There are a bunch of stories in this terrific article about Milwaukee’s Drug Treatment Court.  There’s the story of Judge Joe Donald’s leadership.  And there’s the story of teamwork.  And the one about forging ahead without knowing all the answers.  And the best one — the one that I love — there’s the story about how having faith in people and giving them a chance to get straight pays off in concrete ways. 

Judge Donald is so right — putting addicts in prison for the incredibly long sentences that have become so popular these past few years just pumps up the Corrections budget, cracks up families, and makes nothing better.

This Drug Treatment Court?  It makes things better by giving people the tools, the structure, and the helping hand.  I don’t think going through Drug Treatment is particularly easy.  There is a huge amount of accountability, treatment compliance, and other expectations built into the program.  When a person graduates from the Drug Treatment Court, he/she has accomplished something of great significance.

This article has had me beaming all day — love it when government looks sharp and does right.  I’m also secretly (well, maybe not so secretly now that it’s on my blog) proud to have played a wee role in the Drug Treatment Court’s financial security by working on the federal grant that supports its current operation.  What a great idea, what smart people, what teamwork, what a professional pleasure to have been involved – if only in a small way.

So go buy the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine when it’s available in stores (I tried to post a link but no luck for now).  Maybe you can use your copy to wave in the face of the folks you meet who think that government can’t do anything right. 

It’s unusual for a consultant to have a ten-year relationship with a project.  I started with Brighter Futures as the evaluation coordinator in 2000 when it was just Ramon Wagner’s wild dream to create a prevention movement in Milwaukee that would take up where the CAP Network left off.  His vision was a system of community-based organizations that had the sustainable capacity to offer immediate, relevant, and meaningful services to children, youth and families. I was fortunate to work on Brighter Futures until I decided in February to end my involvement with the project.

Chaordic was the word of the day. Chaordic: combining elements of chaos and order.  And Brighter Futures was just that when it started and, to a large extent, remains that way today.  To effectively reach youth and families, programs need to be agile, smart, unrestrained by convention, and willing to try the ridiculous.  To stay in business, programs need to have capacity to keep funding, track outcomes, and plan for the future.

In my work on Brighter Futures, I tried to find that balance by structuring an outcome system that recognized the local service delivery context and acknowledged the right of funders to have proof of performance and results.  I’m proud of the evaluation work that was done on Brighter Futures and deeply appreciative of the opportunity afforded me by Community Advocates to work on a sustained basis with Joe Volk, Racquel Bell, Ken Germanson, and Aricka Evans.  I learned from the many Brighter Futures agencies — like The Parenting Network, Alma Center, Milwaukee Christian Center, and others — what it takes to b e a sustainable, high engagement program.  Nine times out of ten – wait, make that ten out of ten – it’s all about leadership and relationships.

So why leave?  Brighter Futures had become too comfortable for me.  Too safe and predictable.  A good body of work but the years’ products were beginning to look alike and blend together.  So I traded Brighter Futures for something unsafe and unpredictable.  I’m beginning a new evaluation of a statewide process improvement initiative being implemented in county Aging and Disability Resource Centers by the State of Wisconsin and NIATx/UW-Madison.  Part of this evaluation is visiting all over the state – Fond du Lac, Eau Claire, Marshfield – so I’m looking at a lot of miles and probably way too many drive-throughs. 

At this stage of my career, I don’t want to be on automatic pilot.  No coasting for me.  Far better to head off to a new city and wonder what’s happening there.  How will I understand the process?  Who should I talk to?  What should I ask?  Will I be able to make sense out of a complicated change process?  Can I help improve things for people?

Being in business is fundamentally about taking risks.  That’s a skill that gets rusty fast if you don’t force yourself to use it. 

So, my best to Brighter Futures and the wonderful people involved in that program.  And hello, Fond du Lac.

