down the line too? So it's not just HR's job to think about, like think through.
- [54:18]
B
Yeah.
- [54:19]
A
All right, so before we wrap up, what's next? What are you working on that our listeners on the lookout for or any kind of, kind of big, big, big structural things that you're, you're trying to tackle?
- [54:30]
B
Yeah. So it's funny, I realized that this entire time I didn't, I, I took on the elections department since the last, last talk that is now under our purview and didn't talk about that at all. And that's taken up a lot of our, our bandwidth. Just making sure that our elections processes are resilient and redundant and also well documented. You know, another thing that like is a challenge across all local governments and our processes that often are like, you know, it's literally the premise of democracy and often it's very under invested in set of processes and you know, they operate really lean. I'm sometimes like lean to a degree that I think if, you know, people like to like all the time view government as wasteful. But I think if you see how lean we ran some of these processes, you'd realize that, you know, we need a little more redundancy in those areas. And so we're working a lot on that specifically in our elections context and have some really amazing people who have, have helped us with that work. I think that in terms of what people should look out for, I mean we'll be launching that new talent acquisition system in the next few months. It's a big project that we're rolling out and so excited to see how that goes. I. I hope it's smooth, but these things are always a little bit bumpier than you anticipate.
- [55:43]
A
Yeah, yeah, we'll knock on all the wood and keep our fingers crossed for you. All right, now, the hardest question for all of our guests. If you be the gov love DJ and put the X music for this episode, what. What song would you pick?
- [55:57]
B
Okay. I don't know why this question is so hard. For some reason, the first thing that jumped into my head is Michael Jackson's man in the Mirror. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make the change.
- [56:13]
A
That seems great.
- [56:13]
B
Yeah, I think really just, like, focus. Like, I think what I take from that is not just like, you know, like, you are the problem or like, only focus internally, but really, like, you could only change. Like, right, you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time or whatever that ridiculous thing is. Like, like you can only start with what's in your control. And like, if you want to actually make change, like, I think it really, like, I don't know, it has a local government y cheesy message to me at least, which is like, yeah, just focus on the things that you can control. Start with what your levers of control are and that's how you're going to make a difference in the long run.
- [56:43]
A
That's perfect. I love that. That's a great sentiment. We'll get that queued up and that ends our episode for today. Alex, thanks so much for coming on and talking with me. I really appreciate you taking the time.
- [56:52]
B
Thanks.
- [56:52]
A
It's been a pleasure for our listeners. Govlove is brought to you by engaging local government leaders. And the best way to support GovLove is to become an ELG member. You can reach us online at eaglegl.org govlove or at our page on LinkedIn. And subscribe to GovLove on your favorite podcast app. If you're already subscribed, go tell a friend, a colleague, a neighbor about this podcast and a reminder. You can help us celebrate 10 years of telling local government stories here on GovLove by calling our hotline, 720-2821, 752 and tell us about, you know, trends that you've seen in the last 10 years and what you think local government might look like in another 10 years. And with that, thank you for listening. This has been Gov Love, a podcast about local government.