12: Developing Engaged Communities

Pete Behrens:
How do you develop positive community engagement and ownership?

Welcome to another episode of Relearning Leadership, where we explore a specific leadership challenge and break it down to help improve your leadership, your organization…and even your personal life.

Today, we meet Liz and Luke, an unlikely duo rethinking community engagement and leadership.

Luke Hohmann is a serial entrepreneur and Founder of FirstRoot, seeking to empower young people to take control of their financial lives through participatory budgeting.

Luke Hohmann:
We tell our kids knowledge is power. What do they see? They see money is power...Okay, so let me check this. I'm supposed to do something, but I have no money. And I'm supposed to change something, but I have no vote. What? Like, what? So, participatory budgeting fixes both of those things.

Pete Behrens:
Joining our dialogue is Liz Dudley, a High School Social Studies Teacher in New York City. Liz, in partnership with Luke and FirstRoot, is rethinking education to actively empower her students in civic engagement, discourse, and leadership.

Elizabeth Dudley:
Students are having their own voice, and all students could participate within the school. It wasn't just for one class. So the entire school had that opportunity to really work together as a community to make our new school building what they want it to be.

Pete Behrens:
Together, we explore how a single concept, like participatory budgeting, can positively impact an entire community landscape.

Thanks for joining us today. Let’s dive in!

I'm excited about this episode, because I think for a lot of our listeners, it’s going to be a little different. We have a teacher from New York City with us. And so, Liz, I'd like to have you just introduce yourself briefly for us.

Elizabeth Dudley:
Hi, everyone. So, my name is Liz Dudley, and I am a teacher at Academy of American Studies in Long Island City. I'm also the Coordinator of Student Affairs. So, one of the things that our school prides ourselves in is being the first American History School in America. What that means is that our students from 9th grade to 12th grade—they take some sort of history. And so, in order to incorporate this further into our curriculum, we love using participatory budgeting and implementing that within our school, so that way our students have more civic engagement. And this is more so than just reaching out to our state senators or the federal government itself, but also to focus on our local city government officials and how they can better their own community. We've worked with the Civics For All in the past for participatory budgeting, but this year we couldn't. And so we had the opportunity to work with Luke with FirstRoot, and it's been ultimately just a great experience overall, and the kids are excited to get the items that they worked hard for to vote on in order to make our new school building a better place.

Pete Behrens:
I love the fact that if we don't learn our history, we're doomed to repeat it, so appreciate you helping our kids understand that. We try to do that in our leadership programs as well. Luke, maybe you could get us a little bit more into this. She mentions participatory budgeting, and maybe you could shed some light on this subject here a bit.

Luke Hohmann:
Yeah, I want to help unpack some of that real awesome goodness, some of the facts that Liz dropped on us. Notice that she mentioned the Civics For All curriculum. That's a curriculum developed by the New York City Department of Education in Civics that actually has participatory budgeting as its central thesis, or process by which it's engaging students. And it's a wonderful curriculum and very comprehensive. 

Liz and her students were doing participatory budgeting. It wasn't that FirstRoot introduced them to it; it was the other way around. And it was part of the motivation for me in starting FirstRoot—was looking at this massive growth in participatory budgeting, especially in New York City, realizing that our students were not able to do this wonderful process because of COVID. And so, part of the motivation of creating FirstRoot as a software platform was to try and remove the friction of doing participatory budgeting and enabling teachers like Liz and the students to keep doing this wonderful process, even in the time of COVID. And then extend it into what we know in the Agile community as hybrid collaboration. Sometimes you're in person, sometimes you're remote, sometimes you’re same-time, sometimes you're a different time. We can start to take these processes, put them online, but also improve them as we do this.

Pete Behrens:
You're getting to a really interesting point here. Liz, I'll point it back on you. What do you see as the goal of participatory budgeting? What are you trying to do with these kids that improves their civic duty or connects them more to their role in society?

