Changing a Culture One Meeting at a Time

By Kathy Nyland, Seattle’s Director of Neighborhoods

The opportunity to participate in the second cohort of the Living Cities City Accelerator was appealing because it focused on the very things that Mayor Murray was discussing and prioritizing: improving the lives of underrepresented populations and people of lower economic means, and it was specifically geared towards doing outreach and engagement differently.

Easy right? Anything but! But the right things are rarely the easiest things.

Being motivated by good intentions, Team Seattle gathered to discuss. Our pitch would focus on the City’s update of our Comprehensive Plan, our roadmap for growth over the next 20 years. It was a wonky topic with a city-wide focus. We knew outreach and engagement had to be different which is why the issue aligned so well with this opportunity. We talked, bounced a few ideas around, and agreed to at least apply. And what that entailed was figuring how to produce a video that described our project in three minutes. So in about a week, we quickly learned how to write a script, create a story board, book studio time and the list goes on. All of this while traveling to a conference about land use. Multi-tasking at its best.

Something must have worked because Team Seattle was ultimately chosen to participate in the cohort. Apparently this was a surprise to few except for me. I thought at best we would receive an honorable mention. I just couldn’t fathom that a team led by an introvert would be chosen. But we were, along with Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, and New Orleans. We were honored to be part of such a great cohort.

As challenging as the application phase was, we quickly learned that was the easy part. We now had to drill down on our project and prepare for a site visit. Normally, that would have been something we could easily accommodate, but things with Team Seattle were anything but normal. We quickly realized that capacity was an issue, an issue that would follow us throughout the initial stages of the project.

The site visit by the Engagement Lab was our epiphany. As we talked through the Comp Plan and what we wanted to accomplish, it dawned on us that we might be the problem: we might be the very thing that needed to change in order to do outreach and engagement differently. Our project was to focus not on the external, the community, but rather we would focus on us, the city, and our internal mechanisms.

Changing the culture of city government was no easy thing. But it was not an optional thing either.

Mayor Murray often speaks about how we operate in silos and that was evident in how we conduct outreach. So the charge was given. Change how we do outreach. Utilize more modes. Create more tools. Reach out to more people. Hear more voices. That’s what the Mayor asked. And that’s what this cohort focused on so we knew what was needed.

Knowing this project was a big lift and capacity was an issue for our team, we regrouped to discuss next steps. In order to succeed, we need to have a reality check and that required an honest conversation. Who wanted to continue and who could? These were two distinct conversations. In order for this to work, we needed everyone to be committed because changing how a large municipality operates was a HUGE commitment but the results could be transformative. And this is how Team Seattle Version 2 was born.

Team Seattle Version 2 (V2 for short) concentrated on how outreach and engagement efforts occur city-wide. We realized we needed to make a pivot. Instead of focusing on elements, we’d concentrate on efforts. We knew that in order to truly do outreach and engagement differently, we needed to focus on our internal mechanisms. If we could coordinate from the inside out, we could be efficient and effective. If we could hold meetings and/or present information about multiple issues in a more comprehensive way, be more holistic, having constructive conversations rather than defensive debates.

Outreach and engagement efforts, when done well, provide information, create relationships and continue conversations. In the simplest of terms, when done right, outreach and engagement make community members feel heard and seen.

We still were going to focus on the Comprehensive Plan, but we also expanded our portfolio to include the Housing Affordability Livability Agenda and the renewal of the Housing Levy. All three of these issues spanned 2015 and 2016, involved many of the same stakeholders, and all relied heavily on outreach and engagement efforts. Bundling these like-minded initiatives made sense to us because there was so much overlap. Not everyone saw it that way.

As we introduced ourselves to various project teams, we were frequently met with questions. That’s understandable when trying something new, but those questions often masked wariness or hesitation to this new approach. Some were reluctant to partner because they felt the focus of their effort would be lost or diminished. While others felt that combined efforts would actually cause more work rather than less. And others thought this approach of introducing multiple issues would be confusing to the public.

This is when we introduced the newspaper analogy. People read a newspaper and they are exposed to a multitude of issues. They read dozens of stories and are able to comprehend. They don’t put down the paper confused, mixing sport scores with politics or the lifestyle section.

People are smarter than we give them credit for and our efforts should speak to that. As mentioned earlier, Team Seattle is a determined bunch. So we kept trying. We kept attending meetings and kept answering questions and kept making our pitch. Finally, the status quo stance started to quiver a bit. People were willing to listen to us. Someone said we’re open, and with that, we had an opportunity to try, to try to do outreach and engagement differently.

And that’s what we did. We held two events in the same week that embraced the “newspaper” analogy. In South Lake Union, we partnered with the community council and had numerous departments convene in the same place at the same time (insert gasp). Parks and Recreation was there to talk open space and their community center strategic plan. Transportation and the Design Commission were on hand to talk street vacations and public benefits. And housing was on hand to talk surplus and affordability. And two days later we did it again at Goodwill where six departments spoke to over 100 people who were onsite for their English as a second language class; 94 of these attendees had never attended a city meeting before! Again multiple departments spoke about programs like Utility Discount, Orca lift card, the Comp Plan all with real time interpretation of several languages. Questions were asked but they were about the programs not the process. Confusion was not an issue.

These two events, while small in the larger context, were necessary reminders that what we were doing, what we wanted to do, was important.

If we are asking people to give us their time, time away from their homes, their families, their priorities, then we best give them a reason to make that sacrifice. And that reason is we are providing the information that is of interest, we are introducing issues that are impactful, and we are creating opportunities to participate. It’s a reciprocal relationship, with relationship being the operative word: we are giving people what they want and we are hearing what we need.

Phase 1 of City Accelerator has been quite a ride. There have been days when the project felt so big that our enthusiasm and determination was dwarfed in comparison. There have been days when the frustration far outweighed, well, everything. But there have been days when we would see a glimmer, when a department would let us know about an upcoming meeting or someone would recap by saying “this is what we’ve heard.”

Our project is so different than our esteemed colleagues. It is not focused on a segment of the population or a physical neighborhood. We are attempting to change the culture of a municipal government, the behavior of 10,000 people. We want to coordinate efforts so five different departments are not going out to the same community on five different nights. We want five issues to be presented at one meeting, one night, in the community. We want answers to questions and to talk about next steps and then follow-up.

It sounds so easy on paper but as we have learned, it is anything but. The right thing is rarely the easiest thing.