I feel like our office's intern program is on the verge of a growth spurt. We usually have between 4 and 16 interns, maxing out over the summer (see this graph). But I feel we're on the verge of being able to take on a lot more. I came to this realization yesterday after a series of interviews with prospective interns, and after talking to my district director, Susan, about our program. I left the office feeling elated and empowered.

Interns in our office do great work. In the past, they've enabled us to do a better job of things we already do: writing response letters, assisting constituents with casework, organizing district events. But with the start of the Ownership Initiatives and the leadership development program, our intern program will start to take on an entirely different character - it will allow us to do things we have never been able to do. We'll be able to proactively reach out to constituents (more than we already do); we'll partner with organizations to run health or safety or environmental programs; we'll put on educational workshops; we'll help neighborhoods organize. This is the vision of the intern program that motivates me.

I still need to grow as a manager and leader to make this vision a reality. I feel that I'm on my way down this path, but we also need to be thinking about what factors limit the number of interns we can handle. These are the factors I've been thinking about:

Space/resources: Our office is pretty big, but we do have a finite number of desks and computers. We'll have to figure out ways to fit more interns in here, or find ways for them to do work outside the office. We have a wireless network, so interns could work on laptops. We have a couple of other offices interns might fit into, but only after they've had significant experience in this office - this program works in part because I can help train interns. This brings me to the next limitation...

My ability to manage interns: I'm not quite at my capacity yet, but I may reach it yet, and I really need to ramp up the leadership development aspect of things if I really want this program to take off. I need experienced interns to be able to lead newer interns - I can't be the bottleneck through which everything must pass.

Our ability to find work for interns: As I see it, this is only an issue as long as we have interns working on our existing functions (letters, casework, events). As we develop the ownership initiatives program, more interns will just mean more projects we can take on. This will depend on successful leadership development, though.

The capacity of other staff members to help handle the interns: I do the bulk of the intern management, but other staff members play important roles. Karen reviews every letter after I review it. At the moment she feels well below her capacity, but as we have more interns, this may change. I can try to address this by having interns mentor other interns, and check each other's work before sending it to me, which will hopefully lead to a higher level of quality by the time it reaches Karen. This may decrease response times, though. Staff also do some managing when I'm away at class. This can be addressed somewhat through leadership development - interns can lead each other. It will also help when interns have more self-directed projects - at the moment, I assign them tasks, and once they've finished those tasks, there isn't much they can do. With self-directed projects like the ownership initiatives, they can come up with their own tasks.

I'm ready for our program to take off! I'll keep writing as things develop.

I've been slowly trying to get interns to work together more. I've been doing it both with my Davis Dollars interns and with my interns in Senator Steinberg's office, with different strategies.

I think it's important for a lot of reasons.

• It develops the interns' skills, initiative, and responsibility to be accountable to each other.
• Two heads are better than one - they can think of more ideas together than they'd be able to think of working alone on their projects.
• This allows me to tap into the creativity and intelligence of every intern. I can't think of everything. That fact is obvious, but assigning tasks unilaterally only makes sense if I believe I can think of everything we should do, and how we should do it. By allowing interns to talk about what to work on and how to accomplish it, they can come up with ideas I would not have thought of.
• It removes me as a bottleneck - when I need to assign tasks for everyone, it means interns are stalled if they need to wait to hear back from me. By delegating some authority to the intern teams, they can bypass me. This requires some watching, however, to make sure I approve of what they're working on.

There are different ways I'm having interns work together. My Davis Dollars interns work in small teams (2-3 people per team) to focus on different things. Two interns work on business outreach. Another is working on community outreach, which is broad enough that she helps other interns out as well as doing her own projects. Another intern works on our Gardenscaping project to create gardens for people in Davis, and she has some auxiliary interns helping her out, which I've helped recruit. Yet another intern helps other groups by working on design issues (creating publications, logos, etc.). Grouping them up this way has been tremendously successful in that it capitalizes on their good ideas and reduces pressure on me to think of everything.

In Senator Steinberg's office, I've been a bit less successful in thinking of ways to get interns to work together. They work together on their ownership initiatives, but I’ve had more trouble finding ways for them to work together on their core tasks of writing response letters and working on casework. Many of these core tasks are (to my mind) highly individual tasks that are difficult to split up.

I’ve been thinking of broader ways to get interns to work together, though. Working together doesn’t necessarily require splitting a task down the middle. Rather than assigning individual tasks to interns, I could allow them to create a division of labor by assigning a block of tasks to a group of interns, and allowing the interns to split the tasks between them. This would give them more initiative and make them partners in figuring out the best way to get through all the tasks. My current method commoditizes both the tasks and the interns by making piecemeal work out of something that could benefit from more creative thinking.