Elizabeth Dudley:
So, one of the things that we really strive to have our students learn is to become involved within their community. And so, participatory budgeting is getting involved within the school community itself. And then we also have BSAC (Borough Student Advisory Councils) where students can participate in participatory budgeting within their community itself. And so, in this case, the Academy is getting a new school building in February of 2022. And so, we use this participatory budgeting for, “Well, what would you like to see in the new school building? What is missing in this building that when we actually come back to school full time, in person, in the fall—what would you like to see implemented?” So students are having their own voice, and all students could participate within the school. It wasn't just for one class. So the entire school had that opportunity to really work together as a community to make our new school building what they want it to be.

Pete Behrens:
Can we walk through an example here that might demonstrate how does this work? 

Elizabeth Dudley:
Sure, yeah. So—or Luke, do you want to take over?

Luke Hohmann:
No, no. You go for it.

Elizabeth Dudley:
Okay. So in this case with FirstRoot, it was on an app. And so, the students created different ideas of what they would like to see. So, there's hundreds of ideas at this point of what they want in the new school building. And then they work together to simplify and categorize these ideas, so that way they could then consolidate what they truly wanted instead of having 100 ideas that’s then going to be brought down to a few categories. And so, in this case, we had four different proposals that ended up being voted on. So, for instance, one of them was menstrual products in the women's bathroom, one was SAT books, and so forth. So, these are items that the students determine “This was much needed in the new building!” And so, creating these ideas, consolidating these ideas, discussing and editing their proposals, and then voting on them—that's how we then came to those different proposals.

Luke Hohmann:
And Pete, I want to pick up on a couple of things here, because at times, I think, Liz is more gracious than she might be. This is a partnership. I want to build on what she said. The students are taught to be civically engaged by reviewing the proposals and giving feedback to the other students on the ideas. So Liz was like, “Hey, as an instructor, I need this kind of reporting data because it's part of our assignment.” And she taught us a lot about, “This is how you can not only support the kids in the participatory budgeting process,” but how you can teach, how you can create a true learning experience about what you said, Pete. What does it mean to be a member of the society? What does it mean to spend money?

And on a personal note, of course my family deals with this all the time, right? We talk about participatory budgeting all the time at dinner. And when we got the results from the students voting, I brought it to the family dinner table, and I said, “Hey, look at this! Look at these results. They're buying more menstrual products for the women's bathroom. And my wife smiles, and she says, “Oh, honey, you men are so clueless!” [Laughs] And I'm like, “Yes, we are. Explain!” And she's like, “Again?” Right, because that's the function in our family: I'm clueless, and my wife explains it. She said, “Listen, I know that you guys want 3D printers and chemistry equipment.” I'm like, “Wait, that's one of the things the kids purchased!” And she said, “Yes, I get it. But if you're a young woman, and you don't have the right feminine care products, you're not going to go to school when you're menstruating. You're just not going to go to school at all.” And so, the first step of creating the right environment is listening to the kids so that we know what they need.

And Pete, this is no different than what we preach in the Agile community when we say, “Let's run a retrospective.” And we did run retrospectives with the kids. They filled out surveys; they would give us feedback. They were super engaged. And it's both empowerment, civics—but there's all these Agile undertones and common values.

Elizabeth Dudley:
I just wanted to piggyback off of Luke really quickly. We see that over 60% of our students are low-income, under the poverty level of America. And so, as a result of this, having those feminine products, having SAT books is a resource that was much needed within our school building. 

Pete Behrens:
I guess what's really sticking out to me—and Liz, maybe you can comment on this—is not just the fact that the feminine products or the SAT books come up to the top.” It's the learning everybody gets and the alignment everybody gets on why that's coming to the top. And I can imagine that's probably just as powerful?

Elizabeth Dudley
Yeah, I completely agree. And I see that this actually matters to the kids when they're excited that their proposals are being chosen, when they're then working with other students, because they want to gain those votes, and so they're trying to convince other students—“Come support this!” And so, just seeing them trying to get more kids involved than just themselves in order to support this goal that they want to achieve—it was extremely empowering to see.

