Government Leadership-The Missing Puzzle Piece Accountability

Laura Dunwoody, Director, Resident Engagement, City and County of Denver

Laura Dunwoody, Director, Resident Engagement, City and County of Denver

I started my career in the Financial Services world, Wall St to be specific. It is a very binary Environment. Every day you are either up or down. No gray in the stock market. Much of the impacting factors were not under my control. So, I learned to measure and manage what you can at a granular level. Then I moved to leadership in a variety of public corporations where share price and profits are the King and Queen of success measures. In the 1990s stock options became dominant in most executive compensation packages. This change put much more focus on share price. Being accountable to profits is hard enough. Adding share price to the conversation and not just the conversation, but our bosses pay, required even more diligence.

We needed to back into the performance data required to set goals for, and track to in order to hit our highest level goals. This plan needed to start at the top, but it also had to trickle down to the “boots on the ground” in every division. Done well, we could track data results and see where we were heading from the profit/share price landscape. The early data results gave us what we needed to shift accordingly, as we went along. Should we add salespeople or marketing efforts? The data let us know. Should we expand our footprint or delay