Engage the public and get work done: a shared responsibility strategy Steve Wamback, MPA Solid Waste Administrator Pierce County Public Works & Utilities, University Place, Washington Presenter, 2012 APWA Congress
ublic works officials, managers, and professionals are regularly called upon to interact with customers on project planning and implementation efforts. While we understand the importance of these contacts, there is often a certain amount of dread. Have you heard any of these complaints? •
“If I spend so much time working with customers, I won’t get anything done.”
•
“The stakeholders want all of the voice and none of the responsibility.”
•
“The ‘electeds’ will just ignore them.”
The Pierce County Public Works and Utilities Department has implemented three Shared
Responsibility Strategies to bridge the gap between Engaging the Public and Getting Work Done. One such approach, Appreciative Inquiry, helps customers, stakeholders, contractors, and employees recognize themselves in work effort. Pierce County has recognized that when someone sees themselves as “co-creator” of a vision/plan/strategy/project, they are more likely to want to be a “coimplementer” as well. Through shared responsibility, engagement and work happen simultaneously.
About Pierce County The Pierce County Public Works and Utilities Department provides road, solid waste, sewer, airport, ferry, and surface water management services to over 600,000 residents in the southern third of the Seattle metropolitan area. In addition to being a direct service provider
for urban, suburban, and rural unincorporated areas, through contracts and interlocal agreements, the Department serves customers residing in twenty-one cities and towns.
Appreciative Inquiry Appreciative Inquiry (“AI”) is a “post-problem solving” organization development tool-set which breaks from traditional organizational problem solving by dispensing with a normal first question: “what’s wrong”; and instead asking: “what’s right.” Quoting David Cooperrider from Case Western Reserve University, AI allows users to embark on a “cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system ‘life’ when it is most effective and capable… AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential.”
Appreciative Inquiry in Program Planning
Youth and adults from across Pierce County used the tools of Appreciative Inquiry to design engaging and interactive education programs. 38 APWA Reporter
August 2012
Used successfully in community building and corporate change exercises in school districts, corporate America, and even by the Dalai Lama and the United Nations, Pierce County first used AI in a year-long community effort to develop environmental education programming for a 900-acre Countyowned property. As a provider of youth environmental education,
