Eventually I saw her again, and I asked her where she’d been. She shrugged. I asked her where she lived when the weather got cold. She pointed to one of the tent cities under a nearby overpass.  I asked her if she would go to a shelter if I could find her one.  She shrugged, it seemed that she hadn’t considered going to a homeless shelter on her own and was resigned to life as she knew it.

I did some research, expecting to find at least a few shelters downtown. With all downtown’s homeless, I was sure that someone, some non-profit or church group saw the overwhelming need and had a safe place for homeless people to live in the winter months.

I also thought that homeless shelters would be built in central locations near public transit and other government social services.

I was wrong. There was a men’s shelter downtown, but they had a hard time staying in compliance of city ordinances. This economic crisis hit them hard.  They had no water for a while, and were, at least briefly, shut down.  There was one shelter for women and children, but it was at least 10 miles from downtown. I can’t imagine why a homeless shelter would be built in the suburbs away from public transit. I’ve never even seen a homeless person in Atlanta’s mostly wealthy suburbs.

I must admit that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea of chauffeuring my new friend to a shelter. And who knew if she’d even get in or be willing to stay? She was used to downtown, and with her mental problems I wasn’t sure how she’d adapt to the ‘burbs.

I called the shelter anyway, and learned that she would have to call first and go through their intake process before she could be driven there. (Call how? On the magic payphones that exist downtown that don’t take any money? Or was she supposed to whip out the cell phone that she could afford on her homeless salary?) The person that I talked to at the shelter didn’t think that my homeless friend had a good chance of being admitted as the shelter mostly catered to women with small children.

Still, I gave my homeless friend the number to the shelter along with a bag of chips that I’d saved for her.  While we were huddled in a walkway, she asked me to cover her while she adjusted herself.  Out of one of the folds of her clothes, she pulled out a little change purse.  I saw a couple of one dollar bills and a few quarters and dimes.  She was so protective of her money, and she knew just how to hide it. I can’t imagine the harshness of the life she lives. She not only has to deal with the whims of the weather, she also contends with the brutality of her fellow humans. Yet, I could tell she was comfortable with her current surroundings and those with whom she lived under I-75. Somehow, I didn’t think she would be calling the homeless shelter in the suburbs.

As I listened to the “angry clip” and the accompanying news cast, I shook my head and smiled. Over the past (almost) year and the summer of 2009 that I’ve spent in the Atlanta area, I have heard similar (and worse) news casts about then Mayor Shirley Franklin.  Mayor Franklin got a lot of flack about being angry, confrontational and mean to the press.  The flack is warranted, Mayor Shirley was angry.  But I believe she had every right to be.

Atlanta, like governments and business around the world, is facing tremendous financial insecurity.  Money is tight (and getting tighter). Leaders are in the precarious position of having to make unpopular decisions about what programs stay and what programs need to be cut to keep the bohemeth afloat.

During her years as mayor, Ms. Franklin was no newbie to budgetary shortfalls. When she was elected, Atlanta had a budget deficit that she reversed by enacting an unpopular tax increase. Unfortunately, the recession has placed a dark light on Mayor Franklin’s budgetary prowess.  I remember watching the news months ago as Mayor Franklin gave very clear and rational cost cutting and saving recommendations to City Countil and the public.  I remember her saying something very similar to what Mayor Reed said this morning: No one wants to make cuts, but the budget has to be balanced. Spending has to stop. City Council balked from her recommendation, at least in part because several of them were up for re-election and at least two of them wanted to run for Franklin’s role.  [This is why I HATE the strong mayor system, but that’s for another day, another post,].

I never blamed Mayor Franklin for being angry, she was making hard, unpopular decisions and she was under a lot of pressure. One doesn’t need an MPA to realize that if money is short, something has to give. The decision of what goes and what stays isn’t an easy one, but those decisions are EXACTLY what elected officials in strong mayor cities are elected to make.

I was frustrated right along with Mayor Franklin when she couldn’t get a consensus of city council members to collaborate on solutions to keep Atlanta out of the red. It was like they preferred to do nothing, rather than do something that stepped on someone pet project.

