This is my 33^rd blog post. My blogging process starts with writing a short summary of the idea for the post.  Then I research. If the research supports the idea, I write the first draft. I rewrite until it feels right. Linda and or a co-worker named John proofread my posts prior to publishing. I usually end up publishing the third draft.

Less than half of the short summaries I write up get past the research stage. Even most of the ideas that survive the research stage get drastically modified because the research does not support some of my assumptions.

For example, I had an idea based on an assumption that about 25% of the population watched Fox News.  After looking it up, I discovered only about 2.3 million people (0.7% of the population) watch any part of prime-time Fox News on a given night. My assumption of 25% was off by a factor of 35, only 0.7% actually watch it. Which is why I have never posted about the Fox News’s propaganda machine.  It gets blamed for a lot of the bad in the country but the reality is less than 1% of the country actually watches Fox News.

This happens to me over and over again. The premise of an idea for a new post ends up not being supported by the facts.  I have a college education.  I have read tons of books. I have a couple decades experience as an analyst. For 15 or more years, several days a week, I have read information from multiple established news organizations.  Before I started blogging I was confident that my opinions were in the range of being well supported by the facts. However, once I started fact-checking myself, I soon discovered my assumptions about most things are often off by an order of magnitude or more.

It was and still is disconcerting to realize so many of my assumptions about the world were way off.  Was I losing my mind? Was old-age taking its due?  I am 65 and time does march on, like it or not. Am I an idiot? Just plain stupid?  Maybe the information I looked up was consistently wrong.  No matter the cause the process was taking a toll on my self-esteem. I had hard evidence that my assumptions about the world are often wrong.

So I was going to write about the importance of having self-confidence even when that self-confidence is being challenged by reality. In doing that research is when I ran into the concepts of the false consensus effect and the false uniqueness effect.

False consensus effect is where we overestimate the extent (feel there is a consensus) to which our opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others. The false consensus effect is important to our self-esteem. When we feel like a normal person it is much easier for us to feel good about ourselves.  Unfortunately often when confronted with evidence that we are not normal (a consensus does not exist), many of us assume that those who do not agree with us are defective in some way.

False Uniqueness Effect is our tendency to over-estimate how uncommon certain of our abilities and traits actually are. In other words, we tend to think we are more special than we really are because we have an ability to do this or that thing.  It is important to our self-confidence up to a point.  It makes us big headed beyond that point.

So think about this for a minute.  We, which includes me, think we are both more normal and more special than we really are.  We thus make assumptions about the world that are biased by both the false consensus and false uniqueness effects. So then if you fact-checked your assumptions like I started to do when I started blogging, you would likely discover, as I did, that those assumptions are often wrong.

The reality is we each have abilities at which we are better at than some other people but that does not make us unique in our abilities. If you are in the top 5% in IQ, 4% of the population has an IQ higher than you do. 

The reality is that the combination of our opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits actually does make us each unique. When is the last time you were at a restaurant and everyone around you ordered the exact same thing as you did? 

There is no language you can speak which is spoken by most people on earth.  There is no religious faith you can have which is shared by most people on earth. There is no type of food you can like which is liked by most people on earth.  No matter what age you are, most people on earth are not your age.  There is no lifestyle you can have which most other people have.

Do you personally know anyone who behaves and believes identically as you do?  Do you know anyone who has the exact same likes and dislikes as you? How about someone who has the exact same opinions as you do? Even identical twins who were raised together develop differences in their behaviors. We might know some people with similar backgrounds with similar tastes as we do, but clearly, even then, there are plenty of individual differences.

All humans are of one species. Genetically we are very similar too one to another.  That said, behaviorally, emotionally, intellectually, etc. virtually none of us are the same, one to another. There are 7.6 billion people on the planet, all of us are unique individuals.  Again there are 7.6 billion people on the planet no matter what your abilities are, there are many others with similar or better abilities.  Sure there are world champions but odds are, you are not one of those.

It has taken me a couple months to get my head around the above, however, I have to say I feel like I am in a better place. I now realize my uniqueness is what actually makes me normal. I also feel like my goal is to feel confident and comfortable in my abilities more than to pretend that somehow I am or should be the best at them.

I can say this, fact-checking one’s self will tend to make one humble.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

This article appeared in Govloop.ccom on January 19. 2018

The city hall was packed with what seemed like over 100 agitated residents. I worked for the county and was at the city council meeting to do a short, non-controversial presentation about an information item which had nothing to do with whatever everyone was so hyped about. The mayor asked if I would go on first. I asked if he was worried about the big crowd. He hesitated before responding, then looked me in the eye and said something like, “These people will make their point but I am more worried about the opinion of the other 30,000 residents.”

