Adam Hasler
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

Thank you so much for reading the article. I feel a lot more like a satisfied curator, rather than the creator him/herself, given that the piece really just channeled the terrific ideas that came before me. Then again, that’s how much in this world is created anyway.

In response to your question about individual vs. collective action, I have two thoughts. First, admittedly many of those examples I cited were in a sense “top-down”, in perhaps the most benign way possible. Which is to say that a government/public sector organization realized the immense potential of working differently and more attuned with human-centeredness. Many of these initiatives, such as those linked to in the piece, started from the organization’s management or from innovators within the organization, and subsequently broadened their work from a few projects and hopefully into an entirely different way of working. That, or the actor lives and breathes outside of the public sector organization. These are non-profits who advocate for or fund this different way of working, and act much like an agency, working with organizations to deliver results on a project-to-project basis or building organizational competency.

But more to the heart of your question: what about people like, well, me? As in, actually Adam H., or people like me, who like their jobs and professions, but are committed citizens. We don’t want to become public sector professionals, at least not for any extended period. We’re just citizens, who think we have some good ideas about the government(s) that ostensibly belongs to us (we have a whole lot of layers of those over on this side of the Atlantic!). We’re willing to work without pay for sustained periods of time on issues or projects that matter to us, but don’t necessarily understand why it would need to become our whole job. We do it out of commitment to our communities, not out of advancement per se. Here in the U.S. we have a long tradition of citizen-politicians, but that fades away more and more with each passing election. Our traditions tell of farmers, homemakers, brewers, publishers, surveyors, and lawyers who retained their profession, but just…took a break to hold office for a while or work with others on a project that served the public good.

My answer to this, unfortunately, doesn’t speak from any real experience, but from stories I know from around the world of innovators who just started…doing. It aligns with what I describe in the article. The absolute best, and maybe the only truly effective, place for human-centeredness in government is on the municipal level, where the rubber hits the road (quite literally in a lot of cases). And governments operating on that level should get a broader mandate and more money because they’re the ones most likely to create meaningful solutions, and I hope the ones most likely to provide meaningful opportunities to get involved. The higher you get, the more abstract it becomes. So my suggestion, and what I personally plan to do, is skip the city council meeting entirely. Go right to the source. Become an amateur researcher, and start learning about problems your community faces. Then bring together everyone you possibly can to address that problem, and start solving. You don’t have to work for anyone to be able to do that. And it’s what I personally plan to do myself. I have a long list of issues that citizens of Cambridge have identified, and I’ll just start chipping away at them, one by one. And hopefully soon enough, the government will see that I’ve not only solved some problems, but proven a model that they would be wise to adopt. And in the meantime, got a lot of other citizens involved and familiar with the process.

Hope this helps. Again, I’m delighted to have connected. I look forward to talking more soon.

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    Adam Hasler

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    Designer/Writer/Researcher/Facilitator. Cofounder and CEO of Spofford Design