I’ve been sharing recently the Key Principles that drive our work as a company.
They’re simple and clear to state – and extremely powerful put into action.
The First Principle, though not popular in some quarters these days, is absolutely true: If government relentlessly focuses on results, it can and will make a difference in the lives of its customers.
The Second Principle came into focus for me when we took on reforming welfare in the State of Iowa: If government focuses on the right result, the right results will happen for the customers of government services.
The Third Principle came to me while I served Iowa Governor Terry Branstad as his Director of Policy and Strategic Planning in 1993-1998. Gretchen Tegeler, my boss and the Director of the Office of Management, gave me the task of building an integrated management system that better focused Iowa State Government on results. Gretchen was on the Welfare Reform Council, so she experienced first hand what can happen when Government focuses on results.
The Third Principle is:
Customers experience better results and government is much more ‘on purpose’ when government focuses on results in everything you do – planning, budgeting, performance measurement, reporting, employee performance and collaboration.
Over those years in Iowa, we fundamentally changed and integrated our strategic planning, budgeting and performance measurement efforts to focus more on results.
We ended up in some good places, but we didn’t start out that way.
For my first review of the 20+ strategic plans for State Departments, I spread them all out on the floor of my office. I got down on the floor with a legal pad and started
counting which goals were focused on the customer -- and which ones were instead focused on, or stated in terms of, what the government itself would experience.The score was 9-1 – State Government has it. Customers lose! Government wins!
No kidding – only 1 out of 10 goals was stated in terms of what the customer would experience. That pretty much defined the cultural problem we were facing.
Managing for Results was born from the failure of government to focus on its customers. What we discovered is that it is possible to integrate your essential management systems – planning, budgeting, performance measurement, employee performance, and to align operational performance with strategic goals. Budgeting for Results was born in Iowa in the early 1990s as we integrated Results Performance measures into the State Budget. Department Strategic plans began focusing on measurable results for their customers.
We created the Governor’s Leadership Agenda (which was Gretchen’s idea) which included 20 Strategic Results around which interdepartmental collaboration was directed. Each quarter, the department directors who were responsible for achieving the Governor’s Strategic Results met with the Governor to report on the measurable progress made to date and the interdepartmental plans they had for making continuous progress going forward.
Likewise, to reinforce the culture, Governor Branstad began asking about Results and Cost in his budget and policy meetings with Department Directors. Nothing sends a message about what is really important more than the questions asked by the Boss.
All this to get State Government focused on its core results, or purpose, for customers.
In our work with our customers over the past 12 years, we’ve seen repeated examples of the remarkable power that comes from aligning your systems around results for customers. Instead of having to battle your management systems, when those systems align around results for customers, the multiplier effect is very real and the impact is substantial.
We know, and our customers show every day, the power of putting these three Key Principles to work. In these times of restricted resources, continuing erosion in faith in government, and economic uncertainty, we know these Principles are more important than ever to making government work:
If government relentlessly focuses on results, it can and will make a difference in the lives of its customers.
If government focuses on the right result, the right results will happen for the customers of government services.
Customers experience better results and government is much more ‘on purpose’ when government focuses on results in everything you do – planning, budgeting, performance measurement, reporting, employee performance and collaboration.
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