Federal agencies were built to solve problems in silos—one office, one pollutant, one mandate at a time. But today’s toughest challenges, from climate change and clean water to land use and energy policy, don’t respect those boundaries. Systems Thinking for Real Federal Problems, the first of seven sessions, draws on decades of environmental protection experience at the Environmental Protection Agency to introduce a practical, four-step framework for tackling this kind of complexity. Though grounded in environmental work, the approach is built for any federal practitioner navigating incomplete data, competing stakeholders and decisions that span more than one agency’s lane. This session offers a repeatable process for cutting through complexity, building better cross-functional partnerships and communicating solutions that actually hold up.
A project of the Partnership for Public Service