Luke Hohmann:
And Pete, I want to make that connection to participatory budgeting. One of the more powerful events in my personal life was when Dean [Leffingwell] acquired Conteneo and gave the blessing of SAFE [Scaled Agile Framework] on participatory budgeting and fully integrated participatory budgeting into Lean portfolio management. It's exactly the same process that Liz said with the kids. I'm advocating for something. I'm not negative about something. I'm not saying “Don't do this!” I'm saying, “Let's advocate for change. Let's advocate for something.” And what's exciting to me is that now we can start to go full circle and start to build these life skills very, very early on. 

I'm just going to jump aside a little bit. Liz, we did our first PB (participatory budgeting) program at Huegel Elementary School in a low-income part of Madison, Wisconsin. Fifth graders. So imagine, now you've got a student in fourth or fifth grade. They have a positive experience with participatory budgeting. And then the kids at Huegle—they planted trees, they bought soccer nets, and they bought fidget toys for the class, which is awesome, right? Fidget toys! But now, they move from fifth grade into sixth grade, and each year they are having a positive civic experience, where we are really actually listening to them. And they see their results, and they also see the challenge of, “Well, I have a limited budget, and I can't get everything I want. And they're all actually good ideas, but we can't afford them all, so how do we choose? How do we make those choices?” And the curriculum actually goes through having the students compare proposals and asking them questions. Things like, “Does this benefit everyone in the school, or does this benefit only a subset of the school? And if you're benefiting a subset of the school, is that a subset who needs that support?” Because that's the function of a civil society. How do we, as a society, succeed? And here, the society, or the community, is defined as the school. So it's really exciting about this opportunity to change the narrative. 

Statistically, it's dire. 24% of millennials, according to Tufts University, now believe that democracy and a republic is a bad way to run a country. The data of what our young children believe because of what they see—dysfunctional Congress, roads that are not functioning, costs that spin out of control on any infrastructure improvement. Because, basically, those kids are thinking, “The adults are either corrupt or incompetent, or both.” So, how do we change that without an experience? You can't. You have to create these positive experiences.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah, you're right. We're seeing so much dysfunction in the U.S. level—the competitiveness, the black-and-white thinking that goes on there. And it sounds like you're trying to rethink civics, rethink engagement, rethink politics, at a school level to help teach a different way forward, I can imagine, Liz.

Elizabeth Dudley:
Yeah. And so, with the refinement phase, that's where students already have their proposals created. But then, other students come back in, look at those proposals, and they have to leave comments or questions. So, for instance, we have that 3D printer. What else do we need, besides that 3D printer, in order to make sure that we can actually use it in the new school building? What parts are needed within that 3D printer itself? Is there anything else we need within the classroom to make it successful? And so, by having students ask these questions, it's more so than just students saying, “Well, this isn't working within the government, because…”—and they don't really have a strong answer. So, the students now have to actually critically think about, “Why is it not working? What do we need to make it work?” And so forth. And so, it's a really important process to be a part of, but also to build upon the skills needed.

Luke Hohmann:
Again, Pete, let's make that connection to the Agile community, because to me, it's so obvious. We know the reason Agile teams perform better than single humans. Precisely because when you pull that feature off the backlog and you have the team look at it, each of us are going to look at it from our own unique perspective and add our wisdom or our insight. So, how do we help kids build a better proposal, build something that's more feasible, and more viable, and more implementable, if you will? Well, you ask the other kids to comment on it. So someone says, “Hey, I want a 3D printer!” And another student is going to say, “Wait a minute! What about the supplies?”

And maybe someone who's more spatial-aware would say, “Okay, how big is this thing, and where are we gonna put it, and does our new building have a space for this? Does it have the right power? Does it have the right structure?” So, what's exciting about this is, by getting those students involved just like we do in the Agile community, we get a better proposal, a proposal that's more likely to be successful because you had the benefit of multiple minds looking at it and working on it.

