How to implement innovative solutions in government effectively

By Sandra Naranjo Bautista

Innovating in government sounds appealing but also impossible for some organizations that resist change. How to find space to try something new? What can we learn from the private sector and what can entrepreneurs learn from the government? We discussed all these topics with Martín Burt, former mayor of Paraguay’s capital -Asunción-, and world-renowned social entrepreneur. This blog gives you a summary of our conversation. You can also listen to it fully here.

(2 min) Martín’s advice to implement innovative policies effectively

Start with the people. Understand where they are and find ways to serve them. Martín mentioned as an example that he learned that people love to pay taxes, or at least be up to date with their taxes. Therefore, to improve services, and tax collection, his administration extended opening hours from 7 am to 7 pm to give people flexibility.

Martín told the story of when he was Mayor and the municipality invested in a park, which was soon destroyed. He learned that the work of the mayor is a cultural one and differentiated an inhabitant, someone that lives in a city, from a citizen, someone that takes care of the city and its resources. He found out that a way to identify citizens was to make them part of the projects. As Mayor, he started a program to give a matching grant (60%) to neighborhoods that wanted parks. This meant that people needed to raise money for the other 40%. To his surprise, not only that they did, but it also created incentives for them to take care of the park. 

This experience later helped him to develop the poverty stoplight (a tool for families to assess their poverty levels and create an action plan to address it). He learned that poverty has to be owned by the interested party for it to change. 

(8 min) Listening to citizens and transforming their needs into policy

Martín gave different examples of what it means to listen to citizens and how to incorporate those lessons into policy.  

From the social enterprise perspective, with the poverty stoplight, the goal was for each family to identify what does it mean to not be poor? The stoplight has a dashboard that disaggregates data to show families where they are and create an action plan of what they need to do. That information was then used by Fundación Paraguaya to develop products that address the families’ needs, like micro-insurance, micro-credit, etc. 

“Listening to the people and describing success as a result, from the point of view of the user and not the city or government, is rich in opportunities” 

Martin Burt

From the government perspective (17 min), he proposes having regular meetings with citizens, creating a space of trust and listening to their problems and developing solutions. He did emphasize that it has to be a genuine exercise to address their needs not for political gain. 

(19 min) How to manage the relationship between authorities and civil servants

Martín emphasized the importance of creating a mechanism to listen to your own people (a.k.a. civil servants). Even a simple daily reporting system, where everyone shares the five things they did that day, can help other team members know what everyone is doing. It is also a practical way to carry out the activities, objectives and time frames. This type of mechanism is an opportunity to acknowledge, recognize and praise people’s efforts. 

(27 min) What entrepreneurs can learn from the government

Governments have a big reach, and non-profits and social enterprises are small. One thing he learned in government was how to carry out system change. You need to:

1. Understand the system, and define it. 
2. Find out what does system change look like, and what would you need to reach scale and impact?
3. Identify how to make a structural change irreversible and understandable by everyone. 

To make change irreversible, Martín says it needs to bring in money, be more efficient than other systems, be easy to understand, and it has to render the old system obsolete. 

I liked that he mentioned that governments also have entrepreneurs. Some organizations, like the Schwabb Foundation, are now recognizing these type of initiatives too. 

(38:58) Positive Deviance

Martín is also part of the Better Govs community and he was telling me how they have applied positive deviance, something we talked about in a previous blog, to their work at Fundación Paraguaya. Such insightful conversations are worth sharing, so I invited Martín to talk with us today and tell us more about it. 

He explained he first learned about positive deviance from Joseph Grenny in his book Influencer. He mentioned that the author asks two questions regarding change: Is it worth it? Can I do it? These questions address agency and self-efficacy in individuals. It’s the conviction that change is possible that matters. 

With the poverty stoplight, for example, they identify success stories and interview them to understand their strategies and learn from them. 

(44 min) 3-2-1 Segment

THREE things you wish you knew earlier.

1. Need to have governance in the city council (how to negotiate with people)
2. I would have created more community groups.
3. If you enter government as a politician, do everything in the first year and use the upcoming years to implement those changes. 

TWO main lessons to someone interested in innovating in government with social enterprises as partners? 

1. If not on sabbatical, take some time off to visit other programs and other cities and observe how people do it. 
2. Put yourself in the citizens’ shoes – do the paperwork for example understand why people are disappointed in the government 

Martín’s number ONE tip to getting things done.  

Visualize the dream and make it happen, understanding how does success look like.

Final reflections

A common thread through our conversation was the need to listen to people, both citizens and civil servants, create a space of trust and act on those needs you have identified. How could you do that from your position today?

About Martín Burt

Network, and Teach a Man to Fish. In public service, he has served as Chief of Staff to the President of Paraguay, was elected Mayor of Asunción, and was appointed Vice Minister of Commerce. He holds a PhD from Tulane University and is Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of California, Irvine.

Resources to complement this conversation

• Fundación Paraguaya’s website
• Influencer by Joseph Grenny
• Aravind Eye Hospital