The Performance Imperative

In his inaugural address, President Obama laid out a significant challenge to the managers of the federal government and the public and private sector partners that support government programs:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it workswhether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the publics dollars will be held to account to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

This is a bold call for a significant improvement in the execution of government programs. A few years ago, Gerry Brokaw and I wrote a series of articles entitled, In Pursuit of Higher Performance, in which we proposed a framework and model that included an approach for pursuing high performance. Part of that framework was highlighted through a series of high-level questions that remain relevant today:

• What is high performance? According to whom?
• Who sets the bar or establishes the definition?
• How would we know when we have achieved the objective?

Performance Gap

Many public opinion polls tracking federal government performance note that while there are pockets of improvement, the overall assessment is government does not work the way it should or how citizens expect. The gap between what is expected and what is actually done breaks down trust between the government and those governed.

Numerous polls can be referenced to support this assessment, but the presidents assertion acknowledges the gap and sets a new bar for performance: to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and to do our business in the light of the day. These three actions will go a long way to ensure the vital trust between a people and their government.

The list of recent public management challenges is long and well-documented:

• intelligence agencies need to more effectively assess threats and share information
• financial institutions need to better manage risk
• emergency response teams need to better coordinate intergovernmental responses.

While these challenges are relatively well known, others remain below the day-to-day public radar but are documented in detail in numerous U.S. Government Accountability Office and inspectors general reports. These challenges focus on compliance, efficiency and effectiveness.

To improve federal performance, administrations over the past two decades have initiated their own management reform agendas. These have included a focus on total quality management, the establishment of the National Performance Review, the creation of the Presidents Management Agenda, the creation of the Program Assessment and Rating Tool, and the promulgation of numerous executive orders. The Legislative Branch has done its part, along with the Government Performance Results Act and other measures in the fields of IT, finance, and human capital management.

With all the attention and best efforts from our nations brightest minds, what is missing? Why hasnt more progress been made? How can the presidents call best be answered?

Next Steps

My experienceand that of my colleaguesis that setting the expectations is a critical first step, but it is not sufficient. The president has set the expectation and has raised the bar. It is now time for leaders to take the three critical steps in making significant performance improvement in federal programs and passing the bar.

Step 1| Recognize and Implement Three Dimensions of Performance

To achieve high performance, we must recognize that performance isnt one thing. It needs to be recognized in its three dimensions: results, transparency, and stewardship. Figure 1 documents how these work together to ensure line of sight from an organizations strategic goals, through the functional components, to the individual performer. Leadership needs to recognize its organizations maturity on each of these dimensions and move performance outward from the center.

Results : When working with our government organization clients, we continue asking the same questions: Why are you measuring that? If a measure is not driving behavior or directly contributing to mission, why are you tracking it?

Good efforts are nice, but performance is what matters. Performance is best measured in terms of results aligned to the mission, not activities. Determine what is most important to the mission, then drive performance improvement through it. It is important to think through what the organization is really attempting to impact and define this outcome in terms of results. Next, build dashboards around these larger goals. This drives behavior and increases accountability.

I recall working with a top-level executive in a cabinet-level department. He was extremely pleased with his strategic plan and executive bonus program, and he called me to get my feedback. In many ways, the executive was rightly justified in terms of his improvements. In terms of results, he had several that were holistic and measurable. A key deficiency was that none of the performance measures were aligned with the departments top priorities.

In this case, the organization was moving performance in a direction that, while not in opposition, was not properly aligned and therefore not producing the mutually supporting outcomes that would drive mission performance. Take away: Results need to be outcome-based and aligned with the mission.

Transparency : Most government organizations now work in matrixed or networked organizational structures. For example, most planning is done within the verticals, including IT, contracts, and human capital. Yet, services are delivered horizontally and require acceptance, support, and resources from others.

Many organizations work with other federal departments, agencies, states, or nongovernmental agencies to deliver mission-related services. These configurations represent networked organizational structures. In both of these cases, transparency is critical to effective service delivery.

For example, can you image playing baseball in the dark without any lights? Or playing baseball without any counting or measurement? It just wouldnt be baseball. You cant play in the dark, and you cant play if you dont count. The same applies to team performance in government services. Interdependent service delivery models require openness and shared information. We need to able to engage others and measure in public.

One example that really brought this home for me: I was taking a group of federal executives to FedEx to benchmark mail delivery. One of the key advantages FedEx had at that time was that its delivery trucks worked in pods. Using their satellite measurement system, the pods could track their individual and group performance against service standards in real time. If any single truck fell behind, they would rendezvous and redistribute the workload among the pod to ensure on-time delivery.

You can see how important transparency was to the success of FedExs mail delivery service standards. In high performance teams, quick feedback loops and on-the-spot adjustments are built into the process. Take away: Transparency is now a condition for high performance.

Stewardship : The stewardship dimension focuses on two factors: 1) it recognizes that most goals require participation and support from others, and 2) stewardship has a long-term focus on sustainability.

That mission isnt about an event but a commitmenta promise. This dimension links these to ensure effective coordination and accountability in delivery. As stated earlier, many service delivery processes require participation and support from others. In the review of executive performance plans of the cabinet-level department mentioned earlier, each executive had his own performance goals. The problem was that the goals were individual, but delivery was interdependent.

Given the structure of performance plans, there was little collective confidence that the goals would be achieved. If the goals were not shared, they were working at cross-purposes. Deming explained it best: In the pursuit of optimizing the process, you may sub-optimize the system. Take away: Performance is not an event; you must focus on interdependencies and sustainability to deliver on the mission over time.

