Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative Launches Mayoral Program

The Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative has launched the pilot of its year-long Mayors Program on City Leadership.  Program Faculty Director Jorrit de Jong of the HKS MLD Area says, “We have a great cohort of 40 mayors who are excited about the opportunities we are offering them and have high expectations. This year will be a pilot year and we put systems in place to enable rapid learning, in depth evaluation as well as ongoing impact assessment.”  In the course of this year-long program, mayors will be asked to identify a single priority to apply their learning to: a problem to be solved in the city, an opportunity to realize, or an organizational capability to improve.

Harvard's Jorrit de DeJong addresses city mayors
“Local government is close to the people. Mayors are most immediately held accountable when something goes wrong,” said Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer Jorrit de Jong, the initiative’s faculty director. © Bloomberg Philanthropies

For example, a mayor may choose to make her approach to reduce homelessness more data-driven, run experiments in the city’s effort to reduce obesity, or create a multi-sector approach to creating jobs. The priority may also pertain to organizational development: strengthen teaming efforts across city hall, engage front-line staff in innovation, or introduce a new performance leadership strategy. In the closing session later this year mayors will reflect on what they learned and how they would like to apply that going forward.  A subsequent program for the mayors’ senior staff will build on this innovation priority and will zoom in on the challenges of making change and delivering on the mayor’s agenda. BHCLI will follow up with several supports, including HBX Live sessions on topics that are most relevant and helpful to the greatest number of mayors, and bespoke assistance in the form of research, coaching or regional or thematic workshops.

After the Mayors Program, mayors will meet with the senior staff participating in the Senior Staff program and discuss their innovation priority. As the Senior Staff program focuses on making organizational change and strategy within and across organizational boundaries, program faculty will learn where the cities are coming from and what they are working on. Participating mayors and their staffs will benefit from this model by anchoring their learning in – and applying it to – concrete challenges in their work. Finally, the priority serves as a reference point for faculty follow ups and impact assessment. Our hope and expectation is that cities will be working on an innovation priority of their choice during their year-long engagement with the City Leadership Program.

For further details on the program launch, also read the Harvard Gazette article linked here.

Congratulations to the HKS Class of 2017!

We congratulate all of the Harvard Kennedy School masters and Ph.D. students who will be receiving their degrees today. We also specially recognize all of the students who have earned the Certificate in Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences. While at HKS, these 223 students have shown a sustained commitment to enhancing their leadership potential,  and now they are poised to excel in their future public service endeavors.
The MLD Area faculty and staff wish our graduates all the best for the summer ahead and into the future.

For a closer look at the Harvard Kennedy School Class of 2017, read the HKS press release. HKS Commencement details, including the schedule of events and live stream links, can be found on the HKS website. Information on Harvard University’s 366th Commencement events and activities can be found on the university’s website.

Understanding Emotion in the Context of Intractable Intergroup Conflict

Special Presentation: Understanding Emotion in the Context of Intractable Intergroup Conflict
with Professor Eran Halperin of Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, IsraelPortrait of Eran Halperin

Bio:  Professor Eran Halperin is Dean of the School of Psychology and Professor at IDC – Herzliya. An award-winning pioneer in examining emotion processes using field experiments, Dr. Halperin’s research uses psychological and political theories to investigate causal factors driving intergroup conflicts. More specifically, his work develops new approaches for modifying the psychological roots of intolerance, exclusion and intergroup violence.  The unique case of Israeli society in general, and of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, motivates much of his work and, hence, most of his studies are conducted within the context of that “natural laboratory.”  His laboratory currently spearheads a government sponsored project to standardize social inclusion in Israeli education.

Date: April 27, 2017    11:45 AM – 1:00 PM

Location: HKS, Belfer Building, Land Lecture Hall (Room 400)

Space is limited; RSVP by April 19 REQUIRED  (Light lunch will be provided)

Presentation sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.  Additional support provided by the Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, the Management, Leadership, and Decision Science Area at the Harvard Kennedy School, and the Middle East Initiative of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Dealing with Dysfunction: Innovative Problem Solving in the Public Sector – A Book Talk with author Jorrit de Jong – April 12, 2017

Join us for a discussion on April 12th with Jorrit de Jong, Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at HKS, Faculty Director of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and author of “Dealing with Dysfunction: Innovative Problem Solving in the Public Sector” (Brookings University Press).
Julie Boatright Wilson, Harry Kahn Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, HKS, and Matt R. Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, HKS, will provide responses. Tony Saich, director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, will moderate. Book cover of Dealing with Dysfunction by Jorrit de Jong

