The Story
A few years ago, I was working on a project for the major redesign and reconstruction of a downtown pedestrian street, and the designers had a question: Can we paint our signal poles a different color? They asked because all signal poles (but not light poles) at Minneapolis intersections are painted yellow with a green base. This is a bit suspicious because these are the colors of our neighboring state’s NFL team, the Green Bay Packers, while this is the town of the purple and gold Minnesota Vikings. We searched for an answer to the question “why,” including asking senior public works staff and checking local ordinances and state statutes. We assumed it was some old, safety-driven rule. After finding no clear answer, the public works director gave us the go-ahead to paint the signal poles along this mile-long street a custom color that would better integrate with the urban designers’ plans. Around the same time, the new owners of the Minnesota Vikings, who were about to pay for half of a one-billion-dollar NFL football stadium, also complained to the city about the Packers’ colors. In response, the City’s Public Works Department chose a new color—Minnesota Brown—for use in places where the old yellow and green didn’t quite work. But where did that color scheme come from in the first place?
The Theory
At the height of the Cold War, in the fall of 1962, an American U-2 spy plane flying over the Island of Cuba took photos that, when analyzed, showed that Russian missile bases had been constructed there, just 90 miles off the coast of the continental United States. During a tense two weeks, Russian and American leaders—President John F. Kennedy and Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and their respective governments found themselves in a tense standoff and had to find a way to work together to extricate themselves from a difficult situation and avoid nuclear disaster. In 1968, a PhD candidate named Graham Allison, who was studying foreign affairs at what is now the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, wrote a dissertation on the events that became known as “the Cuban Missile Crisis.” In 1971, he published his rewritten dissertation as a book called Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, which became a bestseller and critical success.1 Allison was interested in foreign affairs, specifically how governments function and make decisions, and he was concerned that the predominant theory at the time was inadequate, so he devised a brilliant study. He created three detailed case studies of what happened during those two weeks in October 1962, each looking through a different “theoretical lens” or model: The “rational actor” model, the “organizational process” model, and the “governmental politics” model.
The “Rational Actor” model—the predominant theory at the time—was based on the classical economic idea of “rational economic man,” and claimed that states behave like individual human beings who are rational actors. The rational actor model personifies large organizations, states, and countries but it oversimplifies and misrepresents decision-making and action by dismissing how fragmented large organizations are and how they are made up of bureaucratic groups and key individuals with different and often competing or conflicting interests. In this case, “Cuba allowed Russia to build missile bases on the island; Russia shipped missiles and supplies to the bases; and the US responded by imposing a naval blockade surrounding Cuba.” A local government example might be, “The City proposed the plan; the designer drew the plan; and the neighborhood group reacted by opposing the plan.” The Rational Actor model presumes that groups are unified and speak and act as a single rational human being. It is elegant and easily used for shorthand in the news, for example, “China and America are engaging in a trade war.” Allison’s point is that this is a dangerously simplistic model that leaves out much of what happens within and amongst bureaucratic agencies and with key individuals.
The “Organizational Process” model argues that decision-making and action revolve around bureaucratic organizations—agencies within government—that rely upon “standard operating procedures” (known well in bureaucratic organizations such as the military as “SOPs”) for much of their work. In the world of SOPs, the answer to the question “why?” is, “because we have always done it that way.” SOPs are fine for typical and repetitious conditions and situations, but failing to adapt them to different or unique contexts can lead to real problems. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the USSR’s bureaucratic missile base planning department designed and built standard-issue Russian Missile bases in Cuba, based on the typical cookie-cutter layout of transports, erection equipment, missiles, launchers, and tent areas. The problem is that from 70,000 feet up in a U-2 spy plane, all Russian Missile bases look the same, and the US intelligence analysts who review the photos taken from the spy plane’s cameras know that pattern when they see it. A creative thinker in Russia’s missile base planning department might have said,
“Hey, let’s make these missile bases look different by re-arranging their layouts, since it will be so much closer to the US and they will know what it is when they fly a U-2 spy plane over it.”
But when organizational processes and SOPs dictate, there is no room for creativity, so despite Nikita Khrushchev’s bold idea (missiles 90 miles from the continental US – that should change the balance of power!), it was effectively defeated by a dominant bureaucratic apparatus over which even Premier Khrushchev had little influence.
