Tag Archives: Mark H. Moore

35 – Accountability in local government. Who are we really accountable to and why does it matter?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                              650 words

The demands for accountability in local government are continuous. The challenge is that they come from many different places and focus on different aspects of performance.   Sometimes they create conflicts. For example, strict adherence to procurement policies can remove the flexibility required to respond quickly and meet complex community needs. But it keeps the Audit Committee happy. A community interest group gains political support for a project that hasn’t been included in the budget. But the councillor and their constituents are happy. I am sure you can think of other examples. Continue reading →

33 – Developing an organisational performance measurement system. Some ideas.

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                     820 words

I have been thumbing through ‘Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart’ by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, in particular the chapter about performance measurement. In it they describe measurement is the single greatest determinant of an organisation’s effectiveness as a system, and as the primary tool for ‘communicating direction, establishing accountability, defining roles, allocating resources, monitoring/evaluating performance, and taking improvement action’.

I haven’t seen a local government that has actively used performance measurement this way. Instead, it tends to be driven by external accountability requirements. We use the performance measurement that we do to convince others that we are doing what we should. Continue reading →

31 – Measures, targets, KPI’s, KRA’s and CSF’s. What are we talking about?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                              740 words

There is a lot of talk in the public sector about measurement. Some people say that you ‘can’t manage what you can’t measure’ or, ‘what gets measured, gets done’. There is no doubt that measurement is inextricably linked to the pursuit of better performance and greater accountability. In local government, we seem to be desperately looking for things we can measure that will tell us how well we are doing. But are we measuring the things that count? Continue reading →

26 – The first 25 posts. What have you missed?

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                                              1100 words

Writers have posted 25 times since the start of the year. A number of themes and ideas have been discussed. This post provides a brief overview.

The goals are set out in post 1 – track current issues and discuss the issues that are ‘everlasting, widespread and insoluble’ (using the least amount of words). A range of issues have since been covered from the daily media, day to day work life, and the things people often talk about but seldom resolve.

Post 2 and 5 discuss local government services – what we do and how we can define it. The conclusion is that local government needs to provide services that fit within legislated requirements, are responsive to broader community needs and expectations, and meet the individual purpose for each person receiving a service. Each service can be defined as a cross-functional process or value chain.

In post 3 the complexity evident in local government is discussed, including the involvement of customers in service delivery, the variability they introduce, the difficulty measuring service quality or setting service goals and measures, and the impossibility of separating service delivery from politics.

The impact of training on performance is discussed in post 4 in response to media criticism of the Australian government public service for its spending on training. The post suggests that understanding, documenting and improving processes would yield more benefit than providing more training for most councils.

In post 6 the differences between customers, clients, citizens, residents and ratepayers are discussed. Understanding which role someone has chosen to take in an interaction is important in determining the value they expect. This can be useful in differentiating between public and private value expectations.

Post 7 looks at public service job cutting and the link to productivity. Some key messages from the Centre for Policy Development report False Economies: Unpacking public sector efficiencies are discussed. The post identifies the importance of defining public value so that any changes to resource levels can be made in the knowledge of the impact they will have on the value produced.

Post 8 presents an imaginary script for an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ in which he assesses the performance of local government as if it were a restaurant.   Hopefully it is both entertaining and thought provoking. What would Gordon Ramsay say?

In post 9 some emerging characteristics of people and councils are discussed. Obligatory empiricism, oblivious narcissism, and consensual lying are put forward as reasons why councils always seem to learn everything from scratch, leaders set out to meet their own needs first, and why people tell others what they want to hear for the sake of convenience.

Post 10 draws a ‘line in the sand’ with a discussion of the changes that have impacted in Victorian local government since the 1990’s. Part history lesson and part explanation of the present, the post concludes that the most influential change has been to the tenure of the CEO and their increased dependence on the goodwill of their council for survival .

Planning in local government gets a thorough airing in posts 11, 12, 18, 19, and 20. In posts 11 and 12 the current organisational planning processes is critiqued. Posts 18 and 19 suggest ways to better integrate planning. Post 20 discusses the role of the Council Plan.  All posts provide commentary on how to develop plans that are realistic, achievable and focused on delivering the value expected by the community. Constraints identified include the need to work within legislated requirements and the need for leadership to really understand ‘the business’ to be able to implement a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ planning process.

