In 2024, our professional life was very busy (as our colleagues, family and friends know), and so we hardly had the energy in our evenings to read as much as we’d like, or to learn to crochet, or practice the piano.
Instead, we found ourselves watching streaming television programs. The three at the top of our list were past seasons of reality shows. Perhaps you might guess that the first two were Amazing Race and Survivor. But the last one was something of a surprise to us: America’s Next Top Model.
Because we have difficulty turning our minds away from work entirely, we found ourselves drawing lessons from these shows about the dynamics of state and local government workforces and the efforts they undertake. The result: We've come up with a half dozen tips derived from reality tv and how they relate to state and local government management.
1) Be prepared for a surprise along the way. On Amazing Race (which usually consists of teams of two traveling on a series of legs around the world) unexpected obstacles often emerge. On a long drive, a team that is ahead of others gets a flat tire or the car breaks down altogether. That’s enough to turn a leader into a laggard. With this in mind, it’s good for government project teams to always be prepared for the unexpected.
2) Leaders can accomplish a great deal more by getting buy-in than by making pronouncements. This one is from Survivor, a show in which a bunch of people compete, usually in teams, and one member of the losing team is voted out of the game by their cohort. We’ve repeatedly seen a smart, determined individual, trying to lead the strategy for their team by announcing what the plan should be. These folks tend to be voted out of the show by teammates who are sick and tired of being lectured to, instead of being brought into the decision,
3) Spend your time trying to improve, not to beat down the competition. On America’s Next Top Model, aspiring models live in the same place, where they squabble with one another while they’re waiting for a series of photographs and sample commercials which will determine who stays on the show. There’s almost always one model who is so attuned to beating down the rest that she stops focusing on the things she can be doing to heighten her chances of being named America’s Next Top Model. Something fairly similar can happen in an office when an individual is so intent on getting a promotion that they aren’t good team players – and typically, this doesn’t work out well.
4) Don’t make excuses. This is a big one on America’s Next Top Model. Contestants who photograph badly in an episode, often explain that the problem was that “it was too cold on the shoot,” or “I had a headache,” and so on. We’ve talked to enough government supervisors to have learned that they don’t want to hear incessant moaning about the unfortunate circumstances or personal difficulties that led to a botched assignment.
5) Learn from your mistakes. This one comes up in all three programs in which the contestants who are introspective and thoughtful about the reasons for failure tend to last much longer before they’re eliminated (or they win). The same thing, obviously, is true for people who work in the public sector.
6) Take risks. On reality shows, people who try to get through by doing the same thing over and over again, tend not to stand out and they’re generally eliminated from the show (like the models who have temporary success by posing sideways, and get bounced from the show because the judges want them to finally pose face on). In the public sector, a willingness to take risks tends to lead to the biggest triumphs, as long as agency heads aren’t risk adverse, in which case risk-taking isn’t going to be happily encouraged.
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