 Oh crap.  I don’t know what depresses me more – the fact that Detroit lost 25% of its population in the past ten years or that Bob Seger is contemplating retirement.  I heard the news about Detroit while I was vacationing in Phoenix, a town where dozens of clay-colored tri-levels take shape while you’re waiting at a red light.  And it made me sad because I consider Detroit a home town.  I never lived IN Detroit, I lived outside Detroit, in a nearby suburb (Southfield) that is now home to probably a 100,000 of the folks who skipped town in the past ten years.  See here for the Free Press’ take on this situation. http://www.freep.com/article/20110322/NEWS06/110322054/With-Detroit-s-sharp-population-loss-can-keep-2-U-S-House-seats-

Detroit for me was Motown on the radio all day/night, Al Kaline at Briggs Stadium, the gorgeous Fisher Theatre, cruising Woodward Avenue, and the senior prom at the Pontchartrain Hotel.  It was wicked good politics, a fantastic paper (the Detroit Free Press that I suscribed to for years after I moved to Milwaukee), and, oh yeah, it was Bob Seger.

Here’s the news about Bob Seger thinking about hanging up the microphone.  http://www.freep.com/article/20110323/ENT04/103240430/1036/ENT01/Will-Bob-Seger-retire-after-tour-He-contemplates-going-out-top?odyssey=nav%7Chead

So what to make of all of this?  Well, after the initial “oh dear,” I started to think that maybe people moving out of Detroit was a good thing.  That instead of showing how bad Detroit is, the migration to the suburbs or other places could just as easily signal increasing wealth.  So I looked it up and, indeed, the out-migration is primarily comprised of middle-income African Americans.  This isn’t the old white flight business – largely because Detroit is now virtually an all-Black city.  This is different.  It’s people with means deciding that they want a newer house, a bigger lawn, a better school system.

Harold Rose, possibly the most brilliant and enigmatic professor ever to grace the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, gave me this perspective.  We debated neighborhood redevelopment, me, taking the view that investment in housing rehab was a huge benefit to the African American population.  Dr. Rose saying to me, “What makes you think Black people don’t want new homes with modern things?  Why do we have to live in the old homes?”

So people are leaving Detroit because they can.  They have more money, more self-determination, more choice.  Is this bad?  Yes.  Partly.  Because Detroit is in dire straits with state and federal aid and there’s the potential loss of a Congressional seat.  So yes, it’s a bad thing.  But the flip side might be progress. 

If we take a longer view, not 10 years or even 20 but maybe 30 or 40, it’s very likely that Detroit will be resettled and redefined.  It will be a different city.  It won’t ever be Motor City again.  It has a new identity but it’s a ways off.  We get depressed and hysterical when we measure change in years and not decades.  We haven’t seen the last of Detroit – believe me.  It’s a place like no other – with a beat and a grit you’re not going to find anywhere else.  It could be empty and still be alive.

So I’ve kind of come to terms with Detroit’s population decline.  Bob Seger retiring?  I’m not so sure.

Click here for what made Bob Seger a Michigan boy. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+seger/makin+thunderbirds_20021995.html

I couldn’t wait to tell the boss that the meat in the sandwiches delivered to the neighborhood center was purple, that it had the sheen on it that ripe lunchmeat can have, that glisten that tells you, “hmmmm, time to toss.”  Fresh from her volunteer gig as a summer day camp counselor, my 15-year old daughter ran through the litany of complaints at dinner the night before.  “The SDC bag lunch was awful – the peach was like a rock and the meat in the sandwich was purple.”

I was all over it like white on rice.  Next morning, first thing, into the Exec’s office (which at the time was next door to mine), I couldn’t wait to unload this little tidbit.  “My daughter says the meat at the neighborhood center is inedible.”  It’s fun, kind of satisfying, to sit around and yak about what someone else did wrong.    Yeah.  I had a field day with the purple meat.

Until.

Later that same day, the head of the food program came into my office.  I remember this like it happened five minutes ago. I can see him walking in, with his trademark limp and his blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He held a clipboard like he was about to check me off.  He didn’t seem mad.  He seemed puzzled, looked quizzical.  Right away, the crumminess of what I had done washed over me. 

Mr. Food Manager stood in front of my desk and just said, “Why didn’t you talk to me if you had a problem?  That’s what we do here.  We take it to the source.”

Which is not so easy – taking it to the source.  A lot easier to take it around the source or above the source.  Taking it to the source means a person has to screw up his or her courage and say, “Ah, excuse me, but I think that yesterday’s meat might have been purple.”  That’s not so easy especially when you yourself did not actually see the meat and you are taking the word of 15-year old finicky eater. 

