October 21, 2024 • 27 mins
In this episode of the Curiosity at Work podcast, Dr. Julie Pham sits down with Michael Jacobson, an award-winning national leader in organizational performance management and the Deputy Director at King County’s Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget. During the conversation, Michael shares insights into his extensive work establishing King County’s performance management systems, including the first countywide strategic plan and public performance reporting. He also dives into the complexities of his role and the challenges of balancing strategic planning with managing diverse teams working on criminal legal system reform, homelessness, and community grants.
Michael discusses how practicing curiosity has shaped his approach to leadership and team dynamics. He emphasizes the importance of creating a work environment where team members feel safe to express curiosity, even in a bureaucratic system filled with rules and limitations. His anecdotal experiences, like building relationships through informal lunches with colleagues, illustrate the positive impact of fostering curiosity and authentic connections within large, complex organizations. Michael’s candid thoughts on navigating hierarchy, politics, and equity in government work provide a nuanced view of what it takes to lead with curiosity and purpose in the public sector.
The episode also touches on Michael's unique perspectives on equity and social justice, including his experience with the Interbranch Equity Team and his ongoing efforts to incorporate equity analysis into performance measurement. He shares his thoughts on the role of historical markers and public narratives, challenging listeners to reflect on who gets to tell these stories and how they evolve over time. It’s a thought-provoking discussion that offers valuable lessons for anyone interested in public service, organizational leadership, or simply how to cultivate curiosity in a structured environment.
Connect with Dr. Julie Pham:
- LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliepham2/
- Website:https://curiositybased.com/
- Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/juliephamphd/
Connect with Michael Jacobson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-jacobson-measure
- Website: https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadership/performance-strategy-budget
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of Curiosity Based.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Hi there, welcome to the Curiosity at Work podcast.
(00:28):
I'm Dr. Julie Pham, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation with Michael Jacobson today.
He is the deputy director at the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget for King County, and a nationally award-winning public servant organizational leader.
I know we're going to get to learn a lot from Michael.
(00:49):
And I also just think he's one of the most curious public servants I have gotten to interact with in this fellowship I used to do for a cross-sector collaboration.
So Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
Honored to be here.
Thanks, Julie.
So Michael, could you explain a bit about what is performance, strategy, and budget?
(01:11):
What does that mean?
How many people are part of your team?
What does that look like?
Yeah, so it's a mouthful, I will acknowledge.
So I work for King County.
A lot of people understand what a city is, but the county encompasses 39 cities, including the city of Seattle.
The county has over 16,000 employees, and my specific office, Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget, has about 80.
(01:36):
I have four direct reports who are managers, and my team is about 20 employees, which is a mix of full-time equivalent positions, term-limited positions, fellows, and even interns.
We are hybrid, but work mostly remote.
My four teams do four really different bodies of work.
(01:57):
The namesake part of the organization works on organizational performance, including performance measures, scorecards, how are we doing, how are we spending public sector dollars, the public's tax money, on how we're accomplishing our goals.
And then we also work on things like strategic planning, helping the organization articulate where we're trying to go.
(02:20):
I have another team that works on criminal legal system reform.
Really different focus, but also thinking about systems and strategy, about how do we do a better job with what was typically called the criminal justice system.
We've been calling it criminal legal system recently.
And then I have another team that runs a jobs and housing program for folks experiencing homelessness.
(02:43):
That's been supported by federal dollars.
That's more of a temporary program.
And then we also have a grants team that manages federal and county-funded grants for the community.
So it's quite a diverse array of responsibilities.
All different, and yet quite a range there.
Quite a range.
I joke with people, I don't touch the money.
(03:07):
It's not entirely true, but I'm not directly in the budget process.
That's the budget side of our office.
But I obviously am involved to some degree, but budget is not my primary area of expertise and responsibility.
So the titles can sometimes be misleading.
We have to ask.
We have to figure out what does that actually mean.
(03:28):
So here, we're curiosity based.
We think of curiosity as a practice.
We're all curious, and yet sometimes we don't always practice curiosity.
And that could be because of the environment, different pressures that we have.
And so I would actually, I think it's important to actually admit when it's hard to practice curiosity, when there are things that are happening that prevent us from doing it.
(03:51):
Maybe those things are internally happening.
Michael, could you share with us what prevents practicing curiosity in your workplace with your team?
Sure.
This is a great question.
And I think a common thing that prevents curiosity is probably something a lot of people suffer from, is we have too much to do.
(04:12):
And what that means is that we basically equates to no time or freedom to be able to reflect and to be curious.
You're just rushing around trying to get stuff done.
That's a reality that modern society we live in.
We're part of that.
It's a curse.
We have responses to that, including looking at our, trying to track our capacity and saying no to things.
(04:34):
But sometimes things come through that we really are not really allowed to say no to.
And so the plate stays overly full.
I think something that may be true for anyone that works in an organization, but is especially true in a political organization, and we're not overtly political.
There's an elected official that we work for.
(04:55):
But in our situation, if the direction has already been kind of decided from above, it kind of closes down opportunities for curiosity.
You know, we're pretty near the top of the organization.
I work for the director of my office.
He reports directly to the Dow Constantine, the county executive.
So if there's some specific direction that's already been provided, then folks typically don't feel like they have the ability to question leadership direction too much, especially if it's come from an elected official, that's council member in terms of a proviso, or in terms of the elected official, like, hey, this is exactly what I had in mind.
(05:35):
It's been done, you know, challenging that direction has occurred.
