Fast Company – Beth Simone Noveck, director of the Governance Lab at NYU, explains the tools you need to develop to change policy to improve people’s lives – “In my book Solving Public Problems, I seek to articulate a learnable set of tools that, when combined with subject-matter expertise, make it possible to design interventions that improve people’s lives. In so doing, I hope to define what it means to take a public-interest project from idea to implementation. Public problem solvers possess a replicable skill set that can be applied to any public problem for making measurable change. These skills include the following:

1. Problem definition: Public problem solvers know how to define a problem that is urgent, that matters to real people, and that can be resolved.
2. Data-analytical thinking: They know how to use data and the analysis of data in order to understand the breadth and nature of the problem.
3. Human-centered design: They shun the closed-door practices of the past and design interventions in partnership with those whom they are trying to help, deepening their understanding of the problem by consulting people directly affected by it.
4. Collective intelligence: They adopt more participatory and democratic ways of working that build on the collective intelligence of communities.
5. Rapid evidence review: They take advantage of new technology to scan for the best available ideas and the best people who know what has worked.
6. Powerful partnerships: They know how to build teams and partnerships that cross many disciplines to become more effective at implementing change that others will adopt and accept.
7. Measuring what works: Finally, they use experimental techniques and collaboration to evaluate what has worked and what has not and either pivot or stay on course as a result. They know how to expand work that has a beneficial and measurable impact on people’s lives…”