About 139 million Americans voted in the last election. About 187 million did not vote. Forty percent of those eligible to vote did not vote. Nobody under the age of 18 legally voted. The focus may be rightfully on the will of the actual voters but we need to be cognizant of the fact that the majority of people did not vote.

Agencies and other organizations have to focus on those who participate but remember there are large numbers of people within their jurisdictions who do not participate. There are all sorts of reasons people do not actively participate: apathy, too busy, shy other priorities, etc. Maybe they just feel your organization is not relevant to their lives. Maybe they are busy working against your agency and do not want to associate with the enemy.

Clearly, when someone does not actively participate, organizations should not treat them as if they do not exist. Those who do not participate still exist. The relevance of our organization is reduced to the extent we ignore non-active participants. School children do not vote but are important constituents for organizations wanting to reduce pollution.

It is no big revelation that connected technology is how an organization can connect with non-participants. Connected technology is pervasive. It is currently the only practical way to connect to a group with whom you do not have a current connection with.

Organizations already use connected technology. Whether the organization expands the use of the technology to also connect with non-participates is a question only your organization can answer. However, there is a question you might want to ask yourself. Would you as an individual employee of an organization want to work on the project to interact with others who currently are not active participants?

Whether you will have the opportunity is a whole other question. However, it is amazing how often wanting to do something leads to an opportunity to actually do it.

Here are some things to think about.

Do you agree that your organization needs to expand its relationship to include those with whom they do not currently interact?

Some people love working on the front lines with active participants. Are you one of these? Would the “mushy” work of building relationships with non-active participants be something you could adjust to?

Some other people want to be in the back room greasing the wheels to keep the organization running. They focus on policy or systems support. Do these people want to expand the organization’s relationship to include those with whom they do not currently interact?

Then there are people who define interesting as trying to make something where there is currently nothing. They want to move the ball down the field. They want the experience of building something new. Working to build an organization’s relationship with people who currently do not have a relationship with an organization is a challenge they want to undertake.

The mayor understood that the 100 energized people in that council room may or may not represent the views of the 30,000 who were not in that room. The effort to reach those who are not engaged means trying many different approaches, most of which will take time to work or prove they do not work. It will not be easy.

One of the characteristics of connected technology is that it generally scales pretty well. It takes the same amount of effort to do a Facebook post no matter how many people view it. There are all sorts of ways connected technology can be used to extend the reach of your organizations to people who are not currently engaged. Actually figuring out the secret sauce to make it work could be interesting.

Most organizations define themselves by the participants with which they interact. However, organizations are an interactive part of a larger community. To be a relevant part of the larger community, the organization needs to interact with the larger community.

The way to expand the reach of an organization is to do what it takes. The organization has to reach out and interact. Theoretically, maybe it could happen by accident but generally, it takes a lot of work by dedicated professionals to get the job done.

The job is to make your agency relevant to the lives of all of your resident population, whether they have an active relationship with your agency or not.

I do not have kids in school but I think the school district should make an effort to keep me engaged in the education of the kids in our area. I will retire this coming year but I think the economic development folks should keep me engaged in what they are doing.

Of course, agencies have to focus on active participants.  However, we need to also focus on those who are not active.

All voices matter.

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This article appeared in Govloop.com on January 12, 2018

Lots of people are willing to tell you what your opinion should be. Far fewer give you the information needed to form your own opinion. Fortunately, in the age in which we live, the information you need is readily available. Here is some practical advice on how to gather enough information to get a basic understanding of an issue.

Take a deep breath, you are smart enough to use an internet search engine:

Step one. Search for the information. Search not only for the first word or phrase that pops into your head but also for related or similar words or phrases.

Do not read any opinion articles about your topic of interest. You are looking for evidence from which you will draw your own opinions. Conclusions others have drawn will bias your learning.

Step two. Read a little bit from a couple of different articles. Get a general idea about the topic. Get used to the jargon, get a feel for how the topic is talked about.

For example, in researching for this post I did some research about knowledge, education, learning and experience. Here are the snippets I got from Wikipedia:

• Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, information, descriptions or skills, which is acquired through experience or education by perceiving, discovering, or learning.
• Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits.
• Learning is the process of acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values or preferences.
• Experience is the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.

Step three. Read one of the articles from your search. Pick one. Read it. Was the article actually on the topic? Lots of titles and opening paragraphs can be deceptive. Whether or not it turned out to be exactly what you needed, you learned something.

When you read a word or phrase or concept you do not understand, use the search engine to look it up. Read a bit to get the definition or general idea about that which you did not understand. Dig deeper if warranted.

