GUEST COLUMN.

If you can’t confidently answer the question in the headline above, don’t fret. You’re not alone. Many people who work in organizations with dashboards full of performance measures can’t answer that question. Unfortunately, many places have made the language of performance management and continuous improvement so convoluted, that answers that should be “no brainers” can be elusive.

Several months ago, I met with a leader in city government who said he had taken a lot of classes in continuous improvement methods, but he had no idea what to do with any of it. That statement sheds a lot of light on the challenge. Watching training videos of golf can be helpful, but until you’ve taken a golf club in hand, they’re not going to teach you how to play.

The problem with creating performance management efforts that are genuinely useful isn’t limited to the public sector. Years ago, when I was working as an operations and technology executive in a large financial services company, I was asked to look at an 80-year-old organization and design a new approach to work.  I was given a large metrics binder to understand performance trends. The binder included hundreds of measures. I took it home and weighed it on my food scale. There were 3.4 pounds of metrics and yet I had no idea if the organization was improving performance year over year beyond its financial results.

Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene recently published an Open Letter to Elected Officials on this general topic. Their premise was that elected officials are often standing in the way, because performance measures can publicly expose failures that won’t bode well at election time.

Others point to push back from city managers. Their role, often the sole direct report of the local elected body, is the most vulnerable for local elected officials to blame for poor performance.

But perhaps the biggest barrier to performance management and continuous improvement is that it’s easier not to do anything. Many of us in the public sector work in environments where how we do our work is determined by the “we’ve always done it this way” department. But the positive benefits of well-wrought performance measurement systems are indisputable. We need to get over our excuses and get to work.

For both elected officials and staff, wouldn’t you rather know if something is off track sooner rather than later? The color red is often used to signal a performance vulnerability. The color red is my favorite color – it is the voice of our residents and a heads-up about where I need to focus my attention. Performance management systems also can reduce conflict and align elected officials and staff toward a shared vision of success, enabling collaboration.

The City of Bloomington Illinois is modeling what can be achieved when city councils and staff work together toward this common goal. Council members identified performance excellence as strategically important to build trust with residents by improving service delivery and driving economic development. City Manager Jeff Jurgens took a seminar to learn more and returned ready to lead the charge. Council members unanimously supported the approach. The commitment was formally conveyed to the public with a pledge to provide quarterly progress reports.

Questions abound for other communities ready to dig in, in the way that Bloomington is. Where should I start? Do I need training? Consultants? 200 slide PowerPoints? Or maybe create a new department? Over the past 20 years, I have seen approaches range from millions of dollars spent on external experts, lots of motivational posters and a newly created logo on coffee cups, training hundreds, making it one person’s or one department’s job, and more. Whatever path you choose, it will work until it doesn’t.

I recommend learning a framework like Lean Methodology to help you focus on things that are making work harder and take more time. Lean concepts also support sustainability, as the objective is to create the most value while consuming the fewest resources possible. It also provides a common language to collaborate and learn from others. Such approaches are used in all sectors including healthcare, education, manufacturing, service organizations, nonprofits, and government organizations. Some of the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had came through benchmarking with organizations as diverse as Hallmark, HAVI, and United Airlines.

Or course, just as with the golfing videos, the training itself does not add value until concepts are applied to improve the work. The City of Bloomington is accomplishing this by requiring a capstone project. Manager Josh Hansen is focusing on sidewalks. He was amazed by the untapped potential in people that was not visible until he looked for it. They are making a difference for residents and their enthusiasm is positively impacting other departments.

Step one is simple. Just start. Anywhere. Focus on work process – not work product. That’s a critical distinction – this is about respecting people, not judging them. Go see work being done, engage people to find ways to make their work easier, and magic can happen.

The contents of this Guest Column are those of the author, and not necessarily Barrett and Greene, Inc.

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