The Big Four Blog Series: Rising to the Level of Our
Goals By Elevating Our Systems
Over the last month and a half, we have gathered feedback from hundreds of election officials – from the state level to the localities – and have heard a lot about election preparedness. We’ve captured some amazing best practices as well as uncovered innovative ideas not currently covered by resources in the market. We’ve also identified a few “elephants in the room” which need to be addressed.
Read on to find out what we’ve learned.
In a recent blog, management guru, James Clear, was quoted from his book Atomic Habits: “We do not rise to the level of our goals but we fall to the level of our systems.”
We commonly hear this phrase: We have our systems in place for managing elections. Of course we do! Across the country, thousands of localities, responsible for managing the electoral process for their citizens, have landed on practices which work. Many of these current systems were pieced together in an effort to weave new technologies with existing methods. What many election officials now navigate is a complex series of independent platforms and practices that lacks efficiency.
This is the “elephant in the room” referenced earlier..
As Clear points out, we often defend antiquated systems because they are “ours”. We really don’t want to change because this would involve a lot of work and emotional investment. In addition, we have a sense of security knowing these tried-and-true systems work, even if they aren’t the most effective. If we’re honest with the face in the mirror, we also feel a sense of power, knowing that we are “the only ones who can run this”.
All of these factors come into play when we are faced with the opportunity to transition from one way of doing our day-to-day activities to another.
We would like to take a closer look at these factors via our upcoming blog series as we tackle The Big Four, a short-list of the most pressing topics election officials deal with across the nation, regardless of locality size or location.
We hope by the end of this mini-series we will have been able to provide helpful insight into these familiar issues as well as leave you feeling empowered to confidently make the best decisions for your election ecocycle.
Stay tuned for the first up in our Big Four blog series as we explore Chain of Custody. We will be discussing what it is and why it matters so much. You won’t want to miss it.