Step four. Now that you know a little more about the topic, refine your search and repeat.

Here is an example. Rather than accept a brag about the massive number of twitter followers someone has, let us seek to understand more about the topic.

First step, gather some basic information.

How many people are there in the area of interest?  This sets the base line.

• World population = 7.6 billion
• US population = 326 million

How many twitter followers are there?

• Twitter has an average of 330 million active users
• Twitter has about 69 million users in the USA.

By doing a little math ((326-69)/326) 79 percent of Americans do not have a Twitter account. Ninety-six percent of the world does not have a Twitter account. Even if everyone with a twitter account followed a single person, the tweets from that person would only reach about a quarter of the people. Now let us dig a little deeper.

The ten most followed twitter accounts include

• @katyperry (105 million)
• @justinbieber (103.12 million)
• @barackobama (96.93 million)
• @talorswift13 (85.3 million)
• @rihanna (81.4 million)
• @TheEllenShow (74.92 million)

The person with the most followers is followed by less than a third of the people with accounts on Twitter. So unless a person is in about the top 10, the percent of the population, actually following them is markedly lower.

I have a couple of Twitter followers. They were all in the room when my daughter helped set up my Twitter account.

New knowledge is gained by building a foundation of basic information. We gather additional information by experience, education, reading, etc. Finally, we put all of the information in perspective relative to other information. From that, we form an opinion.

Sometimes after looking deep into a topic, I have not found what I learned all that useful. Other times I am shocked how wrong my previous opinion was. No matter what your reaction is to what you learned, remember, you learned more than you knew before. That is a good thing.

As a child, the librarian who lived next door told me this. If you read one source on a topic, you have one view of the topic. If you read three sources on a topic, you have enough views to start having some perspective on the topic. When you read 5 or more sources on a topic, you will have enough different perspectives on the topic to maybe have a worthwhile opinion.

Lots of people are willing to tell you what your opinion should be. Ignore them, you have the ability and means to gather the basic information to form our own opinion. It is not that hard. Gathering information and forming an opinion is very rewarding. You will feel good about yourself.

One caution: Keep in mind, nobody is any one thing. Liars do not always lie. Mean people are not always mean. No group ever shares all of the same characteristics. Geniuses do not know everything. People with very low IQs often do and say very smart things. When you read that “they” all have some characteristic or another, it is suspect. Do further reading on the topic.

Nobody is perfect, including you. Smart people, like you, see the facts and sometimes come to a wrong conclusion.  However, most of the time they come to an informed opinion.

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

This article appeared in Govloop.com on January 5, 2018

It is important for your agency priorities to be in sync with the priorities of the people of your jurisdiction – not just your direct customers but generally the people of your jurisdiction. Why is this especially important now? The circumstances of our constituents may have recently changed or are about to change. There are many recent social, revenue, demographic and other influences that may well affect their priorities. Besides, it is always good to communicate with your constituents.

First, remember that much in the lives of the people in our jurisdictions have little to do with the work our government agencies do. Taxes are not their only expenses. Expenses are not the only challenges they face. Our regulations are not the only difficult things they need to understand. However, to the extent our agencies affect their lives, we need to respect the importance of the issues they are facing, whether or not those issues directly affect the work we do.

Here are some examples of influences that might affect their and – thus maybe your own –  priorities:

There are over 326 million people in the USA, and less than one percent of them watch cable news on a regular basis. The reality is that our constituents get their information from a wide variety of sources. About ten times as many people per day view a Wikipedia page than view all cable news shows combined. How current is the information about the work your agency does in Wikipedia?

Constituents know how to search for information when they need it. They are very capable of getting information directly from your agency any number of ways, when they need it. When you hold dialogue with your constituents, do not forget to ask them how they want to get information from your organization. Do not be surprised if the answer is something like, “Just put the information out there, we will find it when we need it.”

The new tax formulas (Tax Cut and Jobs Act ) will decrease federal funding by over $1.45 trillion over the next decade. The portion of the budget paid by business entities has been substantially reduced. This leaves individual workers paying a larger portion of the budget for government services than they were previously.

The first reaction most people/entities have about the new tax act is whether they will pay more or less in taxes. The issue most agencies will have to face is, directly or indirectly, how the funding levels and/or funding sources for your agency will change. The important nuance is that portion of revenue from business profits will decrease. On the other hand, increased wages will tend to increase tax revenue.

Do not forget that the business climate is changing. For example, in many areas, retail centers are suffering as ordering goods and services online is booming. From the perspective of many agencies, this shift in the pattern of commerce changes many things. Economic development is maybe a little less about developing retail shopping centers. Transportation planning may be a little less anchored at retail centers. Public safety will be a little less about retail centers and maybe a little more about packages left at individuals’ homes.