Finally, the “Governmental Politics” model focuses on the politics and negotiations that occur between individual political leaders within governments, and it assumes that much of the action is driven by a handful of key people with unique perspectives, objectives, personalities, egos, and interests—for example, staying in power. Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba, Castro encouraged him to do so, and Kennedy responded to the Soviet Union’s aggression with a naval blockade. In fact, Kennedy and Khrushchev used a back channel—a Russian operative speaking through a close aide of the Kennedys—to carry communications between them, because as the days passed, they both faced the growing risk of losing control of their governments. Khrushchev wanted to find a way to get out of the mess he had created, but he was losing the support of the Politburo, which had become increasingly bellicose, so he needed Kennedy to help him find a face-saving solution to bring back to his government. In the end, Kennedy agreed to remove some obsolete missiles from Turkey, on the edge of Russia, which gave Khrushchev the appearance of a win and the political cover he needed to remove the missiles from Cuba. In this model, individual political actors with unique lives, careers, perspectives, and interests drive all the action and the decision-making.
That was a lot of theory, so let’s summarize: the rational actor model assumes that a large government or organization acts like a single rational individual; the bureaucratic process model assumes that standard operating procedures will shape decision-making in most situations; and the governmental politics model assumes that self-interested individuals will drive the action and the decision-making. Allison demonstrates how, by considering all three models at once, one can develop a more nuanced understanding of the who, what, and why that are driving decisions. Reading Allison’s book is like reading the same story three times, and while each version is different, they are all equally true and relevant. Only by considering all three stories together does one gain a full sense of what happened—a sort of 3D picture, over time.
If these models sound too abstract for use in city-building, let me assure you that they apply as easily to local governmental processes and decision-making today as they did to foreign policy in the 1960s. In my work, I have found it very helpful to create tables that list the major issues in rows; the actors, SOPs, and individuals in columns; and then I fill in the boxes summarizing those unique intersections. Trust me and try it.
Back to those signal poles
I was at a retirement party a few years after our street project was completed when someone made a flip comment about two guys who worked their entire careers in the public works signal shop and who happened to be closet Packers fans. Long ago, they had surreptitiously started a program of painting all signal poles in Minneapolis with their favored team’s colors. More recently, I called a few people I knew to verify this story, but no one knew what I was talking about. I could have dreamed it all up, but I don’t think so. Still, in case I did, allow me to offer another version: I asked someone at the public works signal shop about where the yellow and green color scheme came from, and he said,
“It’s not exactly a formal policy, but over time we come to use some informal best practices and, in this case, the use of two colors increases the visibility of these poles at intersections. So, when the owners of the Vikings complained to the city about the colors, we began to use a new color, what we call ‘Minnesota Brown,’ on our signal poles.”
That sounds reasonable enough, but in case you had any doubts about the strength of long-standing SOPs to dominate over time, he finished with this:
“But the next time a semi takes a tight turn and snaps a mast arm off a signal pole, I can assure you, the replacement will be green and yellow.”
If you believe in “Occam’s Razor”—that the simplest explanation is most likely the right one—then the story of the Packers fans in the signal shop holds some appeal. Either way, over time, green and yellow signal poles became an SOP in Minneapolis, and whether or not it was best practices or Packer’s loyalty, the answer to the question “why?” has always been and remains:
“Because we have always done it that way.”
The Lesson
We would do well to remember that large organizations do not operate as integrated and internally consistent monoliths, but rather as fragmented assemblies with many different interests, departments, initiatives, processes, individuals, and egos that often compete or conflict with one another. Better to consider an organization by looking through the three lenses of rational actors, bureaucratic processes, and governmental politics. Good, too, to remember that in most instances, longstanding bureaucratic SOPs will triumph over shorter-lived goals and the interests and demands of the mere mortals occupying fleeting positions in their organizations.
“Because adherence to standard operating procedures is difficult to second-guess, decision makers who expect to have their decisions scrutinized with hindsight are driven to bureaucratic solutions – and to an extreme reluctance to take risks.”
- Daniel Kahneman
This essay is dedicated to the hard-working folks at the Minneapolis Department of Public Works, who taught me what little I know about street planning, design, and construction.
Allison, Graham T. and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, Second Edition, Pearson, 1999. See also Kennedy, Robert F., Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, New York: Norton, 1969.