About Dealing with Dysfunction

How can we intervene in the systemic bureaucratic dysfunction that beleaguers the public sector? De Jong examines the roots of this dysfunction and presents a novel approach to solving it. Drawing from academic literature on bureaucracy and problem solving in the public sector, and the clinical work of the Kafka Brigade — a social enterprise based in the Netherlands dedicated to diagnosing and remedying bureaucratic dysfunction in practice, this study reveals the shortcomings of conventional approaches to bureaucratic reform. The usual methods have failed to diagnose problems, distinguish symptoms, or identify root causes in a comprehensive or satisfactory way. They have also failed to engage clients, professionals, and midlevel managers in understanding and addressing the dysfunction that plagues them. This book offers conceptual frameworks, theoretical insights, and practical lessons for dealing with the problem. It sets a course for rigorous public problem solving to create governments that can be more effective, efficient, equitable, and responsive to social concerns.

De Jong argues that successfully remedying bureaucratic dysfunction depends on employing diagnostics capable of distinguishing and dissecting various kinds of dysfunction. The “Anna Karenina principle” applies here: all well-functioning bureaucracies are alike; every dysfunctional bureaucracy is dysfunctional in its own way. The author also asserts that the worst dysfunction occurs when multiple organizations share responsibility for a problem, but no single organization is primarily responsible for solving it. This points to a need for creating and reinforcing distributed problem-solving capacity focused on deep (cross-)organizational learning and revised accountability structures. Our best approach to dealing with dysfunction may therefore not be top-down regulatory reform, but rather relentless bottom-up and cross-boundary leadership and innovation. Using fourteen clinical cases of bureaucratic dysfunction investigated by the Kafka Brigade, the author demonstrates how a proper process for identifying, defining, diagnosing, and remedying the problem can produce better outcomes.

Date:

Wednesday, April 12, 2017, 4:15pm to 5:30pm

Location:

Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Suite 200N, 124 Mt Auburn Street, Cambridge

Innovation and Scaling for Impact: A conversation with authors Johanna Mair and Christian Seelos, March 30, 2017

On behalf of the recently launched Social Innovation and Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, we invite you to join an interactive conversation on the new book:

Innovation and Scaling for Impact: A conversation with authors Johanna Mair and Christian Seelos
Thursday, March 30, 4:30 – 5:30PM
Darman Room, Taubman Building, HKS

Join Johanna Mair and Christian Seelos, directors at the Social Innovation and Change Initiative at HKS, for an interactive conversation on their new book, Innovation and Scaling for Impact: How Effective Social Enterprises Do ItRSVP here.

 

 

Learn more about the Social Innovation and Change Initiative (SICI ; pronounced “sigh-see”)  and see listing of upcoming seminars at: http://sici-hks.org/

Announcing the Social Innovation & Change Research Seminar Series

The Social Innovation and Change Research Seminar is a venue for researchers of social innovation and social change to present and receive feedback on their research. The seminar is explicitly multi-disciplinary; work may draw on fields as diverse as sociology, political science, psychology, economics, and other social science approaches.

On behalf of the recently launched Social Innovation and Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, we invite you to join our inaugural research seminar.

THE FIRST SEMINAR IS TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 2017, featuring
Maureen Scully, Associate Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts – Boston
on “Mobilizing the Wealthy: Doing “Privilege Work” and Challenging the Roots of Inequality”
Time: 12:30-2:00pm; Location: 124 Mt. Auburn, Suite 160, Room 105

Summary: Wealthy individuals stand to gain materially from economic inequality, and moreover, have shaped many organizational and societal practices that perpetuate economic
inequality to their advantage. Thus, they are unlikely allies in the effort to remedy economic inequality and indeed likely to contest systematic policies to reduce inequality. In this paper, however, we study the mobilization of a small group of wealthy activists who join allies from lower socioeconomic strata to expose and redress the root causes of wealth consolidation. They offer an instructive alternative to “philanthrocapitalism,” whereby the wealthy present their wealth accumulation as a superior qualification for addressing societal problems and do not address the root causes of how their wealth was amassed. Our study contributes to the growing literature on inequality and organizations, which are the vectors for distributing wages and investment returns, by examining how the wealthy may sometimes wrestle with the sources of their wealth. Advocacy from wealthy allies is unexpected and may jolt attention and change. We derive the concept of “privilege work” from our observations of an often awkward and fraught process that enables the wealthy to engage with their own privilege, use their insider knowledge of wealth accumulation as a lever for change, and work respectfully alongside underprivileged allies. Privilege work represents a new type of ally work along the dimension of socioeconomic class, with potential, even if limited, to disrupt escalating inequality. 

We hope to see you there!

Learn more about the Social Innovation and Change Initiative (SICI ; pronounced “sigh-see”)  and see listing of upcoming seminars at: http://sici-hks.org/