Pete Behrens:
Luke, you've talked about a couple of terms. You've talked about Conteneo and going back to your early days of Innovation Games. It sounds like this is a form of buy a feature, which is a corporate product in terms of, “How do we get the best features forward to build.” Is this a bridge? Moving from kind of a corporate world, where we can talk about this in terms of prioritizing the best features for customers, to kids and civic duties and in school systems.

Luke Hohmann:
Oh, wow that's—okay! So Liz, this is even some backstory for you. So, the Agile movement started in the early 2000s. And I was honored to be part of the organizing committee of the first Agile conference in 2003. And at that conference, I introduced some techniques I had been working on to help Agile teams better understand customers. That was the original intent. So Buy a Feature was like participatory budgeting except for software features. You'd list a bunch of features, you'd give them a price, you’d take your budget, you would distribute it to the customers. And that's the key point: the customers. And the customers would buy the features they want. And it was a powerful form of market research. 

Roll the clock forward a little bit: I published a book in 2006. Roll the clock forward a little bit more: we started to see people using this process internally within companies for portfolio management. And I was like, “Oh, that's interesting!” Because the annual budgeting process in most companies is just garbage. You're supposed to collaborate, except at the end of the annual year, and then you fight. So you roll the clock forward a little bit more: I started doing it philanthropically in cities for free. And so, I know New York City has been doing participatory budgeting in the boroughs. Liz, we were doing that in San Jose way back in 2011, right? We were pioneering some of this stuff. And then on a whim, one night at dinner—because that's the home and family tradition—we just eat a lot of food. [Laughs]

Pete Behrens:
And you’ve got a lot of kids!

Luke Hohmann:
I do have a lot of kids, so it compensates! And Jenna likes to cook, right? And she's good! So, I just said, “Hey, why don't we try this in school!” You know, “Dad’s got an idea!” And my wife's like, “What?” And I said, “Yeah, let's try this at school!” And then we tried it at middle school, and it was amazing. And so then, Pete, I got hooked, because I had this narrative and this arc about wanting to make a contribution you can to business and society. You roll the clock forward a little bit more: I sold Conteneo, which was fantastic, to—the major player in the Agile community is Scaled Agile, for large teams. And then I just thought, “What's my next step?”

So there's a book called The Spirit Level. And what these authors did was—they correlated the economic structure of a society, specifically income and wealth inequality with health and social problems. And the data is absolutely irrefutable. The more unequal the society, the worse it performs in every dimension. So, the United States is the world's most unequal society, and we perform the worst on every dimension you can imagine. We have the highest homicide rate, we have the highest incarceration rate, we have the highest level of obesity, we have the highest level of opiate and drug addiction, we have the highest rate of infant mortality of Western democracies, we have the lowest longevity of lifespan of Western democracies. And the list just goes on and on and on.

And here's the kicker, Pete. An unequal society is bad for rich people. It's not like it's a poor person's problem; it's a societal problem. So you can't just say, “Oh, I'm cool! I'm rich! I'm going to live behind my gated community. I'm going to walk down the street and not trust the person who looks differently than me. I'm going to assume ill intention because I have a posture of protecting my assets. I'm going to choose investments in the stock market without regard for what that company does. I'm going to participate in divisive social media and stay within my bubble and have that echo chamber spin up until I have a Capitol insurrection.”

So these are the things that I'm committed to do what I can to address. If the Agile community is only about building better software, then I'm checking out. It's not my community. If the Agile community is about creating a more humanistic society and using the values and the things that we can do—right? I can't fix this problem through drugs, because I'm not a scientist, Pete. I can't fix this problem through plastic elimination because I don't know anything about plastics chemistry. But I can fix this problem through participatory budgeting because I know that, and I can build great software.

