What I learned running a large government system
Systems don’t improve because no one asked; they improve because someone was allowed to try
Elizabeth Shea, January 2026
Originally published as an Op-Ed in NJ Spotlight News
As the new governor prepares to take over in New Jersey, I’ve been reflecting on what shapes decision making and the importance of culture in government.
I served as an assistant commissioner, running the New Jersey Division of Developmental Disabilities during a period of significant change. I saw firsthand how policy evolves in real time and is influenced not only by legislative and regulatory action or by stakeholder advocacy, but also by internal culture, history and the lessons that state staff absorb over the years.
One phrase I heard more times than I can count (usually from dedicated public servants trying to do their jobs well) was this: “If we allow this, then everyone will want to do it.” To be clear, it was rarely said with malice or resistance to innovation. Rather, it was almost always offered as a statement of responsibility. Stewardship.
In fairness, that’s exactly the role that many staff had been taught. Inside government, employees are told to “be stewards of public funding” and be mindful of the “dangers of precedent.”
But it’s easy to slip into a “no” mindset when stewardship is at the forefront. Moreover, stewardship without nuance significantly reduces innovation, program improvement and accountability. This is true in a system as complex and personal as Medicaid-funded disability services, and it’s especially dangerous at a time when that system is facing potentially enormous federal funding cuts.
Why is it so risky? If we need to find hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, doing it without nuance is about as scary as it gets. Consider “Across-the-board cuts” or “Just move all long-term disability services into managed care.” Yikes!
In addition, if we fall back on “Then everyone will want to do it,” we avoid asking the follow-up questions demanded by truly good stewardship:
Does this meet a need?
How could we structure to ensure fairness and fiscal sustainability?
What might we learn from piloting this?
How can we take a strategic approach?
What guardrails would make this workable?
Anyone who has implemented complex policy changes will tell you that learning from asking those questions is monumental. And what stalls progress most reliably is not failure – it’s the fear of success. That is: If something works, demand itself may become the problem. But demand is neither a policy failure nor a problem. Demand is critically important information about the needs of people whom the government is meant to help. And remember: Many of standard services exist only because someone, at some point, was allowed to go first.
It’s not easy to run a system like Developmental Disabilities. It’s living in constant tension, regularly reconciling individual lives with system-wide responsibility, juggling equity and flexibility and balancing urgency with sustainability. Initiatives that look risky on paper sometimes succeed in practice. And ideas launched with the best intentions sometimes fail to deliver on their promises. The one constant – the thing that is almost always true is this: Nuance is needed.
With a new administration beginning, it’s a good time to think about this.
This is when leadership sets the tone and when staff learns which questions to ask.
Not every idea should scale. Not every pilot program should become permanent. Not every proposal will work. But refusing to even test an idea because others might want it, too, guarantees only one outcome: The system stays as is
Systems don’t improve because no one asked.
They improve because someone was allowed to try.
And because leaders were willing to train nuance – not just caution – into the culture of government.
