Anita began by asking John his thoughts about creating public value.   You have written that, since the 1980s, new public management has focused on the effectiveness and efficiency of government.  We now see yet a new era that we can think of as public value governance, which elevates public values, protection, public service, and citizen engagement into the mix.   What does this mean for the ways that governments operate?

John described how public value has to do with a broad conception of what is good for the public, including what the public wants, and that this has to go way beyond efficiency and effectiveness.   There is a rebalancing occurring…  and this emphasizes helping people have good lives.   The focus of the conversation was on the idea that societies are complex systems in which we tend – at least in the United States – to want the government to be limited to the kinds of things that the government does well.   John described how there’s a loss of sense of community and a loss of reliance on the rule of law as central, abiding, enduring, immutable governance arrangements.  There’s a loss of a sense of what government can do that defined the experiences of the “Great Generation” that went through World War II.

Your writing emphasizes that public organizations – Im thinking of city and state governments in the US, as well as peer institutions and national agencies elsewhere – have to move from a management ethos to a governance ethos given the complexity of big problems like climate, the opioid epidemic, the pandemic, and so on, each of which is beyond the scope of any single jurisdiction.  How is governance capability different from management capability in public institutions?

Anita and John focused on what it takes to run a city like Minneapolis or State College, PA, or even New York City effectively.   John described how responses have to match the scale of problems that must be addressed.  He gave an example:  When the US was expanding westward after the Civil War, a surveyor named John Wesley Powell was commissioned to map the Colorado river.  He realized that there wasn’t enough water west of the 100^th meridian to support the allocation of small sources of land without water contention.   Powell advocated for something that did not come to fruition: The definition of the boundaries of the State of Colorado that conformed to the watershed area of the Colorado river.  With the four corners area of the US defined by four state boundaries, we are stuck in a contentious grand challenge over water rights because there’s no unified governance arrangement.  There’s nobody in charge.

What kinds of governance capabilities do we need to get past jurisdictional fighting over the Colorado water system?

John identified three tools:  Strategy mapping, group model building, and dialogue.    He described the importance of dialogue – of talking – citing Hubert Humphrey’s wisdom.    Growing up in the Appalachians, this wasn’t always easy, as local values emphasized humility and quietness and a kind of isolation.   Yet good government requires shared external memory, boundary objectives, and systems thinking.   This is how these tools can help. 

John interned with the city manager as a high-school student in State College, PA, his hometown in the Appalachian mountains.  There, he got a sense of how everything interacted in human systems of government.   Everyone knew everyone, in the end.  There was local value attached to a good citizenship model of what constitutes community.  What happens through mutual interaction is a sense of caring for the place and the people in it.   We now have some unravelling of this:   epidemics of loneliness, suicides, and loss of connectness.  Government is a reflection of this.

What will it take to create the kinds of governance systems that John sees as so critical to the fulfillment of public values such as a high quality of life?   

There’s a piece of this that requires governments interested in doing good work and in providing good service.   Government needs to be concerned with user experience.  John seems the demolition of what’s been accomplished as a tragedy.   At the same time, we need a restoration of reliance on fundamental principles such as the rule of law and the Constitution as our prevailing governance document.  

What makes John optimistic?

              First, the country’s been through worse before: The Civil War in particular.

Second, there’s a growing recognition of the significance of the problem.  He cited Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny.   Pushback can succeed.

John ended with a story of a doctoral student who played football for the great football franchise, Notre Dame.  A Priest would pray for the team before each game.  John’s student asked the Priest:  Is God on our side?  The Priest’s answer:   Yes if you block your man.