When you change your mind you can improve the world. See how (in this first of 11 parts) tactics that Antanas Mockus used to change the most difficult capital city of all. Then see how these tactics can be used to make your life healthier.
Antanas Mockus was mayor of Bogota, Colombia where physically surviving two terms was a feat in itself. Yet Mockus not only survived, he helped inspire incredible positive change. We can make our lives better by understanding the tactics he used.
Mockus was an academic at Colombian National University, a mathematician and philosopher, who turned politician. His plan upon becoming Mayor of Colombia's capital, Bogota, was not to impose and enforce rules but to change the mindset of the inhabitants. He believed that changing minds will improve behavior.
He used strategies evolved from research on tension between formal and informal rules by Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North and ideas from J¸rgen Habermas' work on how dialogue creates social capital.
Rather than dictate to people how they should be, he communicated through symbols, humor, and metaphors. His goal was the distribution of knowledge based on the belief that knowledge empowers people.
Western civilization is desensitized by noise, violence, deceit, corruption rules and regulations so he used art, humor, and creativity, to communicate.
His success began with transparency. He wanted people in Colombia's capital city to see him as honest. Otherwise his ideas would be rejected. Then to capture attention for his ideas he used unusual techniques.
For example the city was overwhelmed with violence, lawless traffic, corruption and gangs of street children who mugged and stole.
The city's unruly inhabitants treated innumerable traffic rules with disdain, putting drivers and pedestrians alike at risk. There were so many regulations that no one cared.
Mockus made sure that one his first steps to reducing traffic deaths was not to add more rules and police enforcement. He took the opposite tact and closed the transit police because many of the 2,000 officers were notoriously corrupt.
Instead he installed traffic mimes on street corners. Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules. If pedestrians ran across the road, they would be tracked by a mime mocking their every move. Mimes poked fun at reckless drivers.
The program became so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes. Mockus claimed that this worked because it was a pacifist counterweight. With neither words nor weapons, the mimes were doubly unarmed.
In addition the mayor had stars painted on the spots where 1,500 pedestrians had been killed in traffic accidents, adding a grimmer but potent, reality check to the gentle, humorous work of the mimes.
Traffic fatalities dropped by more than half in the same time period, from an average of 1,300 per year to about 600.
Here are truths we can garner from Mockus' success that can make our lives better.
- Truth #1: Capture attention
- Truth #2: Be transparent (easy if you follow rule #3)
- Truth #3: Use the power of truth not force
- Truth #4: Be gentle
- Truth #5: Employ the power of humor
- Truth #6: Employ the power of numbers ((the power of the mimes came from the crowds who saw the mimicking)
- Truth #7: Continually remind the reality in passive-non- aggressive ways
Stay tuned for the next 10 parts in this series! (Posted from time to time.)
Until then you can learn more about Antanas Mockus in an article by MarÌa Cristina Caballero, a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government here.