Yes, things are changing. There is no doubt big changes in government services are going to happen. Covering a $1.45 trillion deficit will directly or indirectly affect most of the levels of government. There are some who feel the “easy fix” would be to eliminate a major program or two.

That might happen but that is not how I read the tea leaves. For most people, priorities should be set around the question of what is the most cost-effective way to get the services they need. For example, the question for most people is really not about eliminating Medicare. Rather, the question is about the best way to achieve good health outcomes for all citizens as cost-effectively as possible.

Contrary to the perception of many, national security is a real day-to-day problem for people in this country. Our personal information is regularly hacked by people outside our borders. We are routinely contacted by people from foreign governments trying to scam us. Too often, they are successful. For most people, being told by those hired to protect us, “to be careful” is not a good enough reaction.

Just because social media is used to disseminate deceptive/fraudulent material does not make it okay. There are legal consequences for fraud no matter how it is committed. Is there a perception that using social media to perpetuate fraud should have a legal consequence? What is the government doing to decrease the amount of fraud on the internet?

It is important for your agency to discuss the germane issues with your constituents. When you talk to them, it may sometimes sound like what they are talking about is not relevant to your agency. Do not dismiss what they are saying. Rather, ask more questions and listen more carefully to better understand what is relevant to your constituents. Remember it is a dialogue, you need to also tell them about the work your agency does.

Funding is changing and the needs of our constituents are changing. The key in times of change is to not avoid discussions with your constituents. Rather, embrace the dialogue. They are the reason your agency is relevant.

Finally, remember you might as well also be a constituent of the agency for which you work. Make sure your voice is also heard.

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

 

This article appeared in Govloop.com on December 22, 2017

The preamble of the Constitution of the United States begins “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…..” The Constitution went into effect in 1789. Here we are 228 years later.

Being a blogger is a good excuse to look some random stuff up and report it as if I did something cool. Here are some things I looked up about “We the people.”

In summary, people are people, we come from somewhere else. Most of us live clustered. Only about half us have a job but there are good reasons the other half does not. Relatively few of us extract stuff from the ground for a living. Education attainment is important to both income and job security. We spend lots on healthcare and our outcomes are good but not the best. Crime is actually lower than it was when we were younger. Then, finally, most of our time is spent living our daily lives the best we can.

The first humans in North America came through Europe and then Asia about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. Starting about 400 years ago, this native population was largely decimated by epidemic diseases brought from Europe; violence and warfare. While there are many people alive today who have Native American ancestors, few if any, have only Native American ancestors.

In the 1780’s the American colonies were home to about 2.6 million people; only about 50,000 of which were Native American. Back then, what would soon be these United States of America enjoyed the highest standard of living in the world.

As a practical matter, every person in America today, either migrated here from somewhere else or their ancestors did sometime within the past 400 years. It is not a coincidence that the ability of ships to reliably travel the oceans started about 400 years ago nor that the native populations of America were mostly eliminated as a result.

Yes “we the people” are all basically migrants. Virtually all of us are “from” multiple regions of the world. But that does not mean we are different from other people in some way. As the science of genetics has advanced, it has confirmed that all people on the planet are the same species, Homo sapiens. There are no exceptions. Genetically humans are about 99.9 percent the same.

Our individual differences occur with about 0.01 percent of our genome. Genetically, our individual differences are mostly things like height, skin tone, eye color, etc. For how different people think others are from them, genetically we are all about 99.9 percent the same to each other. We the people are people just like every other person is.

Our country has over four times the urban dwellers than rural dwellers. About 82 percent of our population lives in an urban area. Rural American populations are older, have a higher poverty rate, a lower education attainment rate and lower healthcare availability. In today’s connected economy, rural America is also struggling to get broadband coverage.

Switching now to employment-related issues.

Only about half of “we the people” (161.5 million) are in the labor force. Most of those not in the labor force are children or the elderly. Also not in the labor force are military, incarcerated individuals, students, homeless, caregivers for children/family members and the like.

Of the 49 percent of “we the people” who are in the labor force, about 86 percent of jobs are in the service sector and only about 14 percent are in the goods-producing sector. It is not that we are manufacturing less or constructing less or extracting less minerals, oils and gasses. What has happened is automation, machinery and related process improvements have decreased the number of workers needed to do the job. Coal miners are mostly now machine operators. Construction workers operate more efficient machines. More and more manufacturing is highly automated.

Times have changed and the jobs today often require more training and education to do them well.

Increased educational attainment level increases earnings and reduces the odds of being unemployed. On average, a person who attained a master’s degree earns twice as much as a person who attained a high school diploma and is half as likely to be unemployed.