Based on the time that Mayor Franklin had with her council, I wasn’t surprised to hear that City Council already turning on Mayor Reed. I’m glad he did not let their gibes slide.

My advice to Mayor Reed? Have a clear, rational decision making process, keep the public informed on what you’re doing and why, don’t shy away from making the hard decisions, and feel free to call your city council out when they lock you down.  And please, don’t be afraid to get angry. Altanta has big problems, and we should all be angry at inaction or worse, elected officials with their heads in the sand who’d rather point fingers than do something.

Even though I was a local government and non-profit junkie with no interest in working for a state government, I was excited about the opportunity because their mission seemed so closely aligned with what I wanted to do. I scheduled time to visit with different layers of the organization’s bureaucracy. I talked to the department and divisions “higher-ups” as well as section chiefs and analysts. I set up one-on-one conversations and gave each person the confidentiality that they needed to tell me their true experience working in their organization using Bolman and Deal’s organizational frames: Structural, Human Resources, Symbolic, and Political frames. (Shout-Out to Org Theory!!)

It didn’t take me long to figure out that the organization was toxic from the top to the bottom. Communication, up down and through the hierarchy was broken. Employees felt that they had been back-stabbed by their bosses—they got blamed for mistakes but never the credit for triumphs. Output was stale. Feelings had been hurt and old resentments had been allowed to fester. Unproductive employees had been moved around rather than fired, and their presence was a drain on everyone else. There was no friendly camaraderie around the water cooler or any activities to make the organization come together to celebrate in a meaningful way.  Most employees felt powerless, and came into work every day marking the hours until they could go home each evening.

In spite of these conditions, most employees cared deeply about the mission of the organization and about their individual work. Unfortunately, that didn’t help company morale. Meeting employees in the hallways was quiet and awkward at best and in some cases it was downright hostile and unfriendly.

Over the course of that semester, I learned that the people in that organization will likely stay in their current job (or one very similar), surrounded by people that they do not like or respect for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years. I interviewed people who were counting the years to retirement and were unwilling to even consider finding a job that suited them better. Over and over I heard about the perks of the job. The 401k match, the 2 weeks of vacation time, the flexible schedule, and the promotion schedule were all touted as reasons to stay. I remember thinking to myself that no amount of vacation was worth being miserable for the rest of the year.

Not only would they not consider quitting jobs that they hated, they weren’t even willing to consider ways to make the job better. They were all content to work (unhappily) for an organization, notice and complain about the problems and issues but not ever do ANYTHING that would make the problem go away. They wouldn’t even consult higher levels of the hierarchy about them. It was like they were stuck in purgatory. Or just stuck.

By the end of the assignment I knew that I never, ever wanted to work for a state government and I had a new appreciation for the term bureaucrat.

In my current position, almost 2 years later, I can confirm that my first impression of state government employees is by and large a correct one. As far as I could tell, state government (in any state) is full of bitter bureaucrats.

Bitter bureaucrats:   While mostly found at the state level of government, bitter bureaucrats can invade any organization.  Bitter bureaucrats can be identified by their constantly frowning faces, and the inability to make eye contact or say a friendly word with their co-workers. Bitter Bureaucrats can usually be found whining and complaining about a process or problem concerning their work flow but refuse to do anything that may alleviate their problem. Beware of Bitter Bureaucrats as they drain the life out of other staff members and organization projects. Bitter Bureaucrats have the incapacity to try new things, create change, or think outside the box or form.

Bitter Bureaucrats are not born. They are made. They get Bitter Bureaucrat Syndrome.

Symptoms of Bitter Bureaucrat Syndrome are: Unproductivity in the workplace, constant taking of “mental health days”, overwhelming feelings of complacency, stagnation, and being in a rut.

You may be at risk for contracting Bitter Bureaucrat Syndrome if: you feel that your boss only gives you negative feedback, the creativity is being beat out of you, you are being asked to conform to a out-dated standard in some way, you are told to do things the way they have always been done, your boss and co-workers have been in their current jobs longer than you’ve been alive, you live in a cube, you are never congratulated for creating a new process or trying a novel concept or if you have 3 or more different company policy manuals in your personal work space.

