Policy is a word that can make a lot of people tune out, or turn off. It’s maybe the less sexy cousin of strategy, often seen as slow, bureaucratic and constrained.
But we need to care about policy, and some people, are making us care. It’s why I wanted to get
who writes on my interview slate.And I like how he clearly articulates what he means by the world in saying "policy is what government does or doesn’t do on any given issue or problem." That includes being reminded in this conversation that inaction is also a choice … just usually not a very good one.
Tom, one of the sharpest voices on innovation policy in Canada, and he argues that good policy lives at the intersection of three forces: evidence, politics and money. "It doesn’t matter if the evidence points in a certain direction if you're unable to build a coalition of people to actually get it done," he explains. And even if it's politically viable, "there’s so much we could do that we just can’t afford to do."
If strategy is about picking a direction, policy is about surviving the collision between ambition and reality. “Government has to be all things to all people," I noted, "and those things are very, very difficult.” Tom agrees: "There are plenty of examples of good policies that have failed because the harms are very pointed ... but the good is very diffuse."
How We Got Here: From Strategy to Status Quo Management
Tom’s frustration with Canadian policy is neatly summed up in what he refers to as the Underpants Gnomes problem (via Alex Usher).
“Step 1: Throw money at the problem. Step 3: World-class outcomes. Step 2? Dot-dot-dot.”
In other words, the connective tissue is missing. "What is the theory of change? How are you actually pulling levers and in what way? That often gets lost in the fog."
What fills that dot dot dot void? Well, often, not very much. Governments end up becoming allergic to experimentation, afraid of getting something wrong, and when they do ‘experiment’ then it’s with things they already know. "There's a reluctance to take risks that might fail and become a stick to beat you with come election time," Tom says. Successes are credited to private sector enterprise, while the failures are blamed on public sector incompetence.
Why Challenger Cities Need Better Policy Storytelling
One of the recurring themes of our chat is that governments are terrible at storytelling. "Evidence can take you so far, but we need to be able to tell stories about the future we're trying to build," Tom notes. Without that narrative, policy becomes just another report.
I think the drinking in parks thing is a pretty good example here. While having a drink in public, is a perfectly normal, and enjoyable aspect of so much life in cities around the world, especially so in Europe. Toronto, like many cities, ties itself in bureaucratic knots debating whether to allow it, and even now is piloting it rather than just saying 'this is fine’ and focusing the resources on change to bigger things.
"Our policy needs to be to go and experiment with this in certain parks and then get a report and then make a decision," I joked. The bigger issue is that the government no longer has the institutional capacity, or psychological safety, to try, see what happens, maybe stumble, learn and evolve.
Tom connects this to a deeper rot: "There’s been a conscious dismantling of the state’s capacity since the '80s and '90s, and it’s responsible for a lot of the crises we face now." You can see it in housing, infrastructure, and regulatory failures. “Even when we want to build, we’ve lost the institutional knowledge to do it.”
The Case for More Place-Based Policy
Challenger Cities should be demanding place based policy, ideas tailored to local context, strengths and constraints. They should be these wonderful experimental entities that allow us to see what works, and what doesn’t. Ultimately, they’re often under invested in both locally, and on the national context. "Cities aren’t just delivery vehicles for federal strategy, they are innovation engines in their own right, but they’re not funded or empowered to act like it."
Canada, Tom reminds me, is among the most decentralised countries in the OECD, and by some measures has the highest level of sub-national spending. "National policies, a single national strategy don’t work for Canada in that way," Tom explains. "The provinces are far too powerful, yet don’t play a big enough role. Cities have a key part to play, but they’re not adequately empowered or funded to play the role they could or should be playing."
This disconnect between decentralisation and practical power leaves cities stuck, they have a front row seat to local problems but hamstrung ability to act boldly or independently. While the federal government can set the tone, it’s often unable to account for the nuances on the ground. The result is policy that’s too generic to be effective, or too siloed to be strategic.
For cities to truly become challengers, that has to change. They need the resources, autonomy and a more confident, stronger voice in shaping not just how policy is delivered, but how they imagine it in the first place.
From More Perfect to More Interesting, Less Wrong
Cities, and countries, don’t need perfect policies. We should accept they’re never going to be right, let alone first time, for everyone. We could though get behind them at least being more interestingly less wrong, and iterating as we go. That framing isn’t meant to just be a cheeky line, but a mindset shift and create the space for experimentation, course correction, all while avoiding the trap of policy paralysis driven by fear.
"Policy making is fairly iterative... but if you do want to do something bigger, then that window has to be open. I think we're in a time... where big change is possible, then there's a real need for very rapid, deep thinking about what does that mean? What can that look like?"
Ultimately, good policy isn’t about being right in theory. It’s about getting better in practice. And if Challenger Cities want to lead, they’ll need to build coalitions, craft better stories, and above all, design policies that are less perfect and more possible.
"If you break government, it's not just a hit to your share price or some issues that need fixing, it's people's lives on the line there," Tom reminds us.
The real opportunity for cities is to move beyond being passive recipients of provincial or federal plans, and start to be more forceful about their own ideas, policies and what they need from others to realise them. They must become authors of their own future by making bolder choices, testing new approaches and finding ways to work around constraints rather than being defined by them.
The moment for that kind of thinking is now, for the window is wide open. The Challenger move is the shimmy up the drain pipe and climb through it!
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