In post 13 the role of policies and strategies is discussed. Are they becoming convenient but ineffective solutions to difficult problems, devices to avoid doing something that needs to be done, or just a way to be seen to be doing something?

Post 14 is an attempt to explain why councils stick with conventional organisational structures and avoid dealing with cross-functional processes; why systems seek to control risk and increase compliance without regard for producing public value; and why council culture encourages people to avoid making decisions. The discussion centres on what an organisational culture survey, an ABEF organisational self-assessment, and the Executive’s risk appetite can reveal.

Four books that should be read by every leader in local government are discussed in posts 15 and 17. The books are Recognising Public Value by Mark H. Moore, The Whitehall Effect by John Seddon, Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache, and The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Each book has a different focus and there is a mixture of public sector and business reading.

Post 16 discusses the rate capping proposed for local government in Victoria. The history of rate capping in Victoria and the long-term effects of it that are apparent in NSW provide a backdrop to a discussion about what councils can do in response. This post covers the potential for shared services and the potential impact on capital and operating budget cuts.

In post 21 the way councillors feel about their role is discussed. Do they feel inundated and manipulated or respected and influential? The difficulties they face as volunteers and in becoming skilled in their role, working together in an adversarial system, and coping with very demanding workloads, are covered. The message is stop complaining and support them more effectively.

What does a high performance local government organisation (HPLOGO) look like? In post 22 a methodology is proposed to define and create a HPLOGO. Based on the work of Andre de Waal, a set of characteristics of a HPLOGO are described (as actions) and prioritised.

Post 23 is a bit tongue in cheek. It is an attempt to pick up on the ‘chip on the shoulder’ prevalent in some parts of local government. Is local government a plaintive country tune or a majestic aria?

In post 24 an article by Frank Ostroff from Harvard Business Review (Change Management in Government) is discussed in relation to making high performance happen. He describes four unique barriers to change in the public service related to leader skills, leader tenure, rules that create inflexibility, and stakeholder resistance to reform.

Finally, post 25 looks at local government budgeting and how it is focussed on the past and has difficulty coping with improvement and innovation.   The need to balance investment in compliance with improving customer service and developing new services is discussed with reference to Christopher Stone’s work on public sector efficiency.

24 – High performance in local government. Part 2 – How can you make it happen?

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In Part 1 I talked about what a high performing local government organisation could look like. In this post I look at how you can improve performance to become high performing. Change management is a buzz phrase in local government at the moment. Everyone in leadership seems to accept that there is a need for change but they can’t agree on how to do it.

Frank Ostroff has some good advice for change agents in the public sector. He says that sustained performance improvement isn’t hampered by failure to identify solutions; indeed, he suggests they are often straightforward. In Part 1 made a list of 24 actions that you could start with to create a high performance local government organisation. Why not just implement them? Part of the answer lies in what Ostroff describes as the four unique obstacles to change in public services.

  1. Leaders are not appointed on the basis of their commitment or experience in reform. Instead, they are appointed for their ‘command of policy, technical expertise or political connections’.
  2. Leaders are appointed for relatively short periods and have limited time to see reforms through to conclusion. Therefore, they tend to focus on quick policy reforms.
  3. Rules covering activities such as procurement, personnel, and budgeting put in place to prevent wrong-doing have made government inflexible. The penalties for failure are also greater than the rewards for exceptional performance.
  4. Everyone has a rightful stake in government activities. Almost any reform is likely to meet with resistance.

I know he is talking about government in the US, and there are some significant differences in Victorian local government. But there are also strong similarities. His four obstacles are just as prevalent, even if it is for some different reasons.

Ostroff provides some insights into the characteristics of successful public service reforms. He describes five principles and illustrates them in some detail with cases. His first principle is to ‘improve performance against mission’. This resonates with the work of Mark Moore about the creation of public value. As with Moore, he says that the mission should be the focus. Improvement in performance achieving the mission (i.e. creating the required public value) needs to be the fundamental objective of the reform program. This makes a lot of sense in local government, where the ‘why’ often becomes unclear or generic.

