The experience in a public animal shelter isn’t easy for either the animals or the humans. Most shelters are overcrowded with pets that have come in for all the wrong reasons. These shelters are noisy. They smell bad. And they’re understaffed for the work that needs to be done.

There are three reasons why shelters are inefficient, discourage innovation, or are mismanaged.

1. Their fear of liability impedes progress.

It’s understandable. The world has its share of crazies who will intentionally put themselves in harm’s way or be purposely neglectful and then sue at a moment’s notice. Public shelter workers all have stories of members of the public who end up getting hurt, file complaints (legitimately or not), taking their grievances public, or even suing. Shelters take great pains to protect themselves from liability, too often using these concerns as an excuse for inefficiencies.

The results can be tragic. Stressed-out animals are labeled sick or dangerous, thus limiting who can help them.  Shelters prohibit certain dogs from even leaving their kennels, labeling them as “unpredictable”—effectively imposing a death sentence.  Perfunctory or nonexistent email replies from shelter managers avoid potential subtext that can be misinterpreted. A shocking number of emails—many from adopters or rescues wanting to help an animal—go unacknowledged. The implication is that the safest thing to do is nothing at all.

At its worst, it’s paranoia writ large. Shelter managers circle the wagons, willfully segregating themselves and their teams from the community they rely on for live outcomes.

In the meantime, well-meaning adopters are told to find rescues willing to sign draconian releases and waivers. Naturally, these documents are paper-based—many are in triplicate, and filed in overstuffed cabinets, only to be lost or misplaced, resulting in further time-consuming forensic research to figure out what went wrong and who is to blame. The proverbial “witch hunt” is alive and well in animal welfare where insiders are rewarded for exposing flaws and tattling rather than proposing improvements and trying out new approaches.

Indeed, the human time required to review, approve, file, monitor, and reference shelter paperwork is staggering. Duplication of manual effort is emblematic of poorly-run organizations—be they animal shelters or corporations—as is the staggering amount of paper-based and analog processes. This adds time—time that could be spent not in offices or cubicles but interacting with the animals to ensure they are healthy, enriched and ready for their forever families.

2. They continue to measure the wrong things.

You would think that “success” in any shelter system would be measured by a decrease in “intake”—animals arriving at shelters as strays or being surrendered by owners, or found wounded or dead by field officers—and an increase in “live release,” meaning animals being adopted or rescued.

But it’s not that simple. Some shelters still kill animals rather than risk allowing them to be adopted.

Some of this is understandable. No one wants to unwittingly adopt what turns out to be a problem pet. However, shelters are inundated with offers of help from:

• certified behaviorists willing to conduct play groups for enrichment and assessment purposes;

• professionals willing to photograph, video, and network animals free of charge;

• volunteers willing to clean kennels and exercise their residents; and

• community members willing to fundraise, promote animals, transport, and foster.

Many shelter systems lack the staff, processes, and, frankly, the curiosity to engage the constituencies who want to help, who could in essence return time to beleaguered and overworked staff.

Meanwhile, shelter directors are buried in paperwork and consumed by reporting requirements. The public agencies that govern shelters are often unaware of the need for (and the value of) volunteer training, rescue outreach, and community engagement. They want statistics: How many dogs came in, how many made it out, and are these figures greater than or less than the prior month/year?

The trouble is that no one understands what the civic leaders who receive these statistics actually do with them. Most leaders don’t use the data to improve shelter operations, step up rescue outreach programs, encourage community participation, or reallocate funding. Yesterday’s metrics, as flagrantly inadequate as they are, are considered a necessary evil. They’re better than nothing.

3. They lack progressive leadership.

This gets to the heart of the matter. Civic leaders charged with shelter system oversight—including city commissioners and deputies, county supervisors, mayoral staff, and state government boards—are generally overwhelmed with human-centered issues. Considering the Covid-19 challenge, this is understandable. But I’d argue that the lines are blurring between human, animal, and environmental health—the triumvirate of what’s become known as population health.

Covid-related changes are challenging leaders to redefine what success looks like. Yes, we should celebrate lower national kill rates. But legacy cultural norms, lack of clear measurements, and budgetary challenges inhibit live-saving improvements—improvements that demand advocacy from shelter leaders.

Many of these leaders spend time on internal issues, avoiding interaction with the public. Direct staff mirror these behaviors. The result? Email responses, if they come, are intentionally vague and non-committal. When external pressure mounts, the shelter staff circle the wagons, ignoring the issue in the hope that it goes away. Once a month or so, they attend an online meeting to pore over paper reports showing last month’s live release rates. Everyone is heads down. Shelter leaders are still rewarded for preserving the status quo.

As the saying goes, the fish rots from the head. These bureaucratic, political, shelter cultures are entrenched because the leaders overseeing the shelters themselves are not incented to innovate and improve, but rather to avoid problems. Maintaining the status quo is the objective, and reducing risk—“As of today, we’re removing all toys from the play yard!”—means job security. But leaders in forward-thinking companies, regardless of their industry or market segment, must unravel traditional operations and their inefficiencies while simultaneously looking for ways to modernize.

The pandemic has forced a reckoning. Not only are legacy policies being reconsidered, leadership skills are being reevaluated. The pandemic is forcing leaders to be curious and innovative, to survey the landscape instead of burying their heads in the sand, and to adroitly introduce changes and negotiate different viewpoints while pushing for systemic improvements.