All of this la-dee-dah goes by way of saying – if someone has an issue with a person, they need to take it up with that person.  Not his co-worker or boss or mama.  Now, this isn’t always a successful and warm strategy.  If I had told Mr. Food Manager directly that his meat was purple, he still would’ve been really mad and demanded to see the specific purple slice of which I was speaking.  But I’d be on a lot higher moral ground than I was, which was basically a sinkhole of professionalism. 

Possibly the most ungrammatical essay ever written.  But you get my point.

What can twenty bucks buy?   Eight gallons of milk.  A boatload of rice and potatoes.  Enough meat for a week….a chicken, hamburger, and some stew meat.  Twenty loaves of bread if you shop day-old and are ok with funky Wonder Bread. 

Should I continue?  How about six gallons of gas, a weekly bus pass, a pair of shoes for a child,  a back-pack and school supplies, the co-pay for prescription drugs.  How about a box of Tampons, laundry soap,  and a roll of quarters to go to the laundromat?

There are a lot of things to think about in the Governor’s proposed budget.  Many sweeping changes.  Programs eliminated.  Eligibility restricted.  Potentially a great deal of human suffering.  Unfortunately, most of the attention has been riveted on the issue of public employee unions, specifically collective bargaining rights.  This is an important issue of principle and I understand that.  But I also know that while the pro-union and anti-union folks are in the center ring duking it out under the spotlights while the big crowd cheers, issues like BadgerCare, Family Care, and W-2 are in the alley waiting to get in the side door to the arena.

No one is ever going to take up the $20 cut to the monthly W-2 payment.   No one’s got time.  So now people who need to use W-2 to get by will have to do so on $653 a month – $20 less than before.

To me, the $20 cut to W-2 is the budget equivalent of  gratuitous violence.  Unnecessary, painful, included just to ratchet up the lather. 

If a government’s budget is the complete articulation of its policies and values, what does cutting $20 from an already unlivable benefit level say?  It says, “We’re mad at you.  You’re taking advantage.  You’re not worthy of our charity.”  It says, “We’re better than you.  You’re lazy.  You need to really feel the pain so you get your ass off the couch and go find a job.”

Wow.  I’m no expert but I don’t think that’s a real good policy statement.  I’m kind of looking for the policy that raises all ships, that expects accountability but appreciates people’s struggles. 

Respect.

Twenty bucks could buy a lot of that.

What’s going to happen next is going to be really awful.  The proposed Medicaid cuts in Wisconsin are going to cause pain to real people.  Not pain as in…”Oh, I wish we didn’t pay so much in taxes.”  Pain as in…”I don’t think I can walk to the bus stop.”  Pain as in doubled over – not from having to write a big check to the IRS or the Wisconsin Department of Revenue but from an untreated ulcer.  Real people will suffer.  They will hurt, they will do without, they will get sicker, and they will die younger.  That’s a fact.  Take it to the bank. 

I am often late on the logic quest.  Other people figure out stuff a lot quicker than me and possibly a lot of people have figured out how having thousands of people with no access to health care and hence more likely to use emergency rooms, miss work because of illness, and become unable to work because of preventable disabilities somehow saves money and makes Wisconsin a better state. 

I’d like to pair up 10 really sick uninsured people with 10 policymakers hot to cut Medicaid and ask each pair to spend an hour talking one on one.  No cameras.  No speeches.  One human being to another. I’d want to make sure that one of those 10 uninsured people is the homeless woman I met at a shelter whose illness had cost her a job, her home, and her independence. Now she is living in a room with another woman with a couple of hooks to put her clothes and a place to stow the rest of her belongings under her bed.

If Legislator X can listen to a diabetic explain how he has to wait to go into insulin shock to get insulin at the ER or Legislator Y can listen to a woman explain how she had undetected breast cancer that advanced to Stage 4 before she could afford a doctor and they can still advocate to cut Medicaid, I will then have to give up all faith in the basic goodness and charity of humankind.  Honestly.