We hear from many senior public managers that setting performance goals and measures is hard and that getting buy-in is even harder. In most cases, the reason is that the organization is focusing on only one dimension of performance. To get buy-in you need to work all three dimensions.

Step 2| Move the Many, Not the Few

A second critical facet for improving performance is recognizing that while you must acknowledge exceptional performance and address poor performance to significantly move the organization on the performance continuum, you most move the many, not the few.

In many of the organizations I have worked with, most of the organizations financial resources and time go to addressing opposite ends of the performance curve (see Figure 2). Resources are expended to deal with poor performance only to have marginal performance value.

On the other side, large amounts of money and rewards are provided to the significant few in terms of performance pay, training, and development. But from what the science and literature points to in taking performance to another level, we need to move the many, not the few.

I saw this principle at work in the U.S. Public Health Services National Institutes of Health. To conduct world-class research, they needed a world-class workforce. Years later as a federal program manager, I tried to put this same principle to work.

Recognizing the performance and education gap in the program, I worked with colleagues in the leadership team to support a multiyear investment budget. We knew that if we wanted to significantly improve performance, our focus needed to be on information and feedback and tools and resources. Information and tools in this case represented between 50 and 70 percent of the solution.

Over the next three years, we trained the entire program staff in new competencies designed to support new products and service offerings of the program. We also provided each professional staff member a laptop and advanced project management software to enhance their productivity and work more effectively in a distributed team environment. Putting that investment together wasnt easythere was no additional funding.

As a leadership team, we made trade-offs, set priorities, and measured in public. We recognized that to deliver on our mission we needed to shift the success curve. It wasnt about hiring some stars; it was, in fact, about making more stars.

In addition to putting in the investment budget, we instituted a new performance management program, including a balanced scorecard of performance and capability measures. Called the New Contract, the performance management system focused on

• assignment completiona result measure, not process
• customer serviceas measured and reported by the recipient of the service
• value to behaviorsmodeling the values of the office as measured by 360-degree feedback
• learningeach employee had a individual development plan aligned to internal capacity needs of the organization consistent with their occupation.

An interesting part of the performance agreement was the notion that learning was an expectation. Given the large investment in training and education, there was an expectation that staff would not only complete course work, but also that the skills would be demonstrated in their job performance. There was no way to continue the large investment in training and education without a commensurate increase in organizational capacity.

Take away: While it remains critical to pay attention to the full performance continuum, the role for leadership is to build a high performance workforce or internal capacity to deliver sustained superior performance. To do that, we need to shift the performance curvethe many, not just the few.

Step 3| Constantly Renew

There have been many books on change. Clearly, we recognize that change is our only constant. It is widely acknowledged that the rate of change is increasingly exponentially and that the world is changing at an ever-increasing rate. How is it then that our governmental programs, policies, systems, and processes seem so incapable of change? How can they remain relevant?

There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers created a government structure that put liberty ahead of efficiency. Thus, we have three equal branches of government and a constitutional division of powers. Does that mean that federal departments and programs cannot renew in manner that is responsive to changing environmental needs and constituents requirements?

The Renewal Factor, Robert Watermans first book since In Search of Excellence, stated very clearly that to remain competitive and relevant every business must renew itselfthat without renewal there is no excellence. In our mixed economy where the division between public and private between inherently governmental and nongovernmental is extremely blurredthe need for relevance and responsiveness is critical and is the fullest measure of performance.

Watermans approach was his 7-S Frameworka systems approach to integrating external demands with internal processes, technology, and culture. The framework, while significant, is not as important as the recognition that the rate of change must be made part of an organizations on-going design and delivery systems.

In Ichak Adizes book Corporate Lifecycles (see Figure 3), he illustrates the natural life cycle of corporations. His model is displayed to the right and documents a natural death spiral for organizations that do not renew. The challenge for federal organizations is that in most cases, their natural state is bureaucracy. How then do we create renewal in what are intended to be bureaucracies?

The good news is that there is evidence all around of how federal departments and agencies have gone through the renewal processes and refocused and aligned their missions to meet emerging needs and to remain relevant and responsive to their constituents. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rechartered itself and stated that its mission was to improve the environment and human health, it was a dramatic renewal statement given the previous 20 years of enforcing environmental laws.

The agency stated that its vision and mission was to have a positive effect on the environmentthat the status quo was not sufficient. Its renewal statement changed everything about the agency, from how they budgeted, recruited, and conducted environmental planning (single media, multimedia) to ecosystems and investment, education, and enforcement.

One of the most profound impacts was on the way it conducted work. Work at EPA required a new way of thinking, planning, and working together. As part of this change, the agency conducted its first agencywide workforce development effort. One of the key outcomes of this effort was the recognition that project management and increased interpersonal and team skills were becoming as important asor more important thantechnical skill sets.

For an agency that placed a great deal of importance on our science, this was a dramatic shift. Yet, it demonstrated that to move toward our new future, working together within and outside of the agency was going to be critical. New skills and work methods would be necessary.

You can see renewal today in many federal departments and agencies. They may not be as dramatic as some, but renewal is occurring. The key to renewal is in large part being willing to reflect, listen, and always seek a better way to truly deliver on your mission. This is, after all, the role of leadershipto understand not only the law, but also the legislative intent. Leaders need to engage and empower the workforce to deliver on the mission.

Take away: Leaders need to create energy within their organizations. They must constantly look over the horizon and reflect on their mission and ensure that performance is relevant, sustainable, and impactful. Yesterdays performance is not a predictor for tomorrows success. To lead this effort requires a willingness to think anew, to explore, to invest in thinking to see beyond the immediate, and to extend from content to context.