Guest blog written by Jacob Lestock
After a little over a year working from home during the pandemic, I quickly realized that returning to ‘normal’ was still far from sight in a professional sense. Virtual work has become the new norm even in public policy settings. Many of the benefits of living in a political hub like Washington, DC with its excess of work events, meet-and-greets, and policy happy hours to network with new people from various public policy fields had abruptly ended. I realized I would need to be more proactive in looking for new opportunities to help advance my own professional development and learn from others about new ways to work on public policy challenges. It was around this time that I came across HKS’s Implementing Public Policy Program and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to fill that void.
Coming into the program I was uncertain of what I could expect as I had little knowledge of the problem driven iterative adaption (PDIA) and how a course designated for public policymakers across the world in the public sector would intersect with my policy problems working for a trade association representing the private sector. On top of this, it was both inspiring and intimidating to hear from my colleagues in the program who are working on such impressive/important public policy issues across the world. Once I was able to catch my bearings, I came to find that there are a set of key concepts and strategies that one can use to help break down any complex public policy challenge. While numerous strategies and concepts have proven helpful during the 6-month course, here are a few that proved particularly useful with my challenge.
Continue reading The Importance of Entry Points in Long Term Policy Problems