Many organizational problems aren't people problems. They're systems problems. The challenge is that "systems problem" isn't a diagnosis. So where do you start? When I'm trying to understand why a process isn't working, I don't start with solutions. I start with questions. Who owns the process? Can anyone see where work is sitting? Where does work change hands? Is the process documented? How do people report problems, and what happens after they do? None of those questions

People experience government through systems long before they experience it through politics or policy. Most residents never interact with an organizational chart, strategic plan, budget document, or legislative agenda. They interact with a form, a website, a permit application, a records request, a utility bill, a phone tree, an inspection process, a missed notification, or a confusing instruction. For most residents, the system is the government. When I was a Village Clerk,

A 60-minute meeting recording is not a meeting summary. A transcript is not a procedure. A Teams recording is not a training resource. And "it's in the recording somewhere" is not a documentation strategy. Many of us have probably found ourselves digging through old recordings (or *ahem* 36,910 screenshots) trying to answer what should have been a simple question. The information technically existed. Somewhere. In a recording. Maybe in a transcript. Possibly in a Teams chat.

If everything is project management, what happens when the project succeeds? It becomes operations. At some point, someone decided to implement a new system, launch a new service, create a new policy, establish a new process, or solve a problem. And while they’re working on that, it’s a project. It has: Meetings Timelines Milestones Status updates People are actively thinking about it. And if you're good at your job (especially the risk mitigation part), the project succeeds.

The longer I work (and it is feeling REALLY long lately), the more convinced I am that everything is project management. I know some PM traditionalists are going to come at me for it, but I said what I said. The impact doesn’t matter. The complexity doesn’t matter. The scale doesn’t matter. The budget doesn’t matter. The audience doesn’t matter. The industry doesn’t matter. If it has a start, a plan, deliverables, and a close, it’s a project. Of course building critical infra

“This meeting should’ve been an email.” But what about the meetings that needed an email? I can’t count the number of times I’ve participated in a meeting where the meeting happens and… that’s it. That’s the deliverable. No agenda. No recap. No action items. No record that the meeting happened other than a calendar block and, maybe, a recording no one will ever watch, or a transcript someone might dig through later, trying to find what could’ve been documented from the outset