I did notice yesterday that two interns who were just starting out spontaneously started helping each other with tasks. Lucy, one of the interns, has already shown more initiative than average, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when she started helping Rochelle (who is a bit newer than Lucy). But I could also encourage teamwork by assigning each new intern to a more senior intern, and ask that senior intern to be responsible for guiding and mentoring the younger intern.

What are your thoughts? Do you have suggestions? How do you work with interns?

At work, in Senator Steinberg's office, we have a swell of interns every summer. The same happens with Davis Dollars interns.

2008 was when I really started supervising and managing other interns at work.

I worked on Davis Dollars beginning in the Fall of 2008, but didn't bring interns on board until the summer of 2009.

I manage all the interns at my job in Senator Steinberg's office, and have recently implemented a leadership development program called Ownership Initiatives. I'll write more in the future about how the program is going, but it's best to start with the description of the project I wrote, and which I ask our interns to read:

We believe interns should be able to take on projects of interest - what we call "ownership initiatives", because we want interns to take ownership over the projects.

Nick will talk to you about what sorts of initiatives you're interested in. (See some initiative ideas below.) You, he and Susan will meet to talk about which is the most feasible, how best to accomplish it, and what deadlines are reasonable.

Nick will also assign you "core tasks" each day, which you must finish before working on your initiative. These are the tasks that it is important for our office to complete, such as writing response letters, casework, printing certificates, addressing constituent inquiries, and answering the phone. Nick will give you a fixed number of tasks each day, plus a share of any tasks that come in that day (e.g. new cases).

It is expected that you will finish your core tasks in the first part of the day, and then move on to work on your initiative. You should talk to Nick if you are having difficulty accomplishing all your core tasks. It is also expected that you will set feasible goals for your initiative, and accomplish those on schedule.

Read this page, and browse through the list of initiatives below. Think about your own interests and passions, and how they might fit in to various projects.

Talk to Nick about your interests, and mention any projects you've thought of that aren't on the list already. He and other staff will think about what sort of project would be feasible to start with. We'll try to generate several options, at which point you have come to the Investigative phase of the process.

Like most real-world projects, your ownership initiative may not be well-defined from the start. It's possible you'll start working on an existing initiative, but it's equally likely you'll want to start working on a project that doesn't have clear boundaries. A big part of being successful is being able to (1) accept ambiguity, and (2) take actions to bring clarity to your efforts. Even if a project is already well-defined, your role in the project may be initially be vague. To begin your initiative, you'll need to do a bit of investigation and legwork to define the purpose and boundaries of the project, or of your involvement with the project.

You can consult with staff for advice on the investigative phase; here are some general strategies for clarifying your initiative:

1. Talk to the point person on the project - that may be a member of the district staff, capital staff, majority caucus, or even possibly someone else. Ask them lots of questions about the nature of the project and how you can get involved; try to pin them down on lots of details. You should have a very clear understanding of what you'll be doing - try explaining your role to someone else, and if you find difficulty explaining something, you should go back to ask the point person more questions.
2. Call other staff and offices working on the project (ask staff in our office for advice on who to talk to) about how you can help. This is important because you won't always be able to reach your point person immediately. It shows initiative that you're ready to move forward with the project even though your point person hasn't given you specific tasks yet.
3. Do some research on the project, to figure out what else we might be able to do to help the project. This could mean calling a relevant state agency, calling some organizations with expertise in the relevant area, or looking around online for resources. (Talk to staff in our office before calling any outside organizations to find out if there's anything sensitive you shouldn't talk to outsiders about.) From your research, you can make some suggestions to your point person. It's an important skill to be able to anticipate things the project might need, and generate options to choose from.

Some initiatives on the list below, and some initiatives you'll think of, have been dreamed up by interns, or by Nick. If one of these catches your interest, your Investigative phase will be heavy on the research aspect - you'll need to define not only your role in the project, but the project itself.

You'll also have to pitch the project and gain approval for it. For some projects, this will be easy - it isn't hard to get approval to run a tree-planting project in a neighborhood, for example. Other projects will require significant research beforehand before pitching. If you want Darrell to carry a bill, for example, you'll have to do a lot of research, some of which will be necessary before you even float the idea with staff (talk to Nick before embarking on anything).

Potential projects may not be approved, so talk to Nick and other district staff to get advice on how to improve your chances. This shouldn't discourage you from pursuing an initiative of your own design, though. Project proposals in the real world don't all get accepted, either. Even if your proposal isn't accepted, you'll earn the respect of the staff you work with.