His second principle is to ‘win over stakeholders’. This is important within and outside your organisation to create a broad support base for reform. His third principle is to ‘create a roadmap for reform’. He suggests three phases; identify performance objectives; set priorities; and roll out the program. It is essential to formulate a vision and set a clear path for reform.

The fourth principle is to take a comprehensive approach. He relates reform to organisational redesign involving integration and alignment of leadership, structure, processes, infrastructure, people and performance management. This concurs with Rummler and Brache and their thinking about the ‘infrastructure’ required for sustained performance improvement, as opposed to episodic campaigns. This involves seeing the organisation vertically and horizontally. They talk about the various levels of an organisation (vertical) and the performance needs (horizontal). I have reproduced their ‘nine performance variables’ diagram below.

the 9 performance variables

The performance needs must be met by the organisational leadership to ensure that work flows smoothly across boundaries. I think that taking a comprehensive approach is particularly good advice for local government, which seems to naturally form silos based on disciplines or functions. Failure to integrate or align is often the reason that reform is necessary.

The last principle is about the importance of being a leader, not a bureaucrat. Ostroff believes that public service managers are inherently respectful of barriers and may hesitate to remove them. There needs to be a readiness to demolish barriers to reform. He says that they are also likely to have to establish trust and demonstrate their sincerity. The failure of successive reforms often leads to cynicism, which needs to be overcome.

Ostroff cautions of the need to be aware of present realities, respect the complexity of what you are trying to do, and to hold people accountable for both results and their commitment to the reform effort. These are key points for local government reform. Present realities include organisational culture and its resistance to change. The complexity inherent in local government activities presents special challenges during a period of reform. Finally, the lack of effort to measure performance and use results to improve seems to be a hallmark of local government. In a reform process there must be accountability if it is to endure once the reform has been implemented.

In a nutshell, formulate your vision, take your present situation into account, seek the support of your stakeholders, set a clear path, be mindful of the complexity in what you are doing, and hold people accountable. Good luck.

Lancing Farrell

Ostroff, Frank   2006. Change Management in Government, in Harvard Business Review, May.

Rummler, Geary A., and Brache, Alan P. 1995. Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart.

21 – Inundated and manipulated, or respected and influential. How do your councillors feel?

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“Politics is the answer that a liberal democratic society has given to the (analytically unresolvable) question of what things should be produced for collective purposes with public resources”.

I was reading this quote from Mark H. Moore (Creating Public Value, p.54) and I thought it might be worth discussing some of the issues relevant to the sometimes uneasy relationship between politicians and the administration in local government. Politicians have a tough job to do. In Victorian local government, the job is made harder for several reasons that are worth some consideration.

Councillors are volunteers. They receive what is effectively a stipend for their many hours of work in representing their constituents. They may have no political experience or skills when elected. They often don’t know the other councillors elected with them and have no relationship with them. If they do, it could be because they have competed with them at previous elections. Often, councillors are elected who have diametrically opposed platforms – they believe their mandate is to achieve the opposite outcome to another councillor.

This situation is quite different to other levels of government in Australia where politicians usually belong to a political party, they know each other, and they share political views and ambitions. If elected to govern, they work as a team towards their goals (or they should do). They are also much more likely to have political skills or experience (sometimes acquired as a local government councillor). They are also paid enough to enable them to dedicate their time to the role, and it is expected that they will do so.

When local government councillors are elected, they have an immediate workload – develop a City Plan within 6 months, approve contracts outside the CEO’s delegation, etc. At the same time, they are learning about the responsibilities of their role – conflicts of interest, meeting procedure, the Local Government Act. And it goes on. Imagine starting a new job (which, by the way, is in addition to your current full time job) and having to learn how to do it while you do it in front of a public audience. It is worth remembering that the public nature of a councillors work is a key factor in the decisions they make.