The fastest and best cure for bitter bureaucrat syndrome in individuals is for the afflicted person to quit the organization that caused the outbreak and find/do work that supports and nurtures in some vital way. Organizationally, the cure for bitter bureaucrat syndrome is to create a new culture. The organization must be purged of complacency, negativity, and conformity and a new culture of creativity and friendliness and open communication must be established.

Pass this along to all those you know who are in danger of becoming a bitter bureaucrat and to those who have been guilty of creating bitter bureaucrats.

When I was in middle school my uncle, who lived with my family, started to go blind.  It started slowly at first, and my mother and all the other adults attributed his weakened eye sight to getting older.  At the time, my uncle must have been in his mid- 40’s and bad eyes run in the family, so no one was surprised that he started needing reading glasses.  Except the reading glasses didn’t work.  In fact, nothing worked.

Finally, after much coaxing, cajoling and outright coercing my mother got my uncle into the car and over to Duke for a physical, including an eye exam.  They returned with thick-ass glasses that my siblings and I made fun of.

It wasn’t until a week or so later that my mom and my uncle apparently went back to the doctor to get the results of the physical.  They, of course, didn’t say anything to us kids.  And I wouldn’t have suspected a thing, if I hadn’t caught my uncle silently crying on our couch before my mom made him leave the room.

A few weeks (or months) later mama took me out for a walk (we still take each other for walks when we have “controversial” aka bad news to share).  It was then that she told me that my uncle was HIV positive and that the disease was what caused him to lose his vision.  I reacted badly and said some pretty hurtful things.  (Give me a break, I was 11) After my mother gave me the look (you know the look), she informed me that he was still family and we would support and take care of him.  She told me that we had to be more careful about washing our hands, and dealing with other body fluids.  My uncle was prescribed what looked like oodles of colorful pills to take every day and he had to stop smoking. He continued to live with us for a little while after that, until again I caught him crying.

That time, mom just called my siblings and me into the family room and told all of us that my uncle now had AIDS.  He moved into a hospice for AIDS patients soon after.  My uncle lived in that home for at least a year or more (it all gets blurry to me). We visited him at least once a week, and got to watch him and a whole bunch of other AIDS victims die.  His fight wasn’t an easy one, and towards the end my mother stopped taking me and the other kids to visit him.  She thought it was too disturbing.

Other than her weekly visits, I only remember a few times when my mother was called to her brother’s bedside.  One was the night that he went completely blind and found himself alone, staring into utter blackness, another happened when one of the other men in the home died (who had come to live there shortly after my uncle) and the last occurred on the night that he died.

My mother recounted the story (or at least his speculation) on how my uncle contracted HIV, but that story doesn’t really matter here.  She also told me of conversations that they had discussed his live and regrets.  She says that he would often dissect his life to see where he went wrong.

I always thought that that was the saddest part of my uncle’s short battle with HIV and AIDS. Even in the end, he equated his being gay with having AIDS. He didn’t “come out of the closet until the beginning of the end and it seems that he still had problems with who he was and how he lived his life.  This, of course, was at least partly to blame on his upbringing, his relationships, and the shame that was still associated with being a gay man in the 1990’s.  I wondered why he never got tested before.  Was it shame? Fear? Lack of education?

My life is riddled with people I wish I could have gotten to know better over the years. People whose stories I wish I could have recorded in some way. My uncle is one of them.

I don’t really know how telling this story is related to the overall mission of this blog, but what I do know is that other people like my uncle exist.  People who feel isolated. People who have health problems they don’t know about. I also know that where we live and how we live affect our outcomes; social, political, economic, educational and health.  Complete communities, which encompass all areas of our lives, support residents allowing them to have full, rich lives.  And we can’t have complete communities without adequate local, affordable healthcare.

I would like to think that the conditions under which my uncle went untested for AIDS for many years (and would have continued to, had he not had those vision problems) no longer exist but I know too well that they do.  AIDS isn’t like cancer in that early detection saves lives (At least I don’t think so) but with the right medication, he would have lived longer, giving me time to grow up and take an interest in him and his life.

