Managing for Results: The Relentless Pursuit of Clarity

Our friend and long-time colleague, Charles Curry, the former budget officer for the City of Austin, has observed that many organizations, both public and private, “enjoy the temporary comfort of ambiguity.” Sooner or later, your customer (or the local newspaper publisher) is going to remind you of the results that matter most to them.

We recall that when David Smith, the award-winning County Manager for Maricopa County, AZ, started Managing for Results there, he said he wanted to have a response to negative press. And the only response he believed that would work is reliable information about the results that customers actually experience. Like many government leaders, David lives in a tough political neighborhood and, because of Maricopa’s years of working with Managing for Results, he has a lot of good performance information about results achieved by the County.

Over the past 11 years, the members of the Weidner team have had the privilege of working with literally thousands of program teams to use Weidner’s Managing For Results tools to achieve uncommon clarity about who the customer is and what results they want the customer to experience at the operations level. They have taught us a lot about the journey to clarity.

Here is how we summarize the process:

If you can think it clearly,
You can write it clearly.
If you can write it clearly,
You can measure it.
If you can measure it,
You stand a good chance of getting it done.
© 2009 Weidner, Inc

It all begins with clear thinking about who your customers are -- and what results you want them to experience as a consequence of receiving your services.