A good strategy for Lean might be to leverage the "normal" against the bureaucratic: where the bureaucratic disallows the norm, a bureaucracy is vulnerable. We need to prick the conscience. If someone can't build a business, build a home, build apartments for the middle class, and so on, that's not normal, and the bureaucracy is vulnerable. "Somebody" can be a builder, a businessperson, and especially (for political leverage) cultural-estate groups and homeowners.

The vulnerability is from within the norm. Any disruption to it is counterproductive to this strategy. If we start disrupting health/safety, sacrificing light/air, privacy, and so on, that's going to disrupt this strategy. The strategy requires quick consensus-building around norms. This has two side benefits (See * below).

This requires re-stating the norm. When we re-state something, we tend to simplify it and work it into everything else we know. This is a necessary process. If we're going to say, "Why can't I just do 'X'?" we have to be clear about what "X" is. For instance, if the norm is to open a small restaurant, then we can say that small-shop entrepreneurialism is "normal," and we can complain that the bureaucracy is disrupting the norm.

Citizenship, leadership, and the cultural estate can work for or against us. If we restate the norm people hold and contrast it with procedure, then we're going with the grain. However, if we want to change the norm, we might wind up going against the grain.

Norms can be changed. . . This is to do with cognitive overhead. Sandy Sorlien's campaign against front-loaded parking in rowhouses can pivot on this. Garages conflict with walkable frontages, so the norm can either be re-stated to exclude walkability or to exclude garages. If she does it right, the cognitive overhead for the former will be greater, and so garage-free frontages can prevail. Note, talking about "rights" or "responsibilities" doesn't necessarily help here. It's about what's normal.

. . . and norms change on their own anyway. That's partly because every generation has to re-state them, and partly because facts on the ground change. The important thing is never to go against the bottom line for each norm. If the bottom line for a norm is accessibility or walkability or safety, we have to promote it, not tear it down. For instance, if we have a bureaucratically disabled norm that is more accessible, walkable, and at least equally safe, then you're in good shape. If it's not, then you've got hard job.

The immediate path to "Lean" is to subtract the norm from the bureaucracy and take the difference. The difference is a vulnerability: "Why can't I just . . . ?"

The longer-term "lean" is to move the norm when necessary. For instance, what if we could get someone to fabricate a smoothly-operating purely-mechanical wheelchair lift operated by either a crank or by wheelchair wheels spinning on rollers? It could become the new norm, and then people would start asking why it couldn't be used. Sometimes just a fact on the ground can move the norm. It's still essential to understand the mechanism, though. The delta between the (proposed) norm and the current bureaucracy creates the vulnerability.

*Two side benefits of consensus-building around norms: (1) Innovation. Once we build a consensus around the need for something, we can innovate in its delivery. For instance, once you agree on the importance of light/air, we can innovate around lightwells, setbacks, and so on. You can disrupt the one-size-fits-all setback in favor of more complex deals between neighbors. (2) We ensconce the norm in the community, rather than in the bureaucracy. This is "capacity building" through the cultural estate or "associations." We can build shame into the system, and approbation. It requires a long lead time, but when it gets going, it's pretty much self-driving. It's catalytic.