No matter how hard they work, states are doomed to operate under great uncertainty. They never know where the next punch might come from. But, instead of being able to take the first punch and stay standing, states need to be the kind of organizations that can punch first, thereby hedging against uncertainty while shaping the future to their advantage.
To be precise, states need to get robust.
They must get better at understanding the many futures they face by building signposts of impending crisis and preparing contingencies to strengthen vulnerabilities. Instead of merely predicting the future from the past, states must develop landscapes of possible futures against which to plan.
They must also get faster at responding to surprises by breaking down the silos between their departments and agencies. Employees cannot have just one job, especially given the potential for pandemics and disasters that reside just around the corner.
States must also set aside funds to adapt to both threats and opportunities in the future ahead. Instead of returning their new rainy day funds to the public, states should establish venture capital pools that would allow their agencies and legislature to innovate. Finally, they must align themselves to act as a whole, not just a sum less than their parts. Governors and legislatures must make government missions absolutely clear, and delegate the authority so every last employee knows how their work matters to the overall quality of life in the state and nation. States that want to look at a truly robust organization only need to look at the Rolling Stones. Although the Rolling Stones do not have a public-service bone in their aging bodies, they may be the quintessential robust organization.
The Rolling Stones are clearly alert to threats and opportunities, setting records in touring revenues, in large part because they pay for opportunities for expanded audience share by adding or canceling concerts. Their 1994-95 "Voodoo Lounge" tour still stands as the most successful concert tour in history, in part because the group played 130 dates (including five secret club concerts) before almost seven million fans.
The Rolling Stones are also one of the most agile organizations in the world. They move 250 employees with every concern, have the capacity to generate four million watts of electricity, lay eight miles of sound and electric cable at every venue, assemble the world's largest television screen, position 1,500 spotlights, and build a stage so tall that it actually requires aircraft warning lights under U.S. Federal Aviation Administration rules, all in record time. It is little wonder that the U.S. Air Force has been benchmarking the Rolling Stones as it tries to cut its time-to-battle down to 48 hours. The Rolling Stones are highly adaptable, largely through outsourcing their marketing, tour-management, logistics, security and supply chain to subcontractors. The outsourcing gives the band maximum opportunity to change direction and focus on its inventory of 130 songs that can be mixed and matched to fit particular audiences both in the U.S. and abroad.
Finally, the Rolling Stones and their contractors are intensely aligned around profitability, which drives their decisions to hedge against high-risk concerts by sharing risks with entities and exploiting opportunities for greater revenue. "They all have income streams like any other company," Mick Jagger told Fortune magazine in 2002, referring to the group's many subcontractors. "They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock. That's my biggest problem."
Governors can hardly go to their legislatures and propose a Rolling Stone government, but they can learn the key lessons of robustness from looking across the fence at both private and nonprofit organizations.
Although they can fight the uncertainty ahead by hoarding cash or cutting programs, it is a strategy doomed to fail. As states have learned time and again, it is one thing to take a punch and get back up, and quite another to start the fight on their own terms. The former takes a resilient organization, while the latter takes a focus on the future and the robustness to respond when threats and opportunities arise.
The Rolling Stones make the future they want. There is no reason why states should not do the same.
