Performancestat Potential The A Leadership Strategy For Producing Results

"It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department but quickly jumped to other public agencies in New York and to police agencies internationally. Baltimore created CitiStat - the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up - all to improve government's performance. Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of public organizations employ the strategy - for example, how the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate urban blight, how the Federal Emergency Management Agency uses its FEMAStat to capture and apply lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation. How best to harness its full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all." --

It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department, and quickly jumped to police agencies across the U.S. and other nations. It was adapted by Baltimore, which created CitiStat the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort by public executives to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up all to improve government's performance. Here, Harvard leadership and management guru Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of a variety of public organizations employ the strategy the way the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate blight in city neighborhoods, and what the Federal Emergency Management Agency does with its FEMAStat to ensure that the lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation are applied in the future. How best to harness the strategy's full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all."

A Brookings Institution Press and Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation publication It started two decades ago with CompStat in the New York City Police Department, and quickly jumped to police agencies across the U.S. and other nations. It was adapted by Baltimore, which created CitiStat—the first application of this leadership strategy to an entire jurisdiction. Today, governments at all levels employ PerformanceStat: a focused effort by public executives to exploit the power of purpose and motivation, responsibility and discretion, data and meetings, analysis and learning, feedback and follow-up—all to improve government's performance. Here, Harvard leadership and management guru Robert Behn analyzes the leadership behaviors at the core of PerformanceStat to identify how they work to produce results. He examines how the leaders of a variety of public organizations employ the strategy—the way the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services uses its DPSSTATS to promote economic independence, how the City of New Orleans uses its BlightStat to eradicate blight in city neighborhoods, and what the Federal Emergency Management Agency does with its FEMAStat to ensure that the lessons from each crisis response, recovery, and mitigation are applied in the future. How best to harness the strategy's full capacity? The PerformanceStat Potential explains all.

New Zealand's deceptively simple but effective program to improve public services New Zealand has long been considered at the forefront of public administration, experimenting with new ways of organizing and delivering public services. Even so, successive New Zealand governments had mixed results from using traditional public management tools to lift the performance of the public service and address persistent problems that required multi-agency action. In 2012 the government decided to try something different. As part of a reform package called Better Public Services, the government challenged the public service to organize itself around achieving just ten results that had proven resistant to previous interventions. The plan was deceptively simple: set ambitious targets and publicly report on progress every six months; hold small groups of public managers collectively responsible; use lead indicators; and learn from both success and failure. This book explores how and why the New Zealand government made progress and how the program was able to create and sustain the commitment of public servants and unleash the creativity of public entrepreneurs. The authors combine case studies based on the experience of people involved in the change, together with public management research. They explain how ambitious targets and public accountability were used as levers to overcome the bureaucratic barriers that impeded public service delivery, and how data, evidence, and innovation were used to change practice. New Zealand experimented, failed, succeeded, and learned from the experience over five years. This New Zealand experience demonstrates that interagency performance targets are a potentially powerful tool for fostering better public services and thus improving social outcomes.

Managing in the public sector requires an understanding of the interaction between three distinct dimensions—administrative structures, organizational cultures, and the skills of individual managers. Public managers must produce results that citizens and their representatives expect from their government while fulfilling their constitutional responsibilities. In Public Management: Thinking and Acting in Three Dimensions, authors Carolyn J. Hill and Laurence E. Lynn, Jr. argue that one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate for dealing with the distinctive challenges that public managers face. Drawing on both theory and detailed case studies of actual practice, the authors show how public management that is based on applying a three-dimensional analytic framework—structure, culture, and craft—to specific management problems is the most effective way to improve the performance of America’s unique scheme of governance in accordance with the rule of law. The book educates readers to be informed citizens and prepares students to participate as professionals in the world of public management.

Choose Results is a deeply considered call to action to leaders committed to improving people's wellbeing. Grounded in the fields of action learning, collaborative thinking, and collective action, Choose Results elucidates the necessary but difficult task of collaborating with others in ways that align action, de-emphasize the personal, and leverage parallel lines of work with in-depth examples from boots-on-the-ground work. This book provides methods, worksheets, and templates to give leaders the tools and practices they need to work effectively with multiple stakeholders and partners across bureaucracies big and small. Raj Chawla has worked with hundreds of leaders who are interested in making a measurable difference in the quality of life in their communities. With a focus on practice and application, he connects leaders' inherent passion for making a difference to the discipline of using data to inform decisions and the sometimes humbling vulnerability needed to choose results.

Why big government is not the problem. The Progressive government movement, founded on support from Republicans and Democrats alike, reined in corporate trusts and improved the lives of sweatshop workers. It created modern government, from the Federal Reserve to the nation’s budgetary and civil service policies, and most of the programs on which we depend. Ask Americans today and they will tell you that our government has hit a wall of low performance and high distrust, with huge implications for governance in the country. Instead of a focus on government effectiveness, the movement that spawned the idea of government for the people has become known for creating a big government disconnected from citizens. Donald F. Kettl finds that both political parties have contributed to the decline of the Progressive ideal of a commitment to competence. They have both fed gridlock and created a government that does not work the way citizens expect and deserve. Kettl argues for a rebirth of the original Progressive spirit, not in pursuit of bigger government but with a bipartisan dedication to better government, one that works on behalf of all citizens and that delivers services effectively. He outlines the problems in today’s government, including political pressures, proxy tools, and managerial failures. Escaping Jurassic Government details the strategies, evidence, and people that can strengthen governmental effectiveness and shut down gridlock.

Public Management and Governance examines the factors which make government critically important and the barriers which often stop it being effective. It questions what it means to have effective policies, efficient management and good quality public services, and it explores how the process of governing could be improved. Key themes include: the challenges and pressures facing governments around the world; the changing role of the public sector in a ‘mixed economy’ of provision; governance issues such as ethics, equalities, transparency and citizen engagement. This revised and updated third edition includes eight new chapters which provide in-depth coverage of key new aspects of public management and governance. It also features a wide selection of international case studies and illuminating examples of how public policy, management and governance can be improved – and what happens when they fail. Each chapter is supplemented with discussion questions, group and individual exercises, case studies and recommendations on further reading. Public Management and Governance is one of the leading student textbooks in its field, featuring contributions from top international authors and covering a wide range of key topics in depth. It is an essential resource for all students on undergraduate and postgraduate courses in public management, public administration, government and public policy.