The Kind of Entrepreneurs City Government Needs Most

Jack Sammons was right.

In his first directors’ meeting as the newly-minted Memphis Chief Administration Officer for interim Mayor Myron Lowery, he told his subordinates around the conference table to quit saying no.

It was a modest proposal with huge ramifications.  Just imagine what the possibilities are for a government whose officials begin with a “yes” mentality, rather than the kneejerk “no” that greets so many questions or suggestions from the public.

At a time when Mayor A C Wharton has set a goal of changing the culture of City Hall, we hope Mr. Sammons’s successor will adopt his commitment to creating a yes culture.

Recycling in Restaurants

We are thinking of this as we contemplate an idea by Project Green Fork founder Margot McNeeley that sounds so plausible and beneficial – restaurant recycling.  Even with Mr. Sammons’ admonition and with the interest of one Council member, it’s impossible to get a pilot program started for this worthy project.

Instead, there are bureaucratic explanations about why it can’t work and how hard it would be with the current equipment, and that old government favorite, it’s been tried and failed.

Unfortunately, Mr. Sammons’s impact on the culture was limited, because from the beginning, most people in City Hall figured they could run out the clock on him since it was unlikely he would remain in his CAO’s job.

As a result, it’s hard to know if Ms. McNeeley’s wise proposal ever got a fair hearing, but we hope that the Wharton Administration will give it the consideration that it deserves.  After all, restaurants produce a stunning amount of waste, but there is no recycling for them.

Supporting Entrepreneurs of the Social Kind

Anyone who has ever met Ms. McNeely is hard-pressed not to be moved by her energy and her persuasive arguments about the sheer logic of such a proposal.

But she is no fanatic.  She is practical and pragmatic, and for this reason, she suggested that City of Memphis set up a pilot restaurant recycling program in the Cooper-Young district, where a number of restaurants have already said they would participate.  In this way, the practical issues and the potential impact could be measured and evaluated in light of real life experiences.

Or worse case, if City of Memphis – with its $650 million budget – thinks it is financially onerous to set up a pilot program for restaurants, it should fund a pilot program outside government to see if it makes financial and operational sense.

The beauty of people like Ms. McNeeley and why they are making such a difference in Memphis is that they are social entrepreneurs.  And government should find ways to partner with them, to empower them and to honor them, because it’s in its own enlightened self-interest.

After all, social entrepreneurs are powering some of the most profound social change in the country, and like business entrepreneurs, they specialize in the brand of creative destruction that imagines change, launching a new idea, accelerating dissemination, and sustaining the impact over a period of time that reaches the tipping point for change.

Special People

Because of it, we think that the Wharton Administration should consider ways to transplant the lessons of social entrepreneurs into city government.

Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, an organization that funds social entrepreneurs described it well in an interview on Smart City: “We see the social entrepreneur as a unique kind of social sector actor, someone who by passion, ability to execute, a tremendous focus on results and impact, brings a new innovative idea to an intractable social problem.  We see social entrepreneurs outperforming other startups actors in the social sector.”

In response to the question of how she spots talent, Ms. Dorsey said: “I think there’s something irrepressible about just deep, deep passion and commitment to an issue and a cause.  The passion literally leaps off the page.  You can feel the commitment to an issue.  I call it a wonderful obsession.

“You read a proposal by the social entrepreneur, and it’s so deeply invested in every nuance of the issue or the problem that they’re studying.  It becomes part of their DNA.”

Set Them Loose in City Hall

Ms. McNeeley comes to mind again.  One social entrepreneur is worth more to the future of Memphis than 100 enforcers of bureaucratic rules.  For that reason, we think the Wharton Administration should begin its program to transform City Hall by finding a few social entrepreneurs to act as agents for change.

It will of course require them being given free rein to challenge the organization, to assemble entrepreneurial teams, and to work outside of the formal structure.  Most of all, it will require city government learning to say yes.

After all, “existing organizations are part of the status quo, so you often need new organizations that allow fragile, potentially threatening, ideas the chance to grow and germinate.  So it sets these new organizational entities are more about providing a protective casing to allow new ideas that hopefully will eventually push against the status quo and set a new normal.”

It doesn’t sound promising for such an operation within government, but there’s the potential, at least in our opinion, of testing a model that sets up an  entrepreneurial section and give them a free hand to innovate within city government.

Getting the Balance Right

And age matters.  “What I like about the young people that I see coming before us,” said Ms. Dorsey.  “They’re agnostic about organizational entities.  It could be for-profit, not-for-profit, big, small, network, not network, and they’re just really more focused on results than organizational form.”

Based on the experience of the 17-year organization, Ms. Dorsey had another observation that seems prescient for Memphis: “There are too many nonprofits in the country.  By some estimates, 114 or so new nonprofits are being formed every day.  You’ve got duplicative, inefficient, overlapping efforts not getting the job done, and it’s a real problem.

“There are a couple of fundamental problems.  The philanthropic marketplace is undercapitalized.  It’s not organized in any particular way.  One of the problems that we often see if foundations have a particular view of the world, and they go out into the world and find organizations that fit into their existing view.

“Unfortunately, that’s not how community problems come packaged.  Indigenous leaders closest to their communities, closest to the data on the ground, know better than any funder ever could how to attack particular community problems and which problems should be attacked first.  I think there’s a fundamental mismatch in the power dynamic between those trying to do the work and those trying to fund the work.”

Perhaps, Memphis could be a place where its City Hall is part of correcting that power dynamic, but first, it has to support and reward social entrepreneurs like Ms. McNeeley that are hopeful enough to see their city government as a worthwhile partner in changing the trajectory of Memphis.