The skills and abilities of individual councillors and the dynamics of the group are critical to the performance of a council. You often hear people saying that the councillors should ‘act more as a team’; however, a council cannot always function as a team. In fact, the community often expects the opposite. They want to see councillors challenge each other and vigorously debate issues. If councillors do caucus and/or if they always agree in the council chamber, they are often criticised. The local newspapers rely on contention in the council chamber to help maintain readership and will often do their best to create it if it doesn’t occur naturally. In some ways, representative democracy works best when politicians pursue different agendas and there is conflict between ideas, so long as the debate and decision-making processes enable the best ideas to be adopted.

So what does this all mean for the council administration?

For a start, don’t expect councillors to be highly skilled in the role, willing to work cooperatively with each other, or prepared to agree with one another. Be pleased if they are, but don’t be disappointed if they aren’t. Plan for the most likely situation. Support the councillors in developing the skills required to participate in formal meetings, publicly debate and issue, and deal with the demands of their constituents.   Create processes that are tailored to councillors needs and effective in informing them about issues to enable informed and vigorous debate. Make them feel respected and empowered. Not inundated and manipulated. Allow the time required for the council to understand issues and make considered decisions.

In saying this, I am mindful of the workload of councils. They have a lot to do and limited time to do it. I have often thought that the main capacity constraint is the time available for councillors to meet and be informed or make decisions. It is a challenging ‘finite capacity’ scheduling problem and probably should be approached in that way. Ask the councillors how often they would like to meet and for how long. This will give you the available time for briefings and meetings. You now know the available capacity.

Then list the statutory decisions that the council must make (e.g. elect the Mayor, adopt the budget), estimate the decisions council must make that cannot be delegated (e.g. approve large contracts, adopt policies or strategies), and then estimate the time that the administration believes it needs with the council to discuss matters that cannot be delegated without direction (e.g. changes in the operating environment, major strategies or projects). Subtract the time required from the time available. You now have the ‘discretionary’ time available for the councillors to pursue their agendas or debate topical issues of interest to them. It won’t be as much time as they want.

Discipline with time is often not a strength of councillors and they can be inefficient in using time because of the group dynamics. But they have choices. For example, they could choose to increase the time available by meeting more often or for longer. There are limits to this, particularly for councillors in full time employment. Another option is to choose to work within the available time and accept the restrictions that this places on them in terms of choosing what is discussed. They will need to priorities as a group and in collaboration with the CEO to optimise the use of time and meet all obligations. A further option is to delegate more decision making to the CEO and the administration. This requires trust and an initial investment of time in ensuring that the policies guiding delegated decision making are acceptable to the council.

In practice, councillors are constantly under time pressure and often they have not been presented with all their options in a way that makes them feel that they are in charge and making the decision. They get swept into the business of dealing with issues and making decisions, feel under pressure to make decisions (sometimes with political consequences), and their trust and confidence in the administration is eroded. Resolving the problem then becomes much harder.

Councillors are asked to make tough decisions under difficult circumstances. Be reasonable in your expectations and plan to support them in ways that meet their need to feel respected and influential.

Parkinson

Moore, Mark 1995. Creating Public Value.

15 – Interested in local government management? Four books you should read and why. Part 1

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I like to read. I know that not everyone else does and when you know someone who reads and likes to talk about it that it can be a bit painful. Nonetheless, I am going to do it again. This post is about the books that I discovered and found interesting in 2014 – books that should influence management in local government. I think they contain relevant and useful ideas to improve what we do. Ideas from all of them feature in posts.

1. Recognising Public Value by Mark H. Moore. Published in 2013, this book expands on the thinking in his earlier book Creating Public Value (published in 1995) in which he described the aim of managerial work in the public sector as ‘creating public value for the community’. This is the equivalent of managers in the private sector creating private value for shareholders.   He says “… it is not enough to say that public managers create results that are valued; they must be able to show that results obtained are worth the cost of private consumption and unrestrained liberty forgone in producing the desirable results. Only then can we be sure that some public value has been created.”