My theory is that people who contemplate these punishing policies don’t know anyone who would end being on the end of the stick.  They don’t have a single face to associate with the issue.  They have never had someone in terrible straits ask them what to do or where to go.  They’ve managed to completely avoid personal interaction with the wounded. 

I wish the next demonstration in Madison about the proposed budget was a sea of crutches and wheelchairs and gurneys.  I wish there was a way that the thousands of people who are going to be at the end of that stick could show themselves to policymakers.  Make the deciders look them in the face.  And then vote.

Right now in Wisconsin, we’ve got a good old street fight going.  What’s good about a street fight?  People come to watch.  They watch, they wager, they strategize.  They tell their friends, they stay up late talking about the new moves.  Consider new weapons.  Call in reinforcements.  Boast, brag, create new Yo Mamma’s, connive, and adrenalize.

We’re taught to be worried about conflict.  Avoid it.  Run away.  Social scientists, tsk tsking about central city kids, will bemoan that they run toward a fight rather than away from it.  And wonder why they don’t have the normal middle class instincts of submerged, indirect conflict and moves so subtle that codebreakers have to be called in to decipher – “was I just insulted?”

I love a throwdown.

A long time ago, I lived in Flint, Michigan, a city that was company (GM) and union (UAW) – either or – all the time.  City council meetings were raucous, risky events.  Broadcast live on AM radio, citizens would jump in their cars and drive to City Hall if the goings-on got real interesting, the name-calling at the right high decibel.  I remember pushing my baby daughter in her bassinet back and forth on a braided rug, getting so angry and exercised about what I was hearing on the damn radio that the bassinet’s front legs buckled.  Oh dear.  Calm down.  I remember a particularly hot meeting when the last vote against a bad city neighborhood plan came rolling in on a hospital gurney with an IV in his arm.  Yes, ma’am.  Throwdown.

So, yeah, there is a big part of me that wonders why the two sides of this issue can’t sit down and respectfully reason together, there’s another part of me that says, “Do it!  Draw a line in the sand.”  “Say what you stand for.”  “Don’t sit down and be nice.”  For once, have the sides of the issue be black and white so everybody can figure out how to choose a team.  Get rid of the backroom moves and the bureaucratic, budget balancing gyrations and put the whole steaming mess on the table.  Make it a good enough show that the old folks and the working folks and students and kids know there’s a ‘fer and agin’ and pick one.

I had been thinking that all this conflict was a bad thing for Wisconsin — it’s not.  Anything political that makes people’s blood boil is a good thing for everyone.  They might be mad.  But, boy, they’re paying attention!

There are a lot of people I know – or know of - who  just can’t wait to get the hammer.  You know the type.  You’re sitting in a meeting, get up to sharpen your pencil, and by the time you get back, the nuclear option is on the table.  Times are tough, people not doing what you want?  Let’s knock ‘em upside the head with something extremely heavy. 

Why talk when you can put a gun to someone’s head?  Which is, I think, the reasoning of the stick-up guy at the gas station who declines having a conversation about his personal unemployment issues in favor of jacking a guy out of $20 right now. 

There seems to be a lot of this hammerhead thing going around right now.  If I was a political analyst, which I’m not, I’d say that Scott Walker has made kind of a fast leap to the heavy tools.  What bothers me about this isn’t what you might think.  I’m not a big defender of public employees or unions for that matter.  Public employee pensions really irk me – probably because as an independent business person, I pay a huge amount of social security tax and have no pension.  But I realize that pension benefits were a negotiated benefit and that the government and the unions agreed to this stuff fair and square.  It’s not like the unions crawled through a window and stole these benefits off the kitchen table.

What irks me is this:  the hammer wielder’s presumption that his opponents are unreasonable, selfish, and unaware of the community (or in this case, the state’s) crisis.  Another shade of that is his presumption that he  absolutely knows the right thing to do and there’s no point in discussing it with anyone who doesn’t agree.  No dialogue. No listening.  No allowing for a spark of genius or creative solution.

I really can’t stand that.  It’s a level of arrogance and dismissiveness of other interests that irks me a lot more than enormously fat pensions ever could.  Not cool.  Not smart.  Not in Madison or right here in our fair city.

