While each of Bob Behn’s Manager’s Choice dilemmas is set in a particular public agency and deals with a particular problem, each is intended to provide a specific context for a common management challenge — one that might just as easily come up in a different kind of agency facing a different kind of problem. All Governing readers and Governing.com visitors are invited to draw on their experience and submit suggestions.

So begin each day’s hearing with an individual who is infected with Hepatitis C. Some of these people might be local celebrities, people whose face will get your hearings on the front page of the Zenith City Tribune. But mostly you should use ordinary citizens — a teacher, a police officer, a grandmother, a farmer.

By scheduling this individual to testify first, you will be able to set the tone for the entire hearings. You will put a face on this unknown disease. And any interest group that seeks to complain about your strategy — about how your proposed rules will impose hardships or costs — will appear quite insensitive to the plight of these people.

Hold Hearings in Every Media Market

The traditional state associations are well prepared to testify at your hearings in the state capitol. But will they bother to make the trip to Nadir Valley? And even if they do, you will still lead the hearing with an individual infected with HCV. Many lobbyists may simply avoid these events.

I’m tempted to suggest that you hold both your first and final hearing in the state capitol. After all, once the Zenith City Tribune covers the first one, you won’t have any trouble getting attention from journalists in the smaller media markets. Then, after you’ve learned what adjustments you need to make in your strategy, you can have one final hearing in the state capitol during which you explain the changes that you and the board have made.

But maybe you should start in a smaller media market, learn how these hearings will go, and then make the necessary adjustments before you take your show onto the state-capitol stage. Any tactical mistake that you make in the first hearing will be much less significant if it isn’t magnified by the capitol spotlight.

Invite Legislators to Testify

But pay attention to their concerns. This is your opportunity to learn what problems your strategy is creating. Maybe some lobbyist or constituent, in conversation with the legislator, misrepresented what you are proposing. If so, take the time to personally visit the legislator with a detailed explanation. Maybe a legislator is worried about the costs of your mandates. If so, take the time to personally discuss these budgetary issues with him or her.

Bow to Budget Realities

Thus you may want to phase in your strategy over several years. After all, the legislature won’t act on it until the 2003 session. Thus, your plan can’t go into effect until fiscal year 2004 — at the earliest. So before you send your final strategy to the legislature in September, you will need to gauge which budgetary mandates are most likely to create significant political resistance and then get the board to delay the starting date for some provisions.

You might want to talk this over with Speaker Douglas. Tell her what your learned from the hearings and what modifications you are suggesting. She wants this strategy approved as much as you do. And she possesses more political expertise. So before you suggest those final modifications to the board, be sure to get both her insight and her approval.

Put Your Energy and Your Staff’s Time into This Project

First, HCV is a serious (if unknown) problem. If the strategy that you and your board have developed will have a significant impact (even if you can’t be sure which of its features will prove most effective), you now have the ability — with just a little more work — to have a major impact on the health of many citizens.

Moreover, proving your effectiveness here will enhance your effectiveness in your future work. Up to now, you have been a relatively anonymous bureaucrat. Sure, a few legislators and a few journalists — those who really worry about public-health issues — know who you are and respect your expertise. But most of the time when you testify before a legislative committee, the presiding member mangles the pronunciation of your name. But if you pull this off, you will enhance your professional reputation for effectiveness — and thus your ability to be effective in the future.

People know that the legislature gave you an impossible job — a big challenge but no resources. Even a minor success will make you look like a genius.