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PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

It is not surprising that intelligent young Fels students are often asked, “Why public management?” For it is a difficult time to begin a career in public service. The common man is frustrated with government, finding it both inefficient (wasting money) and ineffective (not delivering). While managers in the private sector have tangible bottom lines to pursue and easy yardsticks by which to measure achievement, public managers must juggle fiscal stewardship with considerations for environment, public safety, and equity. And the geopolitics of today leave most public managers with far too many high-pressure, no-win situations, like homeland security, crime prevention, and dwindling budgets.

But these challenges also create opportunities for intelligent young Fels students to become influential and productive leaders. Disgruntled citizens are akin to dissatisfied customers just waiting for a viable “product” to switch over to. Both governments and citizens are opening up to exciting reforms in performance measurement and civil service. And the fact that public managers are held to account for more than just a financial bottom line also means that public managers can effect significant positive change in important and noble non-financial arenas, like environmental sustainability and “quality of life” and international relations.

It is vitally important, then, for future public managers to understand how to lead and how to produce results. Specifically, success in the public arena boils down to picking the right roles to play within an organization, and finding the right levers within that organization to effect positive change. Public managers who desire to be leaders who produce results would do well to remember these eight principles of public management:

1. Public management is sometimes the same as and sometimes different from private management. Some of the public’s disgruntlement with its government leaders comes from a sense that they are not as effective as their private counterparts. In fact, there are far too many private sector “best practices” that do not get incorporated into public management. Public managers would do well to learn these practices and use them to run their agencies more effectively. But they would also do well to know where and how public management differs from private management. Government functions such as national defense and drug regulation operate under different rules and motivators that what governs the private market. Rainey discusses these similarities and differences, and exhorts public managers to strive for the best of both worlds: incorporating good private management practices when appropriate, but also understanding how to juggle the unique diversity of goals that public managers must strive for.

2. He who frames the issue sets the agenda and wins the battle. Because of this gangly mix of ends public managers must pursue, it is important to define the context of the issue at hand. The current debate on Social Security reform is an excellent example of the importance of this truth. Like most public issues, Social Security reform has several, often conflicting angles for discussion. It can be debated as an issue of budget stewardship, of the government’s role in citizens’ lives, of retirement security, or of age and class divisions, for example. The winner of this debate will be the side that best frames the issue for the American people in a way that is compelling and that best suits a particular solution.

3. Effectiveness starts with setting the right goals and clearly defining them. Wilson argues that the success or failure of government initiatives can be traced back to the very beginning: were goals set, were they the right ones, and were they clear to all involved? Once a public manager has correctly framed the issue and before the actual work can begin, the right goals must be determined. They must be clear enough for all to understand, and compelling enough for all to rally around. A public manager would do well, then, to emulate Wilson and determine all of the players who will be involved in their work – executive/legislative/judicial, external/internal, media/public – and decide if his or her goals are sufficiently clear and compelling to all of these players.

4. Translating goals into action depends on deciding on the best level at which to make decisions. The issues facing public managers are too complex to use old hierarchical structures, in which all decisions were made at the very top and then disseminated down the organizational chart. Effective managers understand that deciding where decisions are made is the most important decision to make. In making that decision, they are able to navigate the tricky interplay between who is closest to the information (often the person at the very bottom) and who is more accountable to the public (always the person at the very top). Here again, Wilson’s multi-perspective work is instructive to public managers, as is Goldsmith and Eggers’ work, which discusses how to balance decision-making power with accountability. Kettl’s System Under Stress uses the extreme example of the 9/11 attacks to underscore the challenge of determining where decisions should be made. The attacks themselves, and the emergency response to them, were a case study in how difficult it is to decide who should be in charge at the street level. Meanwhile, the overall function of homeland security is also tricky, since increased federalism translates into decreased reliance on local self-government and decreased civil liberties.

5. Organizational culture counts for everything. A public manager’s initiatives will only be as successful as his or her ability to manage the organization’s receptivity to it. Almost every lecture and reading stressed the importance of organizational culture. Changes in the IRS, for example, were found to have little to do with changing the information technology and instead had everything to do with changing the organization’s assumptions about its role, its customers, and its approach. Wye offered 39 suggestions for public managers to influence the organizational culture towards greater receptivity of performance measurement initiatives. Wilson’s entire book is about context, and he speaks early and often how the context within an organization determines that organization’s effectiveness.

6. Change happens because leaders manage it. Fels students are book-smart people who have excelled in school settings where success meant getting the right answer. In the public arena, the “right answer,” even if such a thing exists, is just the first step in an inherently political process of change. Wye’s 39 suggestions about performance measurement are based on two important assumptions: 1) performance measurement is the “right answer,” and 2) leaders still have to manage the change process within their organizations if they want performance measurement to work. Rainey also concludes his book with an exhortation for public managers to focus on transition and on the political influence that will need to be wielded to get others to buy in to the transition.

7. Performance measurement connects decisions to actions and actions to results. It is a long way from the planning and strategizing done by public managers and the tangible results observed by the general public, to whom public managers are ultimately and visibly accountable. Performance measurement can serve a number of useful functions to public managers on this long journey. It can be used as ammunition to prove to supervisors that inputs are translating into outputs. It can expose bad performers and highlight good performers within the organization. It can serve as a dashboard of pertinent and timely information from which to make decisions. And it can signal to the general public that the government is action-oriented, results-driven, and open to accountability. President Bush’s performance scorecard is an example of a recent performance measurement initiative that is seeking to accomplish these and other ends.

8. At the end of the day, if you don’t have integrity, you don’t have anything. People expect both public and private managers to be ethical. But breaches of ethics by public managers seem to hurt more, because public managers operate literally within the public’s trust. Public managers can be effective in all of the methods described above, but they must also understand the ethical yardsticks by which they are being measured. The New York Police Department’s crackdown on crime in the 1990’s, the infamous 1985 MOVE incident in Southwest Philadelphia, and the NASA’s Challenger and Columbia disasters are three examples of public officials being judged not just on financial and operational success but also on ethical and moral grounds. Public managers must understand this aspect of accountability and measure up to it in order to be successful.

Fels students that graduate from the program understanding these eight aspects of “leadership for results” can indeed be considered leaders who produce results. They will understand how to initiate, manage, and complete positive change. They will understand the unique conditions under which they operate, and wield the right levers accordingly. And they will do so with a strong moral compass, not just to avoid bad publicity but to generate positive goodwill. If Fels can produce such leaders, government will not only be more productive but it will also be more inspiring.