City of Oxnard

I have spent much of my career running municipal solid waste and recycling operations. I have also worked in the private sector, where I had the opportunity to see government from the other side of the table.

That experience changed the questions I ask.

There are a lot of good ideas in our industry. New technologies, equipment, software and service models can make public operations safer, more efficient and more responsive. But I have learned that there can be a considerable distance between recognizing a good idea and successfully putting it into operation.

When you are responsible for the operation, your perspective becomes very practical, very quickly.

It is not enough for me to know what a solution can do. I want to know what happens at 6:00 Monday morning when employees have to use it.

Does it work with the equipment we already have? Who maintains it? What happens when it goes down? Does it change how employees perform their jobs? Is additional training required? Did we account for that in the cost and schedule? What does the customer experience while we make the transition?

Those questions are not resistance to innovation. They are what make innovation sustainable.

The Gap Often Starts Earlier Than We Think

One thing I understand differently after working in both government and industry is how easily the two sides can talk past each other.

A company may have an excellent solution and still misunderstand the agency’s problem. An agency may know exactly what is not working operationally but write a procurement so specifically around the solution it envisioned that it never discovers a better way to solve it.

I have seen enough from both perspectives to believe we need more conversation before we get to that point.

The real measure of innovation is whether it works on Monday morning and keeps working long after everyone involved in selecting it has left the conference room.

For government, that means doing the work to understand the market before specifications are finalized. What has changed? What is actually available? What have other agencies learned? What is a realistic implementation schedule? Where are the costs or operational impacts that may not be obvious at first?

For industry, it means spending less time leading with capabilities and more time understanding the operation.

Sometimes the most valuable thing a potential partner can do is ask a question the agency has not considered.

I Pay Attention to What Happens After “Yes”

Procurement naturally puts significant attention on getting to an award. But some of the most consequential decisions become apparent after the contract is signed.

That is why I tend to work backward from implementation.

If we select this solution, what has to be true for it to succeed? Who inside the organization will own it? What will change for the employees actually doing the work? What assumptions are we making today that could create problems six months from now?

A proposal can be technically responsive and financially attractive and still be difficult to implement. Conversely, a solution that requires more discussion upfront may ultimately produce a much better operational result.

That distinction matters when you are spending public dollars. Our responsibility is not simply to complete a procurement. It is to make a decision we can defend not only on the day of award, but years later based on what it actually delivered.

The Best Partners Are Willing to Challenge Each Other

Working in the private sector gave me greater appreciation for the expertise government can gain from industry. Companies that work across multiple agencies see approaches, technologies and lessons that any individual municipality may encounter only occasionally.

Working in government taught me the other half of that lesson: no outside partner knows an operation as well as the people responsible for running it every day.

The best results occur when both sides respect those different kinds of expertise.

I value private-sector partners who are willing to tell me that something I am asking for may not work the way I expect. And I think government owes industry the same candor about our constraints, expectations and operational realities.

That is where partnership becomes useful. Not when everyone agrees, but when each side is willing to make the other’s idea better.

After working on both sides of the relationship, I am still interested in innovation. I may simply define it differently now.

A new idea is only the beginning.

For me, the real measure of innovation is whether it works on Monday morning and keeps working long after everyone involved in selecting it has left the conference room.