Beyond Muddling: Creativity

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1979 When I was a ten-year-old girl, Charles Lindblom wrote an article called Science of Muddling Through.' Two decades later, I find myself in the city manager's office reflecting on that article. In those 20 years, I was fascinated by, studied, and then became a public administrator. It's true: there is a lot of muddling through out here in the real world. But public administrators cannot settle for mere muddling. The stakes are too high. Each generation of administrators has the responsibility to improve the government and its impact on the society. Lindblom fulfills part of his responsibility by sounding a clear note in an orchestra of confusion.