Preface

This book is fundamentally about change. Policy and program implementation requires changing systems and organizations, changing the hearts and minds of both people who work within them and those who are served by them. And there is a lot already written about change. In the early twenty-first century, we are fascinated by it. Popular social commentators' blogs and books help us make sense of the massive societal, environmental, and economic changes occurring around the world. Management gurus provide accounts of organizational change, models to describe it, and ideas for engaging those resistant to it. Self-help books and podcasts describe individual change in spirituality, family dynamics, exercise regimes, and nutrition, providing five-step, eight-step, twelve-step plans to structure our intention and enable personal transformation. All of these many resources help us make sense of these changes; they help us describe it, understand it, and shape it.

In writing this book, we begin with the presumption that amid all of these other resources, ideas, and guides, there is something unique to be learned regarding change in public policies and programs. What is unique, in part, is the ambition. When people in democracies need to address collective problems, they turn to formulating public policies or developing new programs and initiatives. They must accomplish things together they cannot accomplish alone or through purely private activities. They need safe roads, Internet access in remote regions, schools for their children. Yet many such initiatives are what scholars have called "wicked problems," or "grand challenges," difficult to solve because of their complexity. There are often conflicting interpretations of the problem: what should be done about it, who should do it, and how it shall be accomplished.

In the face of such complexity, one response is to attempt to centralize decision making and adopt tools such as written rules, structured protocols, or benchmarks in an attempt to reduce uncertainty. During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars at policy schools in the United States initially saw implementation in this way-as a mere management task that would be propelled through centralization or, at a minimum, professional standardization. It was something to turn to once policymaking was complete to achieve policy outcomes, understood as a distinct phase of the policy process, following agenda setting, policy formation, adoption, and preceding evaluation. Yet thirty years of research documents both the fallacy of trying to control implementation and the limitations of a "phases" model.

An alternative approach is to acknowledge that implementation is about making change in complex systems. It is about how policy ideas come to be embedded in operations and everyday actions. And while it unfolds in unexpected ways, there are lessons that can be learned and patterns that can be identified to improve how this process occurs. In this book, we aim to share these lessons and provide techniques for seeing these patterns. We integrate considerable research in public policy, economics, sociology, public administration, design, medicine, political science, social work, urban planning, education, and public health. We offer stories of challenges and successes. We describe tools that can be applied to your particular interests or professional projects to help improve implementation in those instances and enable you to be a more strategic actor and leader of productive change. We also provide more extensive analysis of cases we each know well: programs developed to respond to the US housing crisis and improve early childhood education. Through these various means, we provide a way to engage in making change in complex implementation systems in ways that improve desirable results.

Attending to policy and program implementation is rarely in anyone's job description, but often is everyone's responsibility. So we focus here on enabling people at various levels in systems to see their implementation roles and responsibilities more clearly. We also highlight the skills necessary to cultivate and seize change moments that present themselves to improve implementation results. In our efforts, though, we want to be clear: implementation is more akin to gardening than engineering or architecture.1 While effective implementation practice benefits from knowing relevant scientific concepts, it also involves attending to the unpredictable environment and engaging in creative problem solving.

Like gardeners, many implementers have an unconscious preference for how to approach their work. One friend of ours started her garden by first testing the soil, assessing the composition and determining whether it was acidic, neutral, or alkaline. Once diagnosed, she systematically introduced additives to improve the soil conditions so she could grow a wider array of plants, testing it every few weeks for the first year. She turned similar attention to eliminating weeds, fertilizing lawns, and fighting pests. When we talk with her about gardening, there are always debates about biotechnology or the best heirloom variety of seeds. She loves consulting and comparing the vast array of scientific knowledge. She combs through it for insights or suggestions about what might be useful in responding to a particular challenge, such as her poorly drained bed in her corner yard or her tomatoes that don't ever seem to ripen.

Yet we know many other gardeners who jump right in and select whatever looks good at the local gardening store each spring. Some of them end up killing almost everything, but they keep repeating the same process each year because their springtime enthusiasm is uncontainable. One of our friends who took this approach is now almost a master gardener. Literally, he started by getting his hands dirty. His approach was intuitive: he plants new additions in his garden each spring and waits to see how well they grow, adding fertilizer, watering, yanking out pesky weeds, and cursing squirrels who always seem to be attacking his tulips and lilies. But as his interest grew, he began to consult gardening blogs and books, learning more about how specific fertilizers could enhance the blooms of his roses.

Obviously for both of our friends, the environment really determines what unfolds under their watchful eyes. The science-oriented gardener reads about microclimates and adjusts her planting given the light, wind, and moisture present in the corner between the house and the garage. But after two months without rain, the plants in that microclimate struggle to survive as much as any other. The forces of nature-sun, rain, and wind-determine whether one will spend most of his or her time in a given summer watering, weeding, or relaxing with a cool glass of lemonade surrounded by colorful beauty. All gardeners respond to the unpredictability of nature. They observe, take risks, and adapt their plans given what is unfolding around them.

In this book, we are trying to support implementers who resemble either of these types of gardeners. We identify and integrate relevant science because we know that both benefit from the insights that emerge from systematic study of policy and program change. Our close reading has uncovered helpful ways to talk about what happens in policy and program implementation across contexts. This allows for better communication about implementation processes and challenges, even when people work at different levels or different scales. We also share case illustrations because in some areas, there is not yet research to probe what occurs in practice.

Yet we want to be clear. Even when consulting these resources, implementation practice is not merely applying technical skills. Rather, improving implementation requires engaging the unpredictable-the people who shape the understanding and activities of the program at various levels, the resources of money and talent that are almost always constrained, and the political environment that is changeable. This environment is often quite influential in policy and program implementation. Elections happen, newly appointed officials are brought in to lead state agencies, foundations change their priorities, organizational boards develop pet programs, and professional accreditation boards alter their standards. Things rarely occur just as they were intended, but through engaging intellect and imagination, the complex and rewarding challenges of policy and program implementation can captivate you for many years to come.

We focus here on policy and program implementation that occurs in public bureaucracies, networks and collaboratives, and public-private partnerships. It happens in nonprofit service organizations, schools, banks, and local governments. In our treatment, we combine policy and program implementation because one's definition about whether something is a "policy" or a "program" depends more on one's reference point than on any inherent characteristic of the change. We also concentrate on change that spans the responsibilities of more than one organization and change undertaken to achieve public rather than private results. A vast array of policy and program implementation projects falls into this definition, from significant federal policy such as new national health care reform, to new local service models developed by food shelves. While there are many, many differences among these initiatives, they all involve the central concern of engaging others to bring about change that benefits people other than themselves.

Although it is very...