About 40 percent of “we the people” aged 25 did not attain more than a high school diploma. Another 40 percent attained a post-secondary degree.

Shifting now to healthcare.

The Peterson- Kaiser health system tracker is a respected authoritative source to which I defer. We the people spend the most on healthcare and our outcomes are improving but often still lagging behind comparable countries.

The violent crime rate is 37 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The crime rates have been reduced by 30-45 percent for all major crime categories except rape (reduced by 17 percent).

How “we the people” spend our time? The Bureau of Labor Statistics periodically does the American Time Use Survey. We spend most of our time on the following: personal care (sleeping), household activities (food prep, cleaning, laundry, lawn and garden, etc.), working (getting there and home) and relaxing/leisure. Caring for others, educational and civic activities are done to a lesser extent.

Conclusion

“We the people” are really not much different from each other genetically. We all share similar experiences. Most of us work unless we have a very socially acceptable reason not too (young, old, military, caregiver and student).

Good education and healthcare are important to us. Most of us live in an urban area and crime is not good but not nearly as widespread as most believe. Finally, we spend most of our time doing what it takes to get by day-to-day living our lives.

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

This article appeared in Govloop.com on December 5, 2017

The work products from most agencies are created, marked up and published in a digital form. It took years but the government is now mostly digital. Many agencies put up a good fight, however digital won. Certainly, some agencies still publish their work as hardcopy but most do not. Looking for information now requires the use of a computer, not so much a trek to the file room. File cabinets are not yet a thing of the past but I have not seen a new one in a while.

I recently saw a picture of a congressman holding up a hardcopy form of a proposed bill they had just voted on. The bill literally had text crossed out with a sharpie and replacement text handwritten in the margins with arrows. The content of the bill aside, what struck me is how old-fashioned and unofficial marking up hardcopy pages looked.

Government agencies work electronically just like the private sector does. Sure, some participants use hardcopy for taking notes but the document actually being marked up is almost always electronic with track changes turned on. Typically some team member(s) creates the original draft. A small group then collaborates to iterate the draft into a more final-like version. Various stakeholders then have the opportunity to digest and comment on the material. Revisions are made up to the moment of “policy” approval.

During the whole process, the work product is kept digital.  It gives everyone access to the current version while it is being worked on and easier to share with the rest of world when it is time to publish the final version. Even when our work gets “public noticed,” we may accept hardcopy comments. But most often, we expect the comments to come in digitally.

Contrary to how secretive the workings of government are often portrayed, the reality is that the process is usually transparent and online. While government agencies are very protective of private information, public information is generally readily available for all to see and interact with.

Day after day, week after week, for many years, government agencies create and post all sorts of information online. As the amount of information online increased, the amount of information worked on and stored in “hardcopy” decreased. Think of all of the agencies at all of the levels of government that produce and publish digital information. Most agencies have thousands and thousands of online “pages” and there are thousands of agencies. The magnitude of government information online is huge and growing.

Over 87 percent of the adult United States population has internet access. Worldwide it is estimated that over 3.8 billion people have internet access. Quite literally posting digital content gives that information the biggest potential audience it can have. No other method of sharing information even comes close. Government agencies literally share most of our information in the manner that most people have access to; the internet.

Sure, there is a huge potential audience for the information but what is the reality of how many view the information? The reality is government sites get an enormous number of views. A quick look at the analytics.usa.gov site shows that the Federal government websites get millions of page views every day. Federal sites had over 2.5 billion visits over the past 90 days. Now add to those all of the views of each of the state agency sites from all of the states. Then, add all of the views for all of the municipal sites within each state. Next, add all of the views for all of the other types of government sites.  Lastly, add them all up and – holy cow – that is a lot of views.

Besides the information posted by government agencies, think about all of the related information posted by public interest organizations, consultants, interested parties (pro and opposed), businesses, academics, students, former and present clients, news organizations, bloggers and the list goes on.

The number of file cabinets in government may be decreasing but the amount of information posted on or about our programs is a lot and continues to grow. The vast majority of that information is available to anyone online from anywhere in the world at any time. Sure, many people don’t know that our information is available but it certainly is not a secret.

The reality is government agencies, as a whole, are using technology to create content and make that content as accessible as possible to the most people as possible. We are not perfect, but the days of marking up hardcopy with a sharpie are mostly in our past. Moreover, the information is actually being accessed and used by millions of our fellow citizens.

FYI – 13 percent of adults in the USA do not have internet access. Surveys show the top two reasons why they do not have access are: no interest and too complicated.

One final thing:

Now that so much government information is online, what happens next?

