Project Objectives: Develop advice to OMB on ways to improve - - PDF document

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NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

A White Paper by the Standing Panel on Executive Organization and Management

Strengthening Organizational Health and Performance in Government

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Project Objectives:

• Develop advice to OMB on ways to improve
• rganizational health and performance
• Inform a new strategy to improve

performance that would reinforce other management initiatives

• Outline actions agencies could take to address

specific, practical obstacles to effectively accomplish their prescribed missions

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The Study Panel of NAPA Fellows

John Kamensky (Chair) Jonathan Breul Nani Coloretti Doris Hausser Judy England Joseph Donald Kettl Bob Lavigna Michael Maccoby Donald Moynihan Demetra Nightingale Andrew Podger Steve Redburn Prajapati Trivedi

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Overview

• Why now?
• The current federal performance framework is incomplete
• What we know about improving organizational health and

performance

• Private and public practices used to improve
• Vision and behaviors to improve organizational health
• Principles and elements of a new strategy
• Recommended near-term actions

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Why a new strategy now?

• Current performance framework mainly

engages policy officials, senior managers

• Granular data on organizational health and

performance growing in volume

• Supply of performance data higher, but use by

front-line managers is not

• Current framework is missing key elements

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What would complete the government’s performance improvement framework?

• Make sub-agency units the building blocks for

improving performance

• Link pursuit of performance with parallel pursuit of

increased organizational health or capacity

• Engage lower-level managers and their staffs in a

collaborative effort to raise organizational performance

• Help managers learn how to analyze data to guide their
• perations
• Facilitate knowledge transfer and learning across
• rganizational boundaries

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What we know

• How can “organizational health” be defined?
• What are characteristics of high performing
• rganizations?
• What contributes to better organizational

health?

• What strategies contribute to better
• rganizational health?

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Public and private sector examples

• Private sector

– Gartner benchmarking – IBM’s use of people analytics

• Other countries

– Australia – Canada – New Zealand

• US federal agencies

– Agriculture – Army – Labor Department

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The Federal government’s challenge . . .

• Develop a vision of organizational health and

continuing performance improvement

• Establish principles and elements of a new strategy to

improve organizational health and capacity to perform

• Identify first steps to implement the new strategy
• Continue to learn from experience and refine the

strategy based on evidence.

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Vision – Where We Want to Go

Transform the federal government into an

• rganization that:
• learns from experience,
• constructively engages employees at all levels

in this shared enterprise, and

• continually strives toward higher standards of

excellence in achieving its many prescribed missions and policy objectives.

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Desired Behaviors – Senior Managers

• Managers at all levels share commitment to,

understand agency’s mission and objectives.

• Senior managers act quickly on information

about and ideas for improving performance received from program and front-line managers.

• Senior managers track, report on, and reward

actions taken to address obstacles to better performance identified by managers at all levels.

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Desired Behaviors – Front-line Managers

• Will have a clear understanding of how their work

contributes to agency mission and strategic objectives

• Are given analytic tools, training to manage using an

emerging array of ‘big data’

• Understand need to build high-engagement work places,

act on data to build engagement and assess progress

• Are assessed (and assess own work) based on contribution

to agency strategic objectives and priority goals

• Are recognized and rewarded, not punished, for calling

attention to, recommending actions to address obstacles to better performance 12

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Principles for a New Strategy

• Apply new data analytics to target efforts to

improve organizational capacity and health.

• Extend the federal performance framework to

reach program managers, frontline operating units, and mission support units.

• Use metrics not as an accountability hammer

but to foster continuous learning and improvement.

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Three Elements of a New Strategy

• Element 1. Help Agency Leaders and Managers

Strengthen Organizational Units’ Organizational Health and Performance

• Element 2. Develop a Learning-Based Approach

to Improving Results

• Element 3. Help Agency Leaders and Managers

Employ the Power of Data Analytics to Manage

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Recommended Near-Term Actions - Caveats

• Limits of current knowledge and the complexity of the

task require modesty about how much can be achieved in the near term.

• Near-term actions should aim to:

– achieve near-term successes in addressing organizational conditions and factors inhibiting better performance; and – establish a government-wide learning process that would facilitate agency performance improvement strategies and inform future actions. 15

3 Sets of Near-Term Actions

• Action 1: Use existing data to assess and diagnose the

state of agency and unit-level organizational health and performance.

• Action 2: Develop a learning-based approach to

improve organizational capacity and performance; and

• Action 3: Help managers make effective use of flood of

new data relevant to their operations by giving them tools, skills to manage in new data-rich environment.

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Concluding Thoughts

• Can be no blueprint for a fully developed strategy to

improve government’s performance -- we are too ignorant and the task is too complex.

• An odyssey, not a day trip: arc of history may bend

toward better government but it is certainly long.

• Success depends on our ability to learn from

experience.

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Sub-Elements of New Cross-Agency Priority Goal: 21st Century Workforce