But I think most folks, even me, feel a little bit, you know, constrained in that.
Michael, I have a clarifying question for you, because I think, so people understand cities, they understand government, but counties, when you have elected officials with counties, do you, because is there more or less pressure than say, if you're working for the city government?
(06:01):
I don't know.
There is pressure, I'll say.
There's still constituents, and they write in, there's still the Seattle Times looking for a breaking story.
So there's still definitely pressure.
In King County, we have 39 cities, so any one of those mayors could call the county executive and have an issue.
(06:23):
There's many constituents.
We're a little, I sometimes describe us as a little bit more on the wholesale side versus the retail side.
And so what I mean by that, I'll use a somewhat icky example, but it's something that people relate to.
So if you live in the city of Seattle, you get your water bill every month.
(06:43):
Every time you flush the toilet, you are paying to have that water be taken care of.
And on your water bill in the city of Seattle says something like 69% of the water bill goes to King County for treatment.
So you're actually paying the city basically to convey the water or the wastewater to the county, but most of the cost is in the treatment of that water, and that's a county function.
(07:09):
So you don't interact, most people don't interact with the county directly in that regard.
There's other services like that.
So if you think about Metro, I've been on the Metro bus, and the Metro bus is running late, and someone says, I'm going to call the mayor.
I'm like, don't call the mayor.
The mayor doesn't run Metro.
So we're running Metro for the region, but there are specific bus routes in specific cities, and so you tend to associate those with the city.
(07:35):
So we run, we operate the jail.
If you are arrested in the city of Seattle, you don't go to city of Seattle jail, you go to a King County jail.
So again, it's more of, I think it tends to think of as a little bit more of a wholesale kind of issue.
So there is pressure for sure.
It's a slightly different pressure, and we're all professional, so there's internal pressure, right?
(07:59):
Like we're all wanting to do a good job and take our jobs really seriously.
So I think that's as much a pressure as anything, but we definitely get constituent input and feedback for sure.
So that's actually interesting.
I hadn't thought about how, especially when you're in the city of Seattle, within the city limits, it's just, oh, I think it's the city's responsibility.
Does that actually give you a little bit of a cushion?
(08:21):
Because it's just, well, there's a lot of scrutiny because they don't know.
There's just this confusion.
And, or yeah.
Is there any of that where?
It could be a cushion.
It could be, like, I work with our customer service folks, probably 50, 60% of the calls they get are not for King County services.
So if someone's calling in about social security, that's a federal function, or they're calling in about the light or the stoplight that's broken, that's in their city, not a King County light.
(08:50):
So there is confusion about that.
So you could call it a cushion, but we probably then spend a little bit more time educating people about who to talk to and where to go.
Yeah.
I would say though, that cities are very powerful constituents in their own right.
So you don't really want to make Renton unhappy or Bellevue unhappy or city Seattle unhappy.
(09:11):
Right.
So they have, and they have that elected official to elected official line of communication.
I wouldn't call it the bat line exactly, but when a mayor calls the county executive and it's in my program area, I'll know about it very quickly.
So there's definitely very acute pressure at times.
Thank you, Michael, for just breaking that down the different layers and then how that then can actually impact the sense of scrutiny and that impacts how, how much people feel safe practicing curiosity.
(09:43):
Cause I, I do think that, that, that sense of safety, the sense of spaces, this impacts that.
So let's turn to Ash.
Oh, I did have one last one.
And it's this won't surprise anyone, but basically bureaucracy and rules do you know, can reduce your curiosity.
(10:03):
We do have a lot of rules to navigate.
Many of those rules were put in place for fairness and for legal reasons.
Maybe there's a state rule or a federal rule.
But I would say that the number of those things can Rob, even the most curious person of the will to live at, you know, it is we, we are rich in mission as a government serve, you know, in terms of when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, I'm going to do important work today.
(10:29):
But those rules and the bureaucracy, you know, to make sure that nothing wrong is happening also robs me of a little bit of my passion.
You know, versus if I worked for Nike, it's like, I'm going to go sell some shoes.
It's like not quite as exciting.
But they have a lot fewer rules and bureaucracy they deal with.
Okay.
That's that interesting.
(10:49):
Because I think about from the outside, we think government's got so many rules, but even within the inside, even employees think we have a lot of rules that are, and it's difficult for you to navigate as well, not just for people outside the system or outside of government.
Procurement rules are a terrific example, right?
We're trying to get money.
We're trying to buy a service or trying to buy something.
(11:11):
We can't just call up a company and say, Hey, give me a million dollars worth of that, right?
We have to put out a bid.
There's lots of rules.
There's timelines.
You know, if you're at, you get your bid in at 501, as opposed to five o'clock, we don't take your bid.
So there's many rules that, that, that organizations and people have to deal with, but we also have to abide by those same rules internally.
(11:32):
Thank you for just sharing some of the, the psyche of the public service within the bureaucracy too.
So then when we think about the practice of curiosity, if you could share a specific example of story of what you do with your, with your team to foster curiosity, that could be around self-awareness, relationship building, clear communication, or just anything that, especially when there's such a, you've got very different functions, workforce and, and the, the, the criminal legal system.
(12:02):
That's very different.
So how do you do that?
We are, I think, on a path towards building, trying to build a more relational culture.
This is something we get feedback from when we have our employee survey, people want to be more connected to each other.
It's when we look at our equity work, it comes through loud and clear.
(12:26):
I'll give a specific example of something that happened to me that had sort of unanticipated positive consequences.