There exists a virtual community surrounding most of our areas of interest. When people search by topic, your site is likely just one of many they find. Your information may be “official” but is it the easiest to understand or use. When is the last time you searched for the same topics on which your agency posts? We are part of a virtual community.

My guess is learning to better interact with our online communities is what is likely to be a big part of what is next.

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This article wsa published in Govloop.com on December 8, 2017

Most people don’t trust government, according to Pew Research. Since 2007, the amount of constituents agreeing they can trust the government “always” or “most of the time” has not surpassed 30 percent.

It might surprise the general public, but people who work at government agencies actually know what they are doing – more often than not. In fact, many government employees are widely recognized experts in their fields. The processes followed are pretty good and are being continually improved. Government agencies generally accomplish good in an efficient manner.

But trust is still important. The perception that government cannot be trusted is a very real problem. This post talks about what can be done to restore the perception of trust. Of course, both you or your agency must be, in fact, trustworthy. Perception is very important but not as important as actually being worthy of trust.

Assuming you and your agency are trustworthy but not perceived as such, how can trust be gained?

Study after study shows most people will not change a belief even when given rational arguments contrary to that belief. Ordering people to trust or not trust something does not work. Trust does not work that way. Bribery can gain cooperation but not trust, in fact, it might reduce trust.

First and foremost, remember that the public is not the enemy. They are us, we are them. This is not about who is better or worse. It is not about who is smart or who is not. It certainly is not about politics. This is exactly about having the work your agency is doing being perceived as trustworthy.

The trick is to not try to change the old perception but rather to reinforce a new perception. People might not trust “the government” but they certainly can trust the important work that you and your agency do. The “government” that people do not trust is this abstract, monolithic thing; not the reality of the work you and your agency do.

People tend to believe the information presented over and over again regardless of the information’s actual validity. The phenomenon is called the illusory truth effect. Repetition helps make it familiar, being familiar makes it believed. Unfortunately, familiarity can overpower rationality. However, being both rational and familiar is the sweet spot that reduces the cognitive dissonance (having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs or attitudes).

If you want people to believe the work you do can be trusted, repeatedly communicate that truth. Put it in every communication. Find ways for the public to get the message over and over and over again. Be honest. Be straightforward. Be positive. Say it over and over again. Experts at agency X solved the problem. Agency X works hard to help all of us. Agency X is a trusted resource for everyone. Agency X provides a trusted safety net when it is needed the most. Agency X is working together with stakeholders for the greater good. You get the idea.

Do not message that mistrust is unjustified. That reinforces the negative perception. Focus on the positive message. State it over and over again. Make it familiar. “The work the agency does can be trusted.” We are not asking them to like government, only trust the work we do. Being liked would be nice but the goal is to be trusted and respected.

Think about all of the crummy toys we “needed” as kids. We saw the commercials thousands of times. In hindsight, how many of those toys did you actually need? Sure some of those toys were wonderful but many were not. Either way, we truly believed we needed those toys because we were repeatedly told we needed them thousands of times.

Remember that people rarely change their mind on that which they believe. People do not trust government. That cause is probably lost for a generation. The new perception is not about trust of the government; it is about trusting the work done by our agencies.

We humans need to interact with each other for our mutual survival as a species. Government establishes and enforces the rules under which our interactions with each other are governed. Without government, every interaction would be contentious. Think of examples of illegal interactions outside the purview of government: gangsters and drug lords and the like. Compare that to interactions made within the purview of a trusted government. In cases of alleged cheating, there is legal recourse judged by a jury of our peers, not violence.

The work of government is, as it always has been, important. Governments that are corrupt or work against the greater good do not deserve to be trusted. Our agencies and our government employees have integrity. We work for the greater good. We live in a time where many people think their government is not trustworthy. We cannot fight that. It is what it is. The best we can do is make it known that the work we and the agencies we work for deserve to be trusted. Of course, we actually have to deserve that trust.

Make it known, over and over again that the work our agencies do is worthy of being trusted. Did you notice I repeated the idea “we and the agencies we work for deserve to be trusted” many times? I repeated it to make it familiar. By the way – did you know that work that government agencies can be trusted?

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This article was first published in Govloop.com on December 1, 2017

The benefits of being a positive person and of supporting a cause bigger than yourself includes: happiness, longer life, improved self-worth, better physical and mental health and the list goes on.

Trying to make the world a better place in a positive way = good for you. Being a self-centered negative jerk = not good for you.

Assuming you choose the former over the latter, as a practical matter you need a list of positive things that will make the world a better place. Where do you start? What process would come up with such a list?

