Tag Archives: Rummler and Brache

140 – Developing a dashboard for performance measurement. A case study – Part 2.

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Posted by Colin Weatherby                                                                         810 words

aircraft cockpit

Some time ago I posted on my approach to developing a dashboard for my unit. I set out the ‘performance questions’ that I could need to answer at any point in time as I ‘drive’ my unit. In this post I apply the ideas of Geary Rummler, Alan Brache, Mark Moore and Christopher Stone to determine measures and lead indicators.

The performance questions identified in my first post are intended to get to the heart of the ‘performance logic’ underpinning performance management of the unit. Understanding the performance logic is an idea from Rummler and Brache. Seeing the performance logic as a series of ‘performance questions’ comes from a handy paper by Bernard Marr on the Advanced Performance Institute website, ‘What are key performance questions’  and how they can be used to engage people in dialogue about performance and guide the design of meaningful performance indicators. Continue reading →

98 – Is your organisation an echosystem? How would you know, … know, … know?

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Posted by Whistler                                                                                          530 words

The scream

Does everything seem to echo around? Messages are usually heard when they reverberate off distant walls? Management decisions are revisited regularly – ‘Hasn’t a decision been made on that already?’ Worse still are the matters that keep coming up, decisions aren’t made and they keep going up and down the organisational hierarchy. Perhaps your echosystem is afflicted by re-managing.

I suppose you are thinking what is ‘re-managing’. I didn’t invent the term. I have borrowed it from Managing the White Space by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache. They use it to describe the behaviour of senior managers when they re-manage the work already carried out by the managers below them. In local government the senior managers are typically Directors or Group Managers. You may ask why they find the need to do this. After all, haven’t they got more ‘strategic’ work to do? Continue reading →

95 – Making high performance happen through value-led management.

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                                              850 words

tug of war

Some time ago I posted on Frank Ostroff and the barriers that he believes prevent change in government . Ostroff makes a lot of sense – formulate a vision, be mindful of your present situation, seek the support of stakeholders, set a clear path, understand the complexity in what you are doing, and hold people accountable. However, I have found that sometimes you need a simple tool to take those ideas into practice. I was once asked by a CEO.

‘How do you get people to fundamentally re-think what they are doing instead of making incremental improvements to optimise what they are currently doing?’

Maybe this is the answer. Continue reading →

81 – Designing a performance management system. Part 2 – A process.

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                              560 words

measures process a

This is the second post in this series. The first post discussed the type of measures needed to manage for performance. This post looks at how you can design an integrated performance management system.

The starting point for developing a performance management system is the ‘performance logic’ of the organisation. What are the most important indicators or measures of performance for your organisation? What are the key requirements of customers and the main strategic business needs of the organisation? Continue reading →

80 – Designing a performance management system. Part 1 – Some tips.

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Posted by Lancing Farrell                                                              430 words

rummler and brache book

There have been several posts on performance (here, here,  here and here). The most recent by Colin Weatherby discussed his approach to developing a ‘dashboard’ for his department. This post is an attempt to consolidate all posts into an integrated performance management system based on the work of Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache in Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart.

Before getting into the details of how to build a performance management system, it is worth thinking about what you are trying to achieve. From a management perspective, measurement specifically communicates performance expectations. It enables feedback to be provided against a standard and for any gap to be identified and addressed. 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 →

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.

17 – Interested in local government management? Four books you should read and why. Part 2

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This post continues my discussion about the books that I discovered in 2014 that I think should influence management in local government.

3. Improving Performance – How to Manage the White Space on the Organisation Chart by Geary A. Rummler and Alan P. Brache. Published in 1995, this book is quite different to the other two books recommended. It is not about the public sector and it is a hard core management book. The authors have developed a way of thinking about organisations and their performance that is very relevant to local government. Topics covered include managing processes and organisations as systems, linking performance to strategy, redesigning processes, and designing a performance measurement system.

Rummler and Brache apply their systems view by discussing the interdependence of nine performance variables shown in the diagram below.

the 9 performance variables

The levels of performance and the performance needs are described:

  • Organisation level – the organisational strategy, goals, and organisational structure.
  • Process level – how work flows across functions in the organisational structure.
  • Job/performer level – the people doing the work in processes.
  • Goals – the customer’s expectations of service quality, quantity, timeliness or cost, etc.
  • Design – of the organisation, processes and jobs to achieve the goals.
  • Management – the practices in place to ensure goals are current and being achieved.

It is a simple and powerful way to think about organisations vertically and horizontally. In a diverse organisation like local government, understanding the performance variables is critical to improving cross-functional services and reducing the ‘silo effect’ in which functional goals are put ahead of the goals of processes that deliver services to customers.  Read it if you are interested in cross functional processes and improving service delivery.

4. The Leaders Handbook by Peter R. Scholtes. Published in 1998, this book is also a serious management text. Written in an engaging way with lots of diagrams and case studies to illustrate points, it is accessible and easily read. So, don’t be put off. For someone who believes in systems thinking, it contains gems, such as this one below written in the context of performance appraisal and why Scholtes believes it isn’t effective;

“Successful work requires having a consistent and reliable set of systems, processes, and methods by which you and your people design, develop, and deliver what the customers need when and how the customers need it. Systems are created, sustained, and improved by insightful and interactive work on the system, not by using carrots and sticks. Measurable goals do not improve systems. Improving systems improves systems (p.303).”

