Five things we recently learned about government failure

In season two episode four of our Reimagining Government podcast, co-hosts Adrian Brown and Athena Hughes discuss failure in government. They highlight:

• What government failure actually means

• What causes failure in government

• Why public servants should embrace failure

• How governments can find better solutions for the people they serve

• What needs to change

• And some examples of failure in government

The episode features Carlos Zimbrom (Co-founder and CEO at Fuckup Nights), Dan Vogel (Ex-Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush), and Kelly Sifford (Assistant County Manager in Cabarrus County, North Carolina) about their experiences with government failure.

In this article, we’ll summarise five key insights from the episode. Listen to the full episode below or click here.

Five things we recently learned about government failure

Here’s five things we learned about failure in government from season two episode four of Reimagining Government.

We should talk about failure in government more

One of the focus points of the episode was how governments need to talk about failure more. Athena commented:

“Talking about failure can create opportunities for people across different departments to connect with one another. It can also create opportunities both to just generate that empathy and those connection points, and that humanising force.”

The need for more conversation around government failure means leaders and institutions must be more open to the concept of it. Sharing their failures (as well as successes) with the people they serve will help establish trust and common ground, and by acknowledging their shortcomings, they’ll have an opportunity to enter into more collaborative relationships with the public.

Athena continues:

“When it comes to leadership and public facing roles and politicians, I think failure is a really vital area to talk about because people tend to not trust politicians. We only ever hear the A sides from politicians, and a lot of government leaders and people tend not to trust that. When you talk openly about the places you failed and what you learned, it creates an opportunity to have an inroad to public trust.”

Governments need to change the way they view failure

Political leaders and organisations also need to change the way they view failure. And this involves discussing it in a much more empathetic rather than accusatory context. Athena said:

“Openly discussing government failure (and failure in general) in a more empathetic context can help to embed it in our culture a little bit more. Doing so can help us to share our experiences with failures internally, and learn from them. And that can help change the tone. Governments are already failing by not being willing to change it.”

Distinguishing between chronic and acute failure is key

It’s important to note the difference between chronic failure and acute failure. So, chronic failure is failure over time, like a broken school system. Acute failure is an immediate crisis, like the government response to Hurricane Katrina.

Chronic failure is less visible than acute failure, but the cost of it over multiple years can be high. Acute failures get more attention because they happen suddenly, and everyone’s eyes are on them.

That being said, the relationship between these two failures is important. A chronic failure can lead to an acute failure, and vice versa. To hear this discussed in more detail during the episode, use the player below and skip to 00:35:10.

Asking questions helps to highlight and learn from failures

During the episode, we also spoke to Kelly about how she and her team approach failure. She said:

“Asking questions can help to highlight failure. In our team, we ask a lot of questions. We send out surveys, we make sure we understand whatever the issue is because sometimes we think we understand the issue, but we don't.”

She continued:

“Teams need to talk about failures. Not doing so makes it harder to identify systematic problems and fix them more effectively in the long term.”

Governments need to be comfortable with failure

Our final insight from the episode is how vital it is that governments are comfortable with failure. Adrian summed it up:

“We need to be comfortable with failure. Are we willing to sit with failure? To be comfortable in the presence of failure? How can we spend some time getting to know failure, feeling comfortable with failure, and talking about failure? Because if we can't do that, we're never going to get beyond the surface quick fix type of response.”

The full conversation about government failure is available now on all major podcast listening platforms. To listen, use the player below or click here.