There are thousands of people and organizations that work very hard to convince you to support their cause. The trick is to figure out what interests you and will make the world a better place. There is only one person who can answer which causes you are interested in: you.

About a year ago, I had read about the benefits of being a positive, altruistic person. I decided I wanted to actually make a list of positive things that interested me and which could make the world a better place. Not saying you should follow the same process but I can categorically say, making the list is well worth the effort. Below is the process I followed.

For several weeks, a couple times a week, I blocked out 15 minutes on my calendar to research and think about what positive things could be done to make the world a better place. Note: I blocked out 15 minutes but most often I actually ended up spending more like 30 minutes. I decided to limit my list to five items.

I made the self-imposed rule that the list would never be more than 5 items. So when a new idea came up I had to decide whether it was good enough to replace something else on the list.

Of course, “better” is in the eye of the beholder. However, I felt the eye of the beholder should be informed by some objective criteria. As I moved from session to session I found my definition of “better” evolved. I also decided that any idea had to be something I would be willing to tell others about and had to be within the realm of realistic and possible.

Ideas can be of any scale: Is it a global thing, a regional thing, a local thing, an interpersonal thing or a personal thing? The ideas do not have to be original or clever. Positive ideas held for the only purpose of opposing something was also contrary to the whole idea of the project.

Here are the criteria I landed on for making the world better:

• Better means a better quality of life first and longer life secondary.

• An idea could benefit either just humans or the combination of humans and other organisms. However, the idea can’t be about harming other organisms.

• Ideas could be about our relationships with others, personal wellbeing or about the environment but could not harm our relationships, wellbeing or the environment.

• Better could be about learning/changing the way we think about something or about actually changing a physical something.

• An idea could help many and harm a few, but in all cases, the idea is to be about helping the many and not basically about harming the few.

Many ideas felt great at first, but upon reflection, not so much. My list was not a “best of” list. It was a list of things that interested me and in my personal opinion would help make the world a better place. The list was not about how to accomplish any items on the list.

Here are the five ideas on my final list. I did not rank them at the time or since.

• Learn to use connected devices better and encourage others to do the same. We are in the information age and learning to use the tools of the age is a very positive thing to do.

• Make government information more accessible and encourage others to do the same (a job-related goal).

• Replace many of the billions of trees that have been cut down over the last couple hundred years.
  • Take carbon out of the atmosphere and put it in the ground where it belongs;
  • Increase the amount of oxygen in the air;
  • Provide a habitat for more organisms, increasing bio-diversity;
  • Stabilizes the soils reducing erosion.

• Help people understand that reality, for all its warts, is a very rich and satisfying place to live. None of us are perfect, accepting each other for who and what we are is a better path forward.

By inclination and nature, I am not an activist or a community organizer. The call is not that you follow me. But I highly recommend coming up with a list of positive things you think will make the world a better place.

The final item on my list was:

Work on being a better blogger with a positive message about making the world a better place.

Being a blogger and this blog post is me working on this last item.

Finally, this is the signature line from my work email. “Plant trees – Your grandchildren will breathe easy and the water will flow cool and clear.”

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

This article was first posted at Govloop.com on November 17,2017

Careers last a long time. Your career is literally the entire period of your work life. The reasonable base expectation for our work lives is we did our job well and, in return, earned a living. For the record, doing your job(s) well and earning a living over the period of a career is something to be proud of in and of itself.

As the years passed, I have come to realize that a career is about the journey and not the destination. A good career is about what happens on your career journey and how you reacted to whatever it was. In the end, the journey was what it was. Whether or not you feel yours was a good career; it’s in hindsight to decide.

The dictionary definition of Career is a person’s progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking.

We cannot change the past of our careers. The best we can do is heed the lessons our past taught us. This is not to imply you should want to change your past. There are people who work at the same job for decades, growing in experience and learning new things all the time. There are others who seem to have just one year’s worth of experience repeated for years on end. Let me be clear, no matter where you are in your career, changing where you have been is not an option. Your option is how you are going to react now.

The future of our career is yet to be determined. The best you can do about the future is to keep it in mind as you do your job day to day. The past is in the past and the future will be what it will be. Some of the future is in your control but you do not control as much as you might think you do. The real key to a good career is doing the best you can today. It is a real cliché but learn from your past, keep an eye on the future all while living in the present.

In the real world, the trajectory of our career path is not a straight, upward-pointing line. Our paths are influenced by numerous factors – some within our control, some not. Budgets get cut back, technologies change, people have children, interests change, opportunities change, relationships get interesting and the list goes on. Through it all, remember that your job is what you have right now and doing your job well is important. However, your career is long and it will ebb and flow.