Chapters cover a wide range of topics including, systems thinking; giving meaning, purpose, direction and focus to work; leading by asking good questions; and performance without appraisal. It is clear that Scholtes (a colleague of W. Edwards Deming) values systems and statistical thinking, relations with people, and learning to master improvement. He sees organisations as ‘complex systems of social networks and technical processes in which simplistic approaches will not help resolve complex problems’. He identifies 6 leadership competencies:

  1. Systems thinking – understanding the difference between systems and structure or policy; and seeking systemic causes, not culprits.
  2. Variability at work – knowing the difference between common cause and special causes of variation.
  3. Learning – understanding when a statement is theory or opinion versus fact, and acting accordingly; and knowing the difference between change and improvement.
  4. Psychology and human behaviour – understanding and applying the concepts of internal versus external motivation and demotivation.
  5. Interactions – seeing the interdependencies between systems thinking, variation, learning and human behaviour.
  6. Vision, meaning, direction and focus – providing clarity of purpose and developing and continuously communicating a clear sense of direction and focus.

Scholtes sets out a new paradigm for leadership for complex socio-technical systems.  Local government, with its political and organisational challenges, is nothing if not complex (as discussed in post 3).

I challenge you to read these books and then decide whether you think about your organisation as a system and if it is really focussed on creating public value by fulfilling customer-defined purpose through effective and efficient processes where variation is understood and performance is measured.

Lancing Farrell

5 – Local government services. How to define them?

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In the last of this series of posts on services (see posts 2 and 3), I discuss ways to define services. The complexity described in the previous post will be evident here too. Unfortunately, nothing in local government is as simple as it could or should be.

You often hear councils described as ‘service organisations’ or being in the ‘service business’. As previously discussed, one of the main reasons local government exists is to ensure that a wide range of services are available to a community. This often means that the council delivers those services. What you don’t often hear about is a concise description of those services, a ‘service catalogue’ if you like. A list of services that helps everyone to understand what services the organisation will provide (and by implication, what services it will not provide). Knowing this should be a key element of organisational strategy (along with who are or are not customers, and how services will be provided efficiently).

Defining services should be straightforward. After all, we are delivering them every day and, in most cases, have been doing so for many years. In Victoria, councils are being asked to define services as part of a sector-wide asset management improvement program. A simple survey of councils revealed very different ideas about what constitutes a service. One council said that it had about 20 services, each defined by a department of the council. Another said that it had about 40 services, each defined by a unit within the council organisational structure (typically several units will form a department). A third council said that it had over 300 services, each defined by a cost centre in the council budget. The assumption seems to be that the organisational structure or budget defines services. This is expedient, but have they really defined services?

The Australian Centre for Excellence in Local Government conducted a review of service delivery reviews in 2012. They found that the ‘interpretation of the term ‘service’ for the purpose of reviews varied considerably between councils. Some councils defined services at a broad level and selected about 40 service groups or packages. Others broke them down into as many as 200 to audit and analyse their services at a detailed level’. Most councils differentiated between services to internal and external customers, and between those required to be provided due to a statutory obligation from those where there was discretion over provision. No criteria for defining services were identified in the report.

Geary Rummler and Alan Brache say that the work flow across functional boundaries is ‘how work gets done’. They contend that organisations produce their outputs through numerous cross functional work processes. If that is the case, then services are cross functional processes. Defining them according to functions is unlikely to be accurate.

I think that a useful definition of a service in local government is ‘an ‘end to end’ process that delivers an output to an identified customer’. The service could be part of a set of services that combine to deliver an output or outcome, which is probably better described as a value chain.

There are challenges in defining services as value chains or cross functional processes. To begin with, it challenges conventional thinking about how local government organisations work. Traditional power bases can be threatened if one disciplinary group no longer has control over a service. There will be a need for customer-focussed and process driven performance measures that are aligned with measures of the contributions of functions to the service. Rummler and Brache suggest appointing process owners, who they describe as the conscience, evaluator and champion of a process.

Thinking of services as processes will require fundamental changes in the way the organisation operates but it is more likely to result in high performance in service delivery.

Lancing Farrell

Australian Centre for Local Government Excellence 2012. Service delivery reviews in Australian local government.

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

Addendum 5 February 2023

A recent insight into use of a service catalogue has revealed that there need to be two catalogues – one that is external facing and used to help customers know what is available and another that is internal facing so that employees know what they are supposed to do. Someone I know who is studying to be a chef highlighted this difference for me. Their initial training was in how to prepare a meal from end to end as it appears on the menu. This gave them fundamental kitchen and cooking skills. Then the training moved to ‘station’ based food preparation where they are learning to work at a station with another chef to prepare one part of the meal. They are now contributing to a process organised and overseen in the kitchen by the head chef. The menu means nothing now and the work is determined by the service design in the kitchen.

Catalogue number one is the menu (i.e. steak and salad) and it is displayed in the restaurant. Catalogue number 2 is the organisation of work (i.e. work at the grill or the salad station) and it is known only to the workers.