In his latest book, he takes this idea further to show how public value can be recognised and measured. The central idea is that the public sector can create an equivalent to the ‘bottom line’ available to the private sector. To achieve this, Moore has developed the ‘public value scorecard’, based on the idea of the balanced scorecard, containing a ‘public value account’ (a clear, explicit and measurable statement of the public value they have created and the costs involved in creating that value); measures of the organisations standing with the stakeholders providing social legitimacy and authority; and measures of the organisation’s ability to deliver the outputs required to achieve the desired public value.

In developing his case for the public value scorecard, Moore covers a wide range of issues, including discussion about private and public value; arbiters of value; costs of using public authority; sources of accountability for the public sector (very interesting reading); the public value chain; and the importance of performance measurement. Both of Moore’s books use case studies to illustrate his ideas, which makes the practical application of his thinking easier to understand. This book should really be compulsory reading for anyone in a leadership role in the public sector because it provides a practical, high-level framework for thinking about why a public organisation exists, what it intends to achieve, and how that can be measured.

2.  The Whithall Effect by John Seddon. Published in 2014, this book consolidates much of John Seddon’s writing about the public sector. If you have read his earlier book Systems Thinking in the Public Sector (published in 2008) you will be familiar with many of the ideas. There are five sections in the book. The first covers the ‘industrialisation’ of services and the many misconceptions that Seddon believes are evident in current service design and improvement, especially those borrowed from manufacturing. The second covers his approach, including his ‘Vanguard Method’ used to understand the current situation before improvements are made. The third section is a critique of government ‘reforms’ of public services that have not produced the results expected. The fourth section addresses current ‘ideology, fashions and fads’ in public services. The last section has his recommendations for change in Whitehall to improve public services in the UK. Overall, the book covers a lot of material, much of it supported by case studies.

Seddon is highly opinionated and critical of failings in government policy and action. This doesn’t detract from the fundamental messages in this book; services need to be understood as a system and there are (more) effective ways of doing this; interventions in service systems should be planned and use knowledge of customers, demands and work flow to inform them; measures must be relevant to the customer and used by the people delivering the service.

In a very practical way, Seddon provides tools for taking Moore’s ideas about public value into action. Seddon is much more focussed on private (customer) value, or the customer-defined purpose, and would no doubt argue that fulfilling purpose is a form of public value. In a way, I think ‘public value’ is just ‘purpose’ writ large. This book should also be compulsory reading for all leaders in the public sector. The ones who read, anyway. Firstly as a tale of what happens when changes to services are predicated on political, and not customer or public needs; secondly to provide a way to understand services as a system; and lastly to reinforce the importance of effective measurement of performance.

More books in Part 2.

Lancing Farrell

6 – Customer, client, citizen, resident or ratepayer. Who are we dealing with?

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In previous posts I have talked frequently about the customer. It is fundamental to the way I think about my work. At this point, it is probably important to explain what I mean when I use the term ‘customer’. In simple terms, a customer is someone requesting and receiving a service. Typically, this occurs in a ‘transactional’ setting where the customer pays for the service when they receive it. This happens in local government for some services, for example entry to an aquatic facility. When the payment has been made at an earlier time through taxes, and the service is free at the point of consumption, the relationship changes. In these circumstances, it is not uncommon for people receiving services to be called clients. Sometimes they are referred to as end-users or service consumers.

In local government, these people can also be citizens of the municipality. They may be franchised to vote (if they are over 18 years of age) and then they are constituents of the councillors who represent them. They may be resident in the municipality and receive property services paid for by the ratepayer. They may also be the ratepayer. As you are probably starting to see, an individual can be a fee paying customer, and a client, and a resident, and a constituent, and a ratepayer, and a citizen. Or they could be only one of them. This might be starting to seem like an esoteric discussion. After all, why does it matter who we are dealing with?

I think it is essential to understand the capacity in which you are dealing with a person. Depending on what the person wants, they may have different rights and responsibilities. They may be after different forms of value. If you believe that the purpose of local government is to create and provide value, then understanding the type of value being sought is integral to success. Mark Moore describes ‘degrees of publicness’ regarding value, which change from essentially private value sought by individuals, perhaps as a customer or client, through to public value sought collectively by ratepayers or citizens. I have reproduced a version of his diagram below.