Here are some basic thoughts on what might make for a good career:

1. Be as competent as you can be at doing your job. Try new things. Let experience teach you what works and does not work. Be willing to be wrong once in a while, but learn from it. Get training and education. Take a class or go to a seminar. Attend sessions at a conference. Learning is inherently valuable to your career.

2. Suggest and or try new ways to get your job done. Be open to trying new ways suggested by others. Sure, it might be at the expense of your current job but have faith in your ability to land on your feet.

3. It is okay to be ambitious about getting ahead. But it is not okay to hurt the career of others to get ahead. In fact, helping others get ahead is a great answer when you get asked, “why do you want to be promoted?”

4. Be genuine, not a robot. Open up to others and be open when others confide in you. Getting along with others is important in almost every career. It is certainly an important part of being a decent human being. Be reasonably social.

5. Sooner or later you will have a load of crap plopped on your lap. First, clean up the mess the best you can. Do what you can to prevent it from happening again. Worry about who was to blame later. Never take revenge but take the high road instead.

6. Relationships are formed by sharing experiences with others. Form relationships by sharing experiences with coworkers. Lone wolves make good novels but generally not great careers.

7. Do what it takes to learn about your agency or organization. What groups do what things? What are the goals? Who is in charge of what? Be curious.

Overall, education, experience, people skills, willingness to do some of the dirty work, organizational knowledge, camaraderie and the like are what make for a good career.

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com

 

This post was first published on November 10, 2017 in Govloop.com

Many of our government agencies have a ton of information (content) that might be helpful to certain people in certain circumstances. But most of the time – to be honest – government agencies have a huge amount of boring content. Yet periodically the right person, having access to that content at the right time, would be a very good thing.

If all of our agencies’ content were to be displayed directly on our websites, wouldn’t that be overwhelming? Who could possibly find anything? Instead, we often put a bunch of links to documents on our web pages. We tell everyone the information is on the web – but likely, we know, it would be hard to find.

The new team was told to get my input on their proposed web page. The proposal was basically a bunch of links under banners with category names on them. It looked nice and they were excited. I knew almost no one actually uses this type of page. It is a tough lesson to learn because you have to observe the analytics for extended periods. I liked them and thought they could handle the truth. I told them, “They call content, ‘king,’ for a reason.” This post is about lessons learned from a project I occasionally worked on since late 2012.

The old Minnesota Stormwater Manual was an 885-page document. The link to it was four layers down from the home page. Additionally, the link was in the middle of 10 to 15 other links. All things considered, the manual still received a couple of thousand dowloads.

The updated Minnesota Stormwater Manual uses read-only wiki technology to display content directly on web pages. The updated manual has received over 9.3 million page views and counting. Note: it is a technical manual targeted for stormwater management professionals, not the general public.

What magic gets a technical manual over 9 million page views in only 4.5 years? Here’s the trick: The web search engines are able to index the entire content when the content is put directly on the web pages. When the content was in a pdf file, the search engines indexed just the title of the document, not the content.

Once the content is indexed, a search for relevant information can include your site in the search results. The requester does not need to know the site existed, let alone how to navigate around the site. They just looked up a topic and the search engine pointed them to the relevant information on your site.

Search engines are a modern miracle. The search engines seem to know what you want, even when you don’t. For example, I entered, “How many search results do people click on?” and somehow it knew to return an article titled, How many Google searchers go to page two of their search results? The answer= Academic research indicates that 91 percent of searchers do not go past page one of the search results and over 50 percent do not go past the first three results on page.

The search engines are sophisticated. They rank sites that have good relevant information higher than sites that do not. Lots of sites try all sorts of tricks but the actual best way to get your pages ranked high is if the page contains good content. It also helps to link to other pages with good content and have them link to such pages.

The search engines do not give extra credit for clever names or the perfect use of color. Search engines like respected, authoritative information from respected sources which are interlinked. The content – boring or not – from a government agency is generally exactly the type of information they rank highly. When the content is interlinked with other government/academic content, it increases the odds your page will appear near the top of a search result set.

Having lots of quality content really is the magic solution to making it easier for content to be discovered by the right people at the right time. The internet is full of tools to make it easy to find and use content. If your site has good content, displayed directly on web pages and if there is a demand for that information, it will be found.

Content is called king for a reason. Make sure the internet can see your actual content, not just a link.

Finally, getting the right information to the right people at the right time is the goal. While the number of page views might help justify funding, accomplishing the goal of your agency is key.

 

Paul Leegard is part of the GovLoop Featured Blogger program, where we feature blog posts by government voices from all across the country (and world!). To see more Featured Blogger posts, click here.

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.
Scaleandperception.com