I had, it was, I did have this in mind to, to make greater connection, but I was surprised at how impactful it was.
At one time I belonged to this large team that was responsible for improving equity across the County.
(12:46):
It's called the Interbranch Equity Team or the, yeah, IBT.
And we'd love our acronyms.
And there were people from every department and agency at the table, maybe 30 people or so altogether.
And we met monthly.
And sometimes we get into these discussions that were kind of heated, of course, because it was around equity issues.
And I realized that some of the people that even I tended to agree with, I didn't actually know that well.
(13:10):
So we'd come together to discuss, we'd break into factions, we'd have our discussion and we kind of go our, go our separate ways.
We come back together the next month.
So I had made a decision at one point that I would have lunch with one person a month to get to know them better.
And I wasn't, didn't need anything from them.
I wasn't trying to make any deals.
I just wanted to literally get to understand them as people, where they were coming from, understand the situations that they were in at work, kind of what their motivations were and, you know, vice versa, right.
(13:40):
Share some of why I was speaking up when I did and why I wasn't when I wasn't.
And I have to say it was the best thing I may have ever done.
One person had their son at lunch one day.
And so he brought his son and the three of us had lunch and we were talking about parenting and his son got to see some of the discussions about what was going on at the county and some of these interesting challenges.
(14:02):
Another person felt honored that someone with my title was taking time to get to know them, but I was humbled that they took time from their busy calendar to hang out with me.
So I eventually, what that resulted in was that I got some very interesting personal insights about each person.
They saw me as a more human and less titled, you know, person and that many of those connections have lasted for years all over lunch.
(14:28):
I can still give any one of those people a call and say, Hey, what's going on?
I, you know, I've got this issue or can you help me with something?
And there's just immediate, you know, I got your back.
So it was, I don't know if I thought about it as a curiosity motivated thing, but it was just to connect with someone.
(14:50):
And, you know, we work in a large organization, people get things done and having that connection with people became really important.
And sometimes it doesn't have to be, I'm going to be curious.
This is the thing.
It's just, Oh, reflection.
They, you learned a lot and they also appreciated that you took the effort to, to the time.
And, and Michael, what you said about the, with your job title and how people felt honored.
(15:14):
It's kind of reminding me of when I can't remember if it was with your team or I know it was with a King County group.
People were talking about the hierarchy and how even where you get off, what elevator, what floor you get off on will, will suggest who, who you are, where you are in the organization.
(15:34):
And that hierarchy is really felt in a government.
It is, I think.
And we, you know, there are efforts to flatten it every once in a while, but there's, you know, there's seniority types of hierarchies, there's title hierarchies, there's decision-making who gets to spend budget or who doesn't.
(15:57):
There's lots of those that are threaded throughout our organization.
I do think we have title oriented hierarchy.
So me being a deputy director, it's not something that I, in some meetings, we, we have to be explicit and say, leave your titles at the door.
That's how important hierarchy is in our culture, right?
(16:19):
Like leave your title.
It doesn't matter what your title is.
I went to a training.
We didn't introduce ourselves based on our jobs and we have an amazing array of people in there.
And only afterward, I'd run into someone and be like, oh, that's cool.
You do that.
That's so interesting.
But like, we got to know each other better as people in that training.
But yeah, hierarchy is, it can be effective for getting things done, but it can be a hindrance to, to connecting as a, as a person.
(16:46):
And just with anything, there's good and bad, and there's the pros and cons and advantages and the disadvantages.
And I appreciate how you, how you listed different kinds of hierarchy and how in this context that that title orientation can be the one that people lean on.
I know that the cross-sectional collaboration fellowship that you are participated in, the following cohort, I remember accidentally just not putting people's titles on their name tags.
(17:11):
And it was just so, it was so useful because all these interesting assumptions came up about what people did when they didn't have their titles as well.
And so it is when you decide, Hey, we're literally not going to put it on, and we're literally not going to talk about it, how that can actually affect people's inquiry in the conversation.
(17:34):
I think it can infect you too, though.
Right?
I remember maybe even in that, in that session we worked on together, I remember bringing some degree of entitlement with me because of my usual, the usual deference given to me because of my title.
Okay.
I'm also a white guy.
I get the whole privilege thing.
(17:54):
I'm, I'm, I'm understand that as well, but like that magnifies the title hierarchy, right?
You know, what's expected and it also, you know, challenges me as a, as a, as a manager, as a leader.
I, I was an individual contributor, right?
Like, you know, at one point, wait, you need me to do that because I now have this title.
(18:16):
I'm like, I just want to share my opinion.
Well, no, you can't share your opinion because now sharing your opinion comes with this title behind it.
And now it has impact and meaning beyond you, Michael, the individual, right?
So there's a, a little bit like living in a, you know, in a racist society, you get infected with those biases.
(18:39):
I think the, I think hierarchy and titles is a, is one that we don't talk about very much, but I think it's very much, it could be similar, right?
I get infected with a kind of privilege of, of, of the title.
So it makes me think about how sometimes when you've got someone with a really high title and they ask a question, then other people take that as a suggestion or an order when you're just literally asking a question, right?
(19:02):
How do you, how do you recruit for curiosity?
How do you interview?
How do you, how do you, having someone join your team, how do you look for that?
How do you determine personally, Michael, what do you do?
Yeah.
So I would say a large, you know, a lot of our work is standard or somewhat predictable.
(19:25):
We're looking for project management skills or specific technical skills.