Sorry, I get really passionate because if we don't fix this, we're going to have—you know, let me put it another way. We tell our kids knowledge is power. What do they see? They see money is power, where three people in America have more wealth than half of America! We tell our kids “Oh, you should get involved!” And then we tell our kids, “But you can't vote!” Okay, so let me check this. I'm supposed to do something, but I have no money. And I'm supposed to change something, but I have no vote. What? Like, what? So, participatory budgeting fixes both of those things. It puts money in the hands of kids, and it gives them a vote.

Pete Behrens:
Now you know why I love Luke. And the passion and the energy behind what he's doing in his career is awesome to see. And you're right, Luke. They give up. They go play video games because “It's more control, and I get more reward by getting leveled up in a video game, because I got no control in society, no inputs to improve the societal ills and challenges.” Liz, connect us to this, a little bit about how you're seeing students respond, or are you seeing changes in students? Can you connect us back?

Elizabeth Dudley:
Yeah, sure. So I completely agree with what Luke was saying about how kids are saying, “Well, we don't have a vote, so what impact can we truly make within society itself? And so, I mentioned before how we also have Senior Thesis, which is where students will choose one aspect within their community that they want to improve. So we're trying to combine the skills and the ideology behind participatory budgeting and Senior Thesis to get more kids involved, to say, “Well, you don't necessarily need a vote. You can call your local politicians, you can call your garbage company, you could call the homeless shelter right across the street from you. You can create social media campaigns, you can stand outside and have a petition.” And so, we have all these different methods for students to get involved, so that way when they say “Well, I'm not 18. I can't vote.” Well, you can still make a difference! And so, we're just trying to show at the very smallest level, you can make an impact.

Pete Behrens:
Well, it's interesting. I'm noticing how many young adults excel and represent our country in the Olympics. And I believe, in our society, we need more 15 to 18 year-olds voting and less 80 to 90-year-olds voting. Because voting's for the future. And a lot of us are stuck in what should have been and what was. So, why is only New York doing this? Why aren't we seeing this in other states?

Luke Hohmann:
Well, actually we are seeing it in other states, and we're seeing it around the world. It was around 2015 or ‘14, right around that time frame, that I started to realize that what we were doing in San Jose was being done in other places. So I started to dig into it. It turns out that the United Nations credits Porto Alegre, Brazil with initiating the first participatory budgeting programs in 1989. And those programs were designed to create transparency and fight corruption. Now, I'm not going to say that we don't have corruption in America, but we have different kinds of issues in America. But, nonetheless, we know that transparency in government is a good thing. It promotes trust within the government. We know what's going on with our taxes; we know how it's being spent.

And the U.S is actually a laggard in terms of participatory budgeting. So, now in the U.S., you're seeing pockets of it really start to grow. You're seeing schools in Chicago, you're seeing what we're doing in Madison, Wisconsin. You're seeing in Phoenix, Arizona at the Phoenix Union High School District—they did something really exciting. They canceled their School Resource Officer program, a 1.2 million dollar contract, to instead allocate that money into a participatory budgeting program. Now, just to be super clear and define a term: a school resource officer is a euphemism for a policeman in a school. And the idea is, “We're going to make schools safer by putting a policeman in the school.” And the data suggests otherwise. The data says all it does is push the problem to the edge of the schoolyard. So there's this kind of force-field that's created in a school environment. The problem's not going away. 

The root cause isn't being addressed. You're just sweeping it under the rug or pushing it outside the edge. It's correlated with mass incarceration, right? If you put a policeman in the school, what do you think they're going to find? Kids doing normal kid stuff or kids doing something that needs to be corrected and put in jail, possibly? So, when I think about this for myself on a personal level, and I think about white privilege, I think about things that I did when I was in high school that if I had a different skin color, I would have been in jail. I don't want to say I was awful in high school, but I wasn't perfect, by any means. And so, when you really understand the data, and you see what's going on—what they're trying to do in Phoenix, Pete, with their participatory budgeting, is to address community and school safety. Get the kids not just in the school, but, like Liz said, show them the voice that they can have. Show them how to engage in that community within and outside the school, because it's not separate. The school is part of the community.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah, I just appreciate all the connections. And it sounds like it's got threads through lots of different social, economic balancing or rebalancing. Liz, any final thoughts? As a teacher here, treat us as your students. What final words of wisdom would you impart?

