What IS Working?

Living in the Washington DC metro area, I hear a lot about politics, and how things are “broken”.

The President says immigration is broken. The Tea Party says that Obamacare is broken. Some reporters say that all of Washington is broken.

It’s easy to focus on the broken. I do too much of it myself. But according to Chip and Dan Heath, the solutions don’t come in pulling out our microscopes and inspecting the brokenness with high magnification. It comes from asking ourselves, “What IS working.”

That’s an idea worth repeating. I’m no expert in public policy but nearly every issue, from Healthcare to Gun Control to immigration reform, has been implemented somewhere else before, whether it’s on the local level, or in nations across the globe. Have we ever stopped and asked ourselves where it’s working, and how we can emulate a model like theirs?

The problems you and I have are not unique… they’ve been solved by someone before. It just takes a bit of motivation and searching to find those examples and adopt them ourselves.