You have to know how to create a performance measure or understand some aspect of the criminal legal system.
You need some political savvy.
Those are sort of the core skills.
But a large part of our work is really about innovation and trying to improve the way things are done.
So I'm always after people that aren't just going to create standard work or follow the rules, but bring ideas and creativity.
(19:49):
So when I'm looking at resumes- Michael, yeah, your, your special tip.
Yeah.
So when I'm looking at resumes, I'm sometimes, I am often looking for the non-linear career choice or a person that shows an interest that doesn't neatly align with their job description.
If all I see is your resumes, you're a performance measurement expert, and all you've done is strategic planning, like, sure, you can do the job, but like, will you bring that kind of passion and that curiosity about it?
(20:16):
So I'm always a little bit wary that you might be too narrowly trained or too focused, might not be able to bring collateral learning to the job.
So I also put a fair amount of value on the questions that the interviewee asks the interviewers.
And we always leave some time at the end.
Sometimes people are like, I just have a single question.
(20:36):
That is a huge missed opportunity, in my opinion, because those questions show that the person's done their homework.
They're thinking about, you know, living in the job and like, what's, what's burning about this opportunity for them?
What's the, what's, what's their curiosity about that position?
So again, the technical elements might, you know, they could ask about that, but more, what are the interpersonal elements, what are the opportunities to grow and expand the role?
(21:03):
Those are showing me that that person has, there's a, there's a je ne sais quoi there that I want to hire that person.
Right.
That there's something special there.
So Michael, and you want things for the unconventional, untraditional career path, but then are you telling the recruiters on your team, Hey, I want you to look for that.
Cause I know you're not looking through every single resume.
(21:24):
Right.
I am telling people to look for, you know, our jobs are not widget making, right.
So, you know, there is some widget making, but we are looking for people that are going to be nimble that can, you know, go with the flow that deal with the ambiguity.
I think that's one of the, the characteristics that we talk about a lot as when we're doing hiring is who's going to be able to deal with the ambiguity.
(21:50):
Cause we do not have perfect clarity coming from leadership.
We do not have perfect clarity about what we should be doing.
There's a lot that's like, go this way, but not how far or for how long.
Right.
And so it's like directional, but it's not, it's not more specific than that.
And so some people's brains will explode.
They can't handle that level of generality or directionality.
(22:13):
They need something much more specific and linear than that.
Those people will not succeed in my team generally, because the work is more, the grants work is more defined, but even still, there's a lot of creativity that's required when, when a new grant is being started and it's not entirely clear what, what, you know, how that money should get spent.
(22:35):
So, and so even having awareness around the kind of thinking approach that someone has, that they'll actually be successful on the team too.
Correct.
So last question for you is what inspires, what's a resource that you turn to?
What is something that inspires curiosity for you?
And it could be personal, professional.
(22:56):
I like to walk and that allows me to kind of look at things a little more carefully when I walk around.
And one of the things that I have found for myself, that's interesting, it are historical markers.
It sounds a little nerdy, but when I see a marker, it gets me to ask the question, is this the official story?
(23:23):
Is this the real story?
What's, why is this marker here?
What's going on about this marker?
I don't know if you followed any of the controversy around the volunteer park marker.
It's now down, you know, there was a whole reassessment of Confederate markers, things like that.
There's one up in Bellingham, which is interesting.
(23:46):
I was walking by one time and it was, there was a little small concrete or stone, and it basically said Chinese deadline.
And I'm like, that's a weird thing.
Like, what's that about?
And then I went back to Bellingham a couple of years later and it had been revised and it was a fuller articulation of what the Chinese deadline was.
(24:10):
And it had to do with our horrible racist past.
And it basically was like, no Chinese were allowed to go beyond that point, that they were working on the tide flat and they couldn't come upland into the town or they could be killed.
It was literally a deadline.
And what was then interesting about this story was the mayor basically apologized to the Chinese community in 2011.
(24:38):
So there was like this whole story of why was that marker there?
There was this whole history of Chinese cannery workers.
You know, there's no cannery there anymore, right?
It's all gone.
It's all history.
But the original marker made me wonder why is that there and had me do some research.
And then the revised one was like, how did that story get retold and kind of reconceptualized?
(25:02):
So anyway, I see things like that.
I see, I'll read the plaques, you know, that most people just walk by.
I read those things.
And I wonder why is this here?
What story is it telling?
Is it the real story?
Is it the wrong story?
Is it a whitewash story?
You know, and so that it always gets me kind of curious, right?
You know, why is this here?
(25:23):
Who spent time to pour this bronze, affix it to a wall or whatever?
I was just in Germany for a family reason.
And there were lots of memorials and markers, you know, sometimes to the Holocaust, sometimes to Germans.
And I was fixated on those memorials and markers.
(25:44):
Like, what is the story that's being told here?
It was very interesting.
Yes.
And I, as someone, as a trained historian, I really appreciate that.
What's the story and then who's telling it and how it can get revised later on.
So thank you so much for sharing that.
And now just if people want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with you?
Easiest is probably LinkedIn.
(26:05):
I'm pretty visible there.
And you could reach out to me at the county if you're interested in learning more about the county opportunities.
There's lots of jobs and, you know, interesting opportunities there as well.
But I'm just happy to connect through LinkedIn and make additional connections there.
Michael, I will say you are probably the most active public servant I know on LinkedIn.
(26:29):
So a lot of times public servants, people who work in government, they're just not active on LinkedIn.