Moore degrees of publicness

A key point is who the arbiter of value is. This is also picked up by John Seddon in his writing. He doesn’t refer to value directly and uses ‘purpose’ instead. It is the same concept. People have an expectation of what will happen when they receive a service. There is a need to be met. In Seddon’s view, it is essential that the service deliverer is not the arbiter of value. Everything must be described and managed from the customer’s point of view. Councils deciding that they know what is best and what constitutes value for their community or customer unfortunately happens too often.

When dealing with someone on an issue, I always try to work out what capacity they think they are dealing with me and the value they expect. Then I work on helping them to understand some of the other points of view about the service they are after. Mostly, people get it. They understand that what they want is sometimes in conflict with broader community needs or expectations. Often, they are prepared to modify their request accordingly.

Lancing Farrell

Moore, Mark 2013. Recognising Public Value.

2 – Why do we provide the services that we do in local government?

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For some practitioners this is a question that is unasked and, therefore, unanswered. For me, the answer is critical in developing my practice and managing for high performance. This is my attempt to provide an answer applicable to any local government.

To begin with, we have legislative guidance. Former local government CEO Catherine Dale, in her thesis for her Doctor of Philosophy, says the functions of a Victorian local government include advocating; planning for and providing services and facilities; providing and maintaining community infrastructure; undertaking strategic land use planning; raising revenue; and making and enforcing local laws. These functions are mostly very broad and open for each municipality to implement according to their community’s needs and preferences. It is a starting point for understanding why services are provided.

Specifically in relation to public services, Mark Moore argues that governments provide public services to create public value. He defines public value as the collective view of the public or community about what they regard as valuable, especially with regard to the use of public money and authority. He says that public managers (i.e. elected representatives and bureaucrats) need to try and understand what constitutes public value for their community so that they can set out to deliver it through their operations and be held accountable for their performance. Moore sets out four key requirements of public managers in creating public value. They must:

  1. Articulate a clear, complete and compelling idea of the public value to be produced.
  2. Develop a set of measures to record performance in producing that value.
  3. Invite and embrace external accountability for defining and creating value.
  4. Create management systems that distribute internal accountability for value creation across managers and employees so that they feel motivated to perform in the short-term and to innovate and learn over the long-term.

A process is required to determine what constitutes public value for each community that includes ways to check in periodically to stay in touch and be responsive to changes in needs and expectations. This could be one of the key objectives of community engagement programs. Too often, community engagement seems to occur so that the council is seen to be doing it, or to consult over a single project or plan. A serious focus on public value would help determine the operational capability required to deliver valued services and to design those services to meet expectations.

In contrast to Moore, John Seddon is less directly focussed on the concept of public value or value in general, and says that ‘purpose’ should be the main focus of services. He argues that it is in the interests of all taxpayers when services are delivered in the most efficient way to meet needs.  Accordingly, Seddon says that understanding the customer or citizen purpose in interacting with the organisation is the key to ensuring that services meet customer needs and expectations. In this model, the services offered and the way they are delivered would be determined by the service consumer and their private value expectation. Seddon places significant emphasis on the worker delivering services and their role in responding to customer–introduced variability and tailoring service delivery.

I think local government is expected to deliver whatever services are required for the community to be safe, healthy and fulfil its potential. This is expressed in many different ways. One council says that its mission or purpose is simply to make the municipality ‘a better place’. Obviously there is an inherent community expectation of value. People are paying taxes and giving authority to the council. They want something in return. As Moore explains, understanding what they want and how it constitutes public value is essential to high performance and success. It should determine the policy settings for services. At the point of a customer receiving a service, understanding their purpose in seeking the service becomes paramount if they are to be satisfied. As Seddon points out very effectively, failure to fulfil purpose leads to ‘failure demand’ and inefficiency.

In a nutshell, the services offered by each local government need to fit within legislated requirements, be responsive to the broader community needs and expectations, and meet the individual purpose for each person receiving a service.

Lancing Farrell

Dale, Catherine 2008. The Role of Local Government for a Contemporary Victorian Community.

Moore, Mark 2013. Recognising Public Value.

Seddon, John 2008. Systems Thinking in the Public Sector.