Vote Week in New York City for Participatory Budgeting just concluded. NYC believes the people who live in the community know what the community needs; so it allows community members to directly decide how to spend part of the public budget.
Here’s how it works:
- The NYC Council identifies a portion of the budget that will be decided upon by the citizens (this year it’s $1,000,000).
- Citizens discuss local needs in their districts.
- Volunteers in each district develop spending proposals.
- Citizens vote for their 5 favorite project proposals.
- The Council funds the projects that receive the most votes until the identified funding is exhausted.
Some funded projects have included: school improvements, parks, libraries, and public housing. “Participatory Budgeting” is grounded on the notion that people support that which they help create. Because community members are involved in the process of deciding how to spend part of the budget, they are more likely to support the Council’s ultimate spending decisions. So how can we leverage participatory bias in our teams and organizations?
- Participatory Agenda: invite people to submit agenda items for a meeting
- Participatory Goals: invite people to submit their ideas for team goals
- Participatory Performance Reviews: invite people to write a portion of their own reviews
- Participatory Process Improvement: invite people to submit ideas for improving processes
Involving people…
- bolsters their shift from victim to victor
- strengthens their trust in the process and in their leaders
- powers their ownership in solutions
- fuels their engagement
- underscores their importance in success
Granted, we frequently need to choose dictatorship over democracy, but let’s not miss those opportunities to share a part of the decision process with the people who are impacted by the decisions we make.
If NYC can do it, so can we!