Engelse mail aan organisatie New York

Dear mrs Wicks,

I have been refered to you by my colleague Jula Grimbilas of the City of Rotterdam. She told me that she was impressed with your schools and that you have worked together in organising a music class by the Rotterdanm Philharmonic Orchestra when they visited New York.

I am currently working on a master's study public administration at the Netherlands School of Public Administration. I am doing so with a group of three other students. Niels Kuipers is senior advisor of the elderman on education (City of Rotterdam), Abdilaziz Musa is senior policy advisor welfare (City of Utrecht) and Rudmer de Vries is strategic education advisor (City of The Hague). We'll graduate on leadership qualities of civil servants who work in the field of education (I'll explain more below). In February we'll visit Boston (attending classes on leadership at the Kennedy School of Public Administration) and New York.

All four of us are fascinated by the wide gap between our own organisations (the municipality as a bureaucracy) and the world around us. The bureaucracy is made for transparancy, control and is focused on serving the political leadership. The world around us is a network of persons, organisations and different interests. These two worlds have not only different interests, but also different paces and timeframes, different logics, and sometimes even different languages. We believe that innovations rarely derive from our bureaucracies, but come from others, like the Urban Assembly. But it takes two to tango: innovators in the networks need the bureaucracy for budgets or legal approvals. That wider the gap between the two worlds, the more powerful the impediment for change.

We are even more fascinated by those civil servants who are able to balance between the network in the city and the bureaucracy. They balance between chaos and order by crossing the border back and forth. These professionals understand the logics of both worlds and are able to connect them (resulting in innovations that work in the outside world and that are embraced by the bureaucracy). They are rare, though, as they encounter a lot of misunderstanding of colleagues. Taking such a position may be dangerous, so it requires courage. We believe that the future of public administration is that civil servants have to change into people who seek the balance between the logics of their own municipality and that of the network outside the municipality. We'll write our thesis on the required personal qualities that civil servants enable to connect these two worlds. There also many leaders in the networks outside the municipalities.

These are leadership qualities. We are not so much looking for the big heroes (the CEOs, directors etc.), but more so for the small leaders. Those are the ones who have the courage to take risks, the courage to advocate a new policy even without the certainty that it will work, the courage to address taboo issues, the courage to take sides of 'the other party', etc. Those are the ones who are able to convince their colleagues to embrace change. We call them leaders, but in many cases they are not recognized as such. Also they themselves may not see it that way. So, we take the term 'leadership' as wide as possible.

We will interview many small and big leaders on their personal qualities, how they deal with hierachy, uncertainty, conflicting interests, how they create their own space of movement etc. Those are leaders in and outside the municipality. We do so in four cities: The Hague, Enschede (a small but very innovative town), Antwerp (Belgium) and New York. All four cities have a different context and office culture. We focus on people who work in the field of education.

Without leadership there was no Urban Assembly. It is one of the successful initiatives to reform the system. You have been able to make a difference for a new generation that you enable to achieve 15 points higher than before. That is a powerful result. That achievement could only be made by people who have shown great leadership. You must also have had a Geoffrey Canada. But they have only managed, however, because other people, the small leaders, joined in.

We would be very interested in interviewing several the big and small leaders of Urban Assembly. If possible also your counterparts of the borough of Bronx and the City of New York.

I hope we can visit you for a couple of interviews on Monday 21 or Tuesday 22 February.

I'll try to call you tomorrow morning (your time).

On behalf of Niels, Abdilaziz and Rudmer,

With kind regards,

Ruud Rakers