Furthermore, who knows how things would be different if whomever my uncle contracted the disease from had been educated about the sexual risks they were taking, and had used condoms.  Now scale that up and think about all the other people who could be saved with proper sex education and access to free condoms.

Luckily, in the county where I grew up, things have changed for the better.  At the local health department, students could get free condoms, birth control and STD testing.  I hope adults without insurance can get the same benefits.

Unfortunately, other areas aren’t as progressive as my hometown.  Even in the city of Atlanta, population 537,958, finding a health department that does STD testing can be a miserable experience. Just this summer, I wanted to have a physical without health insurance. The only option I could find was a Planned Parenthood, if the City of Atlanta has health departments, their web presence is deplorable.  At the local Planned Parenthood, guess who I shared the waiting room with on the day of my appointment? Young gay men and teenage girls. And if the looks on their faces were any indication, they weren’t getting any good news.  It just breaks my heart because it could easily be much different.

Some would say it is unpractical and certainly unprofitable to have plentiful local healthcare in easily accessible areas in and around our neighborhoods. But we already know the difference it makes when folks have easy access to healthy food and more education. (We get healthier, smarter folks) In the same way, having near-by healthcare options and comprehensive sex education can also improve the quality of life of residents.

I love my job.  Finding ways to make stuff better is a part of my natural make up. It’s just what I do.

I’ve been on this job for about a month now. And the program that I’ve evaluating is full of problems.  But in talking to its employees, I quickly realized that it is has not always been this way.  Back in the day, this particular program was STATE OF THE ART.  So what has happened over the years?

Nothing.  Nothing has happened.  Nothing has CHANGED. They do things today, very much like they were done 25 years ago.  They’ve half-assed implemented pieces of technology, but their business processes have not changed to reflect new technologies, or changes in population growth, or an increase in business requests.

Of course, this is a bad idea.

Technology is our friend.  Say it with me. Technology is our friend. However, it is important to recognize that the implementation of technology should change the way business is conducted.

One of the major recommendations that I’m going to make to the program that I’m analyzing is to match your business needs with your technology functions.  If you need to enter data, make sure that your technology makes data entry easier.  If you need to search for data, have a well developed search function.  If you need to preserve data, have adequate back-ups (electronic or some other form). If you need to communicate with an audience, make sure that you have the technology in place to make your communication efforts strong ones.

Know what you do, and let your business processes guide your technology decisions. Technology can help improve the way you do business. Understand that implementing new technologies should spark changes in your processes.  Things should not stay the same.

My obsession started years ago, and developed as I tried to understand how so many fighters for the common good could spring from such an unlikely, rich, upper echelon family.  I couldn’t understand how or what has driven this family to champion social problems. Not only the policies and programs that John, Robert, and Ted fought for in political arenas and the non-profits, foundations and other charitable work that has been accomplished by Eunice, Caroline, and Maria, they amaze me.

Granted, the Kennedys, like the rest of us, have feet of clay, but in terms of political power and change, I cannot think of any other family who has been more influential.

I’ve spent a good part of the morning reading the obituary and various other articles about Ted Kennedy.  Thankfully, everything I’ve read so far has given (mostly and here too) equal space to his triumphs as will has his downfalls.

As I read through the various obituaries, all the kind words that have been spoken and the volumes of legislation that he had a hand it, I am overwhelmed by the breadth of his life’s accomplishments and the lives that he has touched.

And I remember why public service is so important to me. Through public service, each of us has the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of those who live among us.  We all have a duty to stand up and support policies that reflect the kind of world we want to live it.

Do we want to live in an America where those less fortunate have no opportunities to better themselves? Do we want to live in an America segregated into haves and have nots? Do we want to live in an America that squanders our precious resources with no thought for tomorrow?  Do we want to live in an America where many of us lack access to basic necessities and food?

That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. I want to live in an America that celebrates diversity and equality.  I want to live in an America where people of different socio-economic standings have the same opportunities for advancement.  I want to live in a world that cares for the least among us.  I want to live in an America that believes in and supports the progressive social policies that Senator Kennedy spent decades in the Senate fighting for.