Elizabeth Dudley:
Oh, that's a tough one. What I would really just say is, just get involved. It's ironic how we were talking about lowering the voting age when the students ironically don't want the voting age lowered, even though they're in that age that it could affect. And they say, “You know, 18 is a good age. At 16, we're uninformed, we're immature.” They don't want to vote at this age, but they do want to get involved.

And so, this is just a really great way for them to do it. This is something that is optional that they're taking on their own. And I'm finding that they're loving it, and that once they actually complete participatory budgeting—I see how happy they are and impressed that this was their hard work. They took those comments and questions from their peers, they refined their proposals, it was then selected. And it's amazing to see just how those items are used. So, my one piece of advice and wisdom is get involved. It may seem a lot like a lot, but it's really not. And then, in the end, it's worthwhile.

Pete Behrens:
Hm, yeah. And Luke, I'll give you the same chance here. What can people do if they are interested? And whether it's a school, whether it's a business, or even a local government, what are some things that you might direct them towards? 

Luke Hohmann:
Okay, like, there's no possible way to answer this question other than to say, use participatory budgeting, right? It works at all levels of society. In fact, Pete, we're so all-chips-in on participatory budgeting, and it's part of FirstRoot. We are a benefit corporation, and so our stated charter is to create financial literacy and civic engagement. So, our family edition of our app is completely free. And so, you can do participatory budgeting in your family, which is what I do with my kids on things like planning a family vacation. We get them involved. Jenna and I will establish the family budget for charitable donations, and then we get the kids involved on which charity should we donate to and why. And so, if you're in your family, you want the opinions of others. If you're in your school, the opinions of others matter and make it better. If you're in your community, the opinions of others matter and make it better. We are tribal creatures. And if you're in business, the opinions of others matter. Not every decision is made through ROI.

Pete Behrens:
Yeah. What you're saying here is, “Society is made up of many communities. Religious communities and social communities. And you're going to the core, which is the family community, which is a great place to start. Well, I just want to say thank you to both of you for sharing your time today and sharing your insights. And I think you've given me a lot to rethink about in terms of leadership, in terms of engagement, empowerment, that I think is fundamental to the role of leader. So thank you, Liz and Luke.

Elizabeth Dudley:
Thank you for having us.

Luke Hohmann:
Thanks, Pete.

Pete Behrens:
I am moved by the passion and creativity of Liz and Luke catalyzing their communities. For Liz, it’s about impacting her students’ school community to be more socially accountable, to show up and be engaged in a positive way!

For Luke, it’s about creating a platform for leaders of any community to positively engage their members through participatory budgeting. This includes corporate, civic, school, family and other social communities.

What did you relearn from Liz and Luke’s story? For me, there were three key takeaways.

#1 Ownership. Regardless of leading students, civilians, or employees, value is enhanced through its members who are not only engaged in their community, but they take an active ownership stake in their community’s priorities and systems.

#2 Diversity. Better outcomes emerge through divergent perspectives aligning on a common goal. Seek to expand creative possibilities before contracting through diverse exchange. And foster a safe-to-contribute environment.

#3 Courage. We are not going to solve the problems of today with the same thinking that got us into these problems. We need the courage to experiment with new ways of thinking and engaging in solutions for tomorrow.



So whether you are a leader in a civic, education, social, family, or corporate community, I hope you find the courage to embrace diversity and share ownership in your community’s future.

Relearning Leadership is the official podcast of the Agile Leadership Journey. It’s hosted by me, Pete Behrens, with analysis from our global Guide community. It’s produced by Ryan Dugan. With music by Joy Zimmerman. If you loved listening to this podcast, please leave us a review. And visit our website, relearningleadership.show, for guest profiles, episode references, transcripts and comments, and more. And to (re)learn more about your own leadership, visit us at agileleadershipjourney.com.