Twice this week, I was called into projects because the participants had let things get too complicated.  Their planning groups had started difficult projects, let the doors and windows open to any and every idea, and were now baffled and stuck. 

For a long time, I’ve been using the phrase, “Let’s make things simple first.   We can make them complicated later.”  Clients usually think that this is a planning device – something learned in graduate school or fancy seminars on one coast or the other.  Nope.

I need to make things simple so I can understand them.  Because I often get invited into projects after they’ve become knotted up like cheap necklaces in the jewelry box, my first worry is figuring out how to not sound like an idiot.  So I ask myself, “What’s the simple thing here?  What’s the most important thing? Where’s the easiest place to start?”

So I pull out the really sophisticated planning tools:  making an agenda, keeping minutes, developing a logic model.  These are all  things that I know and trust after years in this business but sometimes seem  too rudimentary for high-flying professionals.  The funny thing?  How often mention of these simple devices calms the worried and disorganized. 

Seriously, here are some things that I think really help people in a group get their heads on straight and work more productively:

• Go back to the original purpose of the group — what was it that the group was convened to accomplish.  Let’s get that on paper and make sure we all remember the starting purpose and agree that it’s still valid.
• Stress the importance of the same people staying involved over time.  Often a high-powered planning process will devolve to less influential staff.  This next generation process is good and one to be nurtured, but tough planning processes require decision-makers in the room.  And the same decision-makers over time.
• Have a designated facilitator, someone without a stake in anything other than the success of the group.  Let that facilitator manage the agenda, the discussion, and the work products.
• Establish a group norm of  discussion, consensus-building, agreement, and consolidation. Consolidate gains made at each meeting to avoid circling back at the next meeting.
• Create that logic model. It’s linear, spare, overly simplistic, and incredibly effective – the logic model gets everyone on the same page because there’s only one page to be on.  Distilling the group’s goals and outcomes into a simple logic model format of goals, objectives (activities), outputs, and outcomes sweeps away discussion debris and gets people focused fast.

I had a boss once who referred to endless planning sessions as “being lost in hedgerow country.”  We’ve all been there.  Maybe with some of these ideas, you can be the one to cut through the maze.

A bunch of kids went nuts at Mayfair Mall on Sunday night.  Scared people.  Knocked things over.  Created a lot of hubbub – which is my favorite word for a really loud, messy, situation. So, ok, what’s next will be Mayfair deciding that no one under 25 can enter the mall without a double escort. Groups of more than three kids will be tossed out of the mall.  And there will be worried, worried eyes cast on any gathering – large or small – of African American teens.  Broad brush, this is going to be.

I’m telling you that the real Mayfair Madness isn’t what happened there on Sunday night – although the little rampage/wreckage/intimidation was totally out of line, disgusting, and unacceptable (why has that word become our favorite way of saying that something is BAD to do?).

The real Madness is yet to come.  This is when the Red Rover teams choose up sides.  On the one side will be the folks that shake their heads, tsking, “Those kids don’t know how to act.”  On the other side, the sad, understanding folks, “Oh, those poor kids don’t have anything to do in this town.”

Heaven forbid someone calls me to facilitate a planning session on how to deal with kids not having anything to do so they have to act like idiots at the mall.  Here’s the deal on this one:  Kids act like idiots a lot of the time.  When there are a lot of them together in a mood to act like idiots, a well-proven mechanism  called mob psychology takes over.  This is the same group-think that has resulted in all manner of mayhem and tragedy – people in a group will do things they would never do on their own. 

Pick apart the Mayfair One Hundred – or however many they end up being – and you’ll find a bunch of A students, a couple of athletes, a few kids who spent the afternoon in church, a couple of delinquents, and a whole bunch of kids who thought running through stores was more interesting than eating their 12th Cinn-A-Bon in the food court.

My view:  Relax, everybody.  Kids freaked out.  It’s not the end of the world.  It’s not enough the end of Mayfair.  Or shopping as we know it.   It’s just kids acting nuts.  Do we love it?  No.  But do we need to start planning on how to solve this terrible problem?  Do we need a day long retreat on recreational alternatives for youth? 

No.  We need to roll our eyes and get a grip.