So as you said that, it's just, yeah, you're quite active.
There are quite a few of us.
Some of them are more at the federal level, but, you know, I'll push jobs out.
I'll talk about work that my team is doing.
I'll talk about, you know, if there's an interesting press release that people should know about.
(26:52):
Yeah, I'm happy to share that information.
I think people have a weird perception of public sector and of public sector employees.
And so I just want to normalize that.
You know, we're just people too.
And we're really committed to our jobs and we want to do a good job.
And more knowledge, more awareness is good.
Yes.
And I always appreciate your posts because I do find them really educational.
(27:15):
So with that, Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, listeners.
And remember to practice curiosity at work.
Thanks, Julie.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) I'm Dr. Julie Pham, founder of Curiosity Based.
We help people practice curiosity in the world, starting in the workplace, because that is where we spend most of our waking hours.
Curiosity as a practice boils down to self-awareness, relationship building, and clear communication.
So join us as we interview leaders to see how they use curiosity at work.
Hi there, welcome to the Curiosity at Work podcast.
(00:28):
I'm Dr. Julie Pham, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation with Michael Jacobson today.
He is the deputy director at the Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget for King County, and a nationally award-winning public servant organizational leader.
I know we're going to get to learn a lot from Michael.
(00:49):
And I also just think he's one of the most curious public servants I have gotten to interact with in this fellowship I used to do for a cross-sector collaboration.
So Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
Honored to be here.
Thanks, Julie.
So Michael, could you explain a bit about what is performance, strategy, and budget?
(01:11):
What does that mean?
How many people are part of your team?
What does that look like?
Yeah, so it's a mouthful, I will acknowledge.
So I work for King County.
A lot of people understand what a city is, but the county encompasses 39 cities, including the city of Seattle.
The county has over 16,000 employees, and my specific office, Office of Performance, Strategy, and Budget, has about 80.
(01:36):
I have four direct reports who are managers, and my team is about 20 employees, which is a mix of full-time equivalent positions, term-limited positions, fellows, and even interns.
We are hybrid, but work mostly remote.
My four teams do four really different bodies of work.
(01:57):
The namesake part of the organization works on organizational performance, including performance measures, scorecards, how are we doing, how are we spending public sector dollars, the public's tax money, on how we're accomplishing our goals.
And then we also work on things like strategic planning, helping the organization articulate where we're trying to go.
(02:20):
I have another team that works on criminal legal system reform.
Really different focus, but also thinking about systems and strategy, about how do we do a better job with what was typically called the criminal justice system.
We've been calling it criminal legal system recently.
And then I have another team that runs a jobs and housing program for folks experiencing homelessness.
(02:43):
That's been supported by federal dollars.
That's more of a temporary program.
And then we also have a grants team that manages federal and county-funded grants for the community.
So it's quite a diverse array of responsibilities.
All different, and yet quite a range there.
Quite a range.
I joke with people, I don't touch the money.
(03:07):
It's not entirely true, but I'm not directly in the budget process.
That's the budget side of our office.
But I obviously am involved to some degree, but budget is not my primary area of expertise and responsibility.
So the titles can sometimes be misleading.
We have to ask.
We have to figure out what does that actually mean.
(03:28):
So here, we're curiosity based.
We think of curiosity as a practice.
We're all curious, and yet sometimes we don't always practice curiosity.
And that could be because of the environment, different pressures that we have.
And so I would actually, I think it's important to actually admit when it's hard to practice curiosity, when there are things that are happening that prevent us from doing it.
(03:51):
Maybe those things are internally happening.
Michael, could you share with us what prevents practicing curiosity in your workplace with your team?
Sure.
This is a great question.
And I think a common thing that prevents curiosity is probably something a lot of people suffer from, is we have too much to do.
(04:12):
And what that means is that we basically equates to no time or freedom to be able to reflect and to be curious.
You're just rushing around trying to get stuff done.
That's a reality that modern society we live in.
We're part of that.
It's a curse.
We have responses to that, including looking at our, trying to track our capacity and saying no to things.
(04:34):
But sometimes things come through that we really are not really allowed to say no to.
And so the plate stays overly full.
I think something that may be true for anyone that works in an organization, but is especially true in a political organization, and we're not overtly political.
There's an elected official that we work for.
(04:55):
But in our situation, if the direction has already been kind of decided from above, it kind of closes down opportunities for curiosity.
You know, we're pretty near the top of the organization.
I work for the director of my office.
He reports directly to the Dow Constantine, the county executive.
So if there's some specific direction that's already been provided, then folks typically don't feel like they have the ability to question leadership direction too much, especially if it's come from an elected official, that's council member in terms of a proviso, or in terms of the elected official, like, hey, this is exactly what I had in mind.
(05:35):
It's been done, you know, challenging that direction has occurred.
But I think most folks, even me, feel a little bit, you know, constrained in that.
Michael, I have a clarifying question for you, because I think, so people understand cities, they understand government, but counties, when you have elected officials with counties, do you, because is there more or less pressure than say, if you're working for the city government?
(06:01):
I don't know.
There is pressure, I'll say.
There's still constituents, and they write in, there's still the Seattle Times looking for a breaking story.
So there's still definitely pressure.
In King County, we have 39 cities, so any one of those mayors could call the county executive and have an issue.
(06:23):
There's many constituents.
We're a little, I sometimes describe us as a little bit more on the wholesale side versus the retail side.
And so what I mean by that, I'll use a somewhat icky example, but it's something that people relate to.
