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.
"In "The PerformanceStat Potential", Bob Behn sees with great insight and clarity the historic changes under way in self-governance. He contrasts the old ways of leadership that were ideological, hierarchical, and bureaucratic with new models that are fundamentally entrepreneurial, operationally collaborative, and relentlessly performance driven. As command-and-control gives way to effective collaboration, Behn heralds the rise of open, transparent, real-time, and real fast governance." --Martin O'Malley, Governor of Maryland
"Bob Behn gets it. Sure, he sees what most people see at any PerformanceStat session--data and analysis, meetings with questions. Behn, however, sees more. He sees the feedback and the follow-up; the focus on purpose plus the delegation of discretion; the necessity of adaptation combined with a commitment to results. Most significantly, Behn sees the leadership. At CompStat meetings, most visitors never see any leadership. But Behn gets it: PerformanceStat is all about the leadership."--William J. Bratton, Police Commissioner, New York City
"Driving change is hard. Bob Behn's "The PerformanceStat Potential" demonstrates that achieving important public purposes requires leadership commitment, a set of critical operational components, and a new way of working. These are hard to pull off, and even dangerous for a public executive. Through a series of cases of PerformanceStat efforts, Behn teaches deep and enduring leadership lessons about what it takes to "Reach the New Order of Things" and why it's worth the risk."--Mary Bryna Sanger, Deputy Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, The New School
"This is an excellent and ambitious book. It digs deeply into understanding how dedicated efforts at performance measurement can dramatically improve service quality in public agencies. At a superficial level, it's a matter of getting the metrics right and tracking them in real time. But at a deeper level, these numbers need to be monitored by managers who know and care about achieving results and who can lead others in their organizations in the same direction."--Eugene Bardach, Professor of Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California-Berkeley
"In "The PerformanceStat Potential," Bob Behn sees with great insight and clarity the historic changes under way in self-governance. He contrasts the old ways of leadership that were ideological, hierarchical, and bureaucratic with new models that are fundamentally entrepreneurial, operationally collaborative, and relentlessly performance driven. As command-and-control gives way to effective collaboration, Behn heralds the rise of open, transparent, real-time, and real fast governance."--Martin O'Malley, Governor of Maryland