So if you live in the city of Seattle, you get your water bill every month.
(06:43):
Every time you flush the toilet, you are paying to have that water be taken care of.
And on your water bill in the city of Seattle says something like 69% of the water bill goes to King County for treatment.
So you're actually paying the city basically to convey the water or the wastewater to the county, but most of the cost is in the treatment of that water, and that's a county function.
(07:09):
So you don't interact, most people don't interact with the county directly in that regard.
There's other services like that.
So if you think about Metro, I've been on the Metro bus, and the Metro bus is running late, and someone says, I'm going to call the mayor.
I'm like, don't call the mayor.
The mayor doesn't run Metro.
So we're running Metro for the region, but there are specific bus routes in specific cities, and so you tend to associate those with the city.
(07:35):
So we run, we operate the jail.
If you are arrested in the city of Seattle, you don't go to city of Seattle jail, you go to a King County jail.
So again, it's more of, I think it tends to think of as a little bit more of a wholesale kind of issue.
So there is pressure for sure.
It's a slightly different pressure, and we're all professional, so there's internal pressure, right?
(07:59):
Like we're all wanting to do a good job and take our jobs really seriously.
So I think that's as much a pressure as anything, but we definitely get constituent input and feedback for sure.
So that's actually interesting.
I hadn't thought about how, especially when you're in the city of Seattle, within the city limits, it's just, oh, I think it's the city's responsibility.
Does that actually give you a little bit of a cushion?
(08:21):
Because it's just, well, there's a lot of scrutiny because they don't know.
There's just this confusion.
And, or yeah.
Is there any of that where?
It could be a cushion.
It could be, like, I work with our customer service folks, probably 50, 60% of the calls they get are not for King County services.
So if someone's calling in about social security, that's a federal function, or they're calling in about the light or the stoplight that's broken, that's in their city, not a King County light.
(08:50):
So there is confusion about that.
So you could call it a cushion, but we probably then spend a little bit more time educating people about who to talk to and where to go.
Yeah.
I would say though, that cities are very powerful constituents in their own right.
So you don't really want to make Renton unhappy or Bellevue unhappy or city Seattle unhappy.
(09:11):
Right.
So they have, and they have that elected official to elected official line of communication.
I wouldn't call it the bat line exactly, but when a mayor calls the county executive and it's in my program area, I'll know about it very quickly.
So there's definitely very acute pressure at times.
Thank you, Michael, for just breaking that down the different layers and then how that then can actually impact the sense of scrutiny and that impacts how, how much people feel safe practicing curiosity.
(09:43):
Cause I, I do think that, that, that sense of safety, the sense of spaces, this impacts that.
So let's turn to Ash.
Oh, I did have one last one.
And it's this won't surprise anyone, but basically bureaucracy and rules do you know, can reduce your curiosity.
(10:03):
We do have a lot of rules to navigate.
Many of those rules were put in place for fairness and for legal reasons.
Maybe there's a state rule or a federal rule.
But I would say that the number of those things can Rob, even the most curious person of the will to live at, you know, it is we, we are rich in mission as a government serve, you know, in terms of when I wake up in the morning, I'm like, I'm going to do important work today.
(10:29):
But those rules and the bureaucracy, you know, to make sure that nothing wrong is happening also robs me of a little bit of my passion.
You know, versus if I worked for Nike, it's like, I'm going to go sell some shoes.
It's like not quite as exciting.
But they have a lot fewer rules and bureaucracy they deal with.
Okay.
That's that interesting.
(10:49):
Because I think about from the outside, we think government's got so many rules, but even within the inside, even employees think we have a lot of rules that are, and it's difficult for you to navigate as well, not just for people outside the system or outside of government.
Procurement rules are a terrific example, right?
We're trying to get money.
We're trying to buy a service or trying to buy something.
(11:11):
We can't just call up a company and say, Hey, give me a million dollars worth of that, right?
We have to put out a bid.
There's lots of rules.
There's timelines.
You know, if you're at, you get your bid in at 501, as opposed to five o'clock, we don't take your bid.
So there's many rules that, that, that organizations and people have to deal with, but we also have to abide by those same rules internally.
(11:32):
Thank you for just sharing some of the, the psyche of the public service within the bureaucracy too.
So then when we think about the practice of curiosity, if you could share a specific example of story of what you do with your, with your team to foster curiosity, that could be around self-awareness, relationship building, clear communication, or just anything that, especially when there's such a, you've got very different functions, workforce and, and the, the, the criminal legal system.
(12:02):
That's very different.
So how do you do that?
We are, I think, on a path towards building, trying to build a more relational culture.
This is something we get feedback from when we have our employee survey, people want to be more connected to each other.
It's when we look at our equity work, it comes through loud and clear.
(12:26):
I'll give a specific example of something that happened to me that had sort of unanticipated positive consequences.
I had, it was, I did have this in mind to, to make greater connection, but I was surprised at how impactful it was.
At one time I belonged to this large team that was responsible for improving equity across the County.
(12:46):
It's called the Interbranch Equity Team or the, yeah, IBT.
And we'd love our acronyms.
And there were people from every department and agency at the table, maybe 30 people or so altogether.
And we met monthly.
And sometimes we get into these discussions that were kind of heated, of course, because it was around equity issues.
And I realized that some of the people that even I tended to agree with, I didn't actually know that well.
(13:10):
So we'd come together to discuss, we'd break into factions, we'd have our discussion and we kind of go our, go our separate ways.
We come back together the next month.
So I had made a decision at one point that I would have lunch with one person a month to get to know them better.
And I wasn't, didn't need anything from them.
I wasn't trying to make any deals.
I just wanted to literally get to understand them as people, where they were coming from, understand the situations that they were in at work, kind of what their motivations were and, you know, vice versa, right.
(13:40):
Share some of why I was speaking up when I did and why I wasn't when I wasn't.
And I have to say it was the best thing I may have ever done.
One person had their son at lunch one day.
And so he brought his son and the three of us had lunch and we were talking about parenting and his son got to see some of the discussions about what was going on at the county and some of these interesting challenges.
(14:02):
Another person felt honored that someone with my title was taking time to get to know them, but I was humbled that they took time from their busy calendar to hang out with me.
So I eventually, what that resulted in was that I got some very interesting personal insights about each person.
They saw me as a more human and less titled, you know, person and that many of those connections have lasted for years all over lunch.
(14:28):
I can still give any one of those people a call and say, Hey, what's going on?
I, you know, I've got this issue or can you help me with something?
And there's just immediate, you know, I got your back.
So it was, I don't know if I thought about it as a curiosity motivated thing, but it was just to connect with someone.
(14:50):
And, you know, we work in a large organization, people get things done and having that connection with people became really important.
And sometimes it doesn't have to be, I'm going to be curious.
This is the thing.
It's just, Oh, reflection.
They, you learned a lot and they also appreciated that you took the effort to, to the time.
And, and Michael, what you said about the, with your job title and how people felt honored.
(15:14):
It's kind of reminding me of when I can't remember if it was with your team or I know it was with a King County group.
People were talking about the hierarchy and how even where you get off, what elevator, what floor you get off on will, will suggest who, who you are, where you are in the organization.
(15:34):
And that hierarchy is really felt in a government.
It is, I think.
And we, you know, there are efforts to flatten it every once in a while, but there's, you know, there's seniority types of hierarchies, there's title hierarchies, there's decision-making who gets to spend budget or who doesn't.
(15:57):
There's lots of those that are threaded throughout our organization.
I do think we have title oriented hierarchy.
So me being a deputy director, it's not something that I, in some meetings, we, we have to be explicit and say, leave your titles at the door.
That's how important hierarchy is in our culture, right?
(16:19):
Like leave your title.
It doesn't matter what your title is.
I went to a training.
We didn't introduce ourselves based on our jobs and we have an amazing array of people in there.
And only afterward, I'd run into someone and be like, oh, that's cool.
You do that.
That's so interesting.
But like, we got to know each other better as people in that training.
But yeah, hierarchy is, it can be effective for getting things done, but it can be a hindrance to, to connecting as a, as a person.
(16:46):
And just with anything, there's good and bad, and there's the pros and cons and advantages and the disadvantages.
And I appreciate how you, how you listed different kinds of hierarchy and how in this context that that title orientation can be the one that people lean on.
I know that the cross-sectional collaboration fellowship that you are participated in, the following cohort, I remember accidentally just not putting people's titles on their name tags.
(17:11):
And it was just so, it was so useful because all these interesting assumptions came up about what people did when they didn't have their titles as well.
And so it is when you decide, Hey, we're literally not going to put it on, and we're literally not going to talk about it, how that can actually affect people's inquiry in the conversation.
(17:34):
I think it can infect you too, though.
Right?
I remember maybe even in that, in that session we worked on together, I remember bringing some degree of entitlement with me because of my usual, the usual deference given to me because of my title.
Okay.
I'm also a white guy.
I get the whole privilege thing.
(17:54):
I'm, I'm, I'm understand that as well, but like that magnifies the title hierarchy, right?
You know, what's expected and it also, you know, challenges me as a, as a, as a manager, as a leader.
I, I was an individual contributor, right?
Like, you know, at one point, wait, you need me to do that because I now have this title.
(18:16):
I'm like, I just want to share my opinion.
Well, no, you can't share your opinion because now sharing your opinion comes with this title behind it.
And now it has impact and meaning beyond you, Michael, the individual, right?
So there's a, a little bit like living in a, you know, in a racist society, you get infected with those biases.
(18:39):
I think the, I think hierarchy and titles is a, is one that we don't talk about very much, but I think it's very much, it could be similar, right?
I get infected with a kind of privilege of, of, of the title.
So it makes me think about how sometimes when you've got someone with a really high title and they ask a question, then other people take that as a suggestion or an order when you're just literally asking a question, right?
(19:02):
How do you, how do you recruit for curiosity?
How do you interview?
How do you, how do you, having someone join your team, how do you look for that?
How do you determine personally, Michael, what do you do?
Yeah.
So I would say a large, you know, a lot of our work is standard or somewhat predictable.
(19:25):
We're looking for project management skills or specific technical skills.
You have to know how to create a performance measure or understand some aspect of the criminal legal system.
You need some political savvy.
Those are sort of the core skills.
But a large part of our work is really about innovation and trying to improve the way things are done.
So I'm always after people that aren't just going to create standard work or follow the rules, but bring ideas and creativity.
(19:49):
So when I'm looking at resumes- Michael, yeah, your, your special tip.
Yeah.
So when I'm looking at resumes, I'm sometimes, I am often looking for the non-linear career choice or a person that shows an interest that doesn't neatly align with their job description.
If all I see is your resumes, you're a performance measurement expert, and all you've done is strategic planning, like, sure, you can do the job, but like, will you bring that kind of passion and that curiosity about it?
(20:16):
So I'm always a little bit wary that you might be too narrowly trained or too focused, might not be able to bring collateral learning to the job.
So I also put a fair amount of value on the questions that the interviewee asks the interviewers.
And we always leave some time at the end.
Sometimes people are like, I just have a single question.
(20:36):
That is a huge missed opportunity, in my opinion, because those questions show that the person's done their homework.
They're thinking about, you know, living in the job and like, what's, what's burning about this opportunity for them?
What's the, what's, what's their curiosity about that position?
So again, the technical elements might, you know, they could ask about that, but more, what are the interpersonal elements, what are the opportunities to grow and expand the role?
(21:03):
Those are showing me that that person has, there's a, there's a je ne sais quoi there that I want to hire that person.
Right.
That there's something special there.
So Michael, and you want things for the unconventional, untraditional career path, but then are you telling the recruiters on your team, Hey, I want you to look for that.
Cause I know you're not looking through every single resume.
(21:24):
Right.
I am telling people to look for, you know, our jobs are not widget making, right.
So, you know, there is some widget making, but we are looking for people that are going to be nimble that can, you know, go with the flow that deal with the ambiguity.
I think that's one of the, the characteristics that we talk about a lot as when we're doing hiring is who's going to be able to deal with the ambiguity.
(21:50):
Cause we do not have perfect clarity coming from leadership.
We do not have perfect clarity about what we should be doing.
There's a lot that's like, go this way, but not how far or for how long.
Right.
And so it's like directional, but it's not, it's not more specific than that.
And so some people's brains will explode.
They can't handle that level of generality or directionality.
(22:13):
They need something much more specific and linear than that.
Those people will not succeed in my team generally, because the work is more, the grants work is more defined, but even still, there's a lot of creativity that's required when, when a new grant is being started and it's not entirely clear what, what, you know, how that money should get spent.
(22:35):
So, and so even having awareness around the kind of thinking approach that someone has, that they'll actually be successful on the team too.
Correct.
So last question for you is what inspires, what's a resource that you turn to?
What is something that inspires curiosity for you?
And it could be personal, professional.
(22:56):
I like to walk and that allows me to kind of look at things a little more carefully when I walk around.
And one of the things that I have found for myself, that's interesting, it are historical markers.
It sounds a little nerdy, but when I see a marker, it gets me to ask the question, is this the official story?
(23:23):
Is this the real story?
What's, why is this marker here?
What's going on about this marker?
I don't know if you followed any of the controversy around the volunteer park marker.
It's now down, you know, there was a whole reassessment of Confederate markers, things like that.
There's one up in Bellingham, which is interesting.
(23:46):
I was walking by one time and it was, there was a little small concrete or stone, and it basically said Chinese deadline.
And I'm like, that's a weird thing.
Like, what's that about?
And then I went back to Bellingham a couple of years later and it had been revised and it was a fuller articulation of what the Chinese deadline was.
(24:10):
And it had to do with our horrible racist past.
And it basically was like, no Chinese were allowed to go beyond that point, that they were working on the tide flat and they couldn't come upland into the town or they could be killed.
It was literally a deadline.
And what was then interesting about this story was the mayor basically apologized to the Chinese community in 2011.
(24:38):
So there was like this whole story of why was that marker there?
There was this whole history of Chinese cannery workers.
You know, there's no cannery there anymore, right?
It's all gone.
It's all history.
But the original marker made me wonder why is that there and had me do some research.
And then the revised one was like, how did that story get retold and kind of reconceptualized?
(25:02):
So anyway, I see things like that.
I see, I'll read the plaques, you know, that most people just walk by.
I read those things.
And I wonder why is this here?
What story is it telling?
Is it the real story?
Is it the wrong story?
Is it a whitewash story?
You know, and so that it always gets me kind of curious, right?
You know, why is this here?
(25:23):
Who spent time to pour this bronze, affix it to a wall or whatever?
I was just in Germany for a family reason.
And there were lots of memorials and markers, you know, sometimes to the Holocaust, sometimes to Germans.
And I was fixated on those memorials and markers.
(25:44):
Like, what is the story that's being told here?
It was very interesting.
Yes.
And I, as someone, as a trained historian, I really appreciate that.
What's the story and then who's telling it and how it can get revised later on.
So thank you so much for sharing that.
And now just if people want to get in touch with you, how do they get in touch with you?
Easiest is probably LinkedIn.
(26:05):
I'm pretty visible there.
And you could reach out to me at the county if you're interested in learning more about the county opportunities.
There's lots of jobs and, you know, interesting opportunities there as well.
But I'm just happy to connect through LinkedIn and make additional connections there.
Michael, I will say you are probably the most active public servant I know on LinkedIn.
(26:29):
So a lot of times public servants, people who work in government, they're just not active on LinkedIn.
So as you said that, it's just, yeah, you're quite active.
There are quite a few of us.
Some of them are more at the federal level, but, you know, I'll push jobs out.
I'll talk about work that my team is doing.
I'll talk about, you know, if there's an interesting press release that people should know about.
(26:52):
Yeah, I'm happy to share that information.
I think people have a weird perception of public sector and of public sector employees.
And so I just want to normalize that.
You know, we're just people too.
And we're really committed to our jobs and we want to do a good job.
And more knowledge, more awareness is good.
Yes.
And I always appreciate your posts because I do find them really educational.
(27:15):
So with that, Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you, listeners.
And remember to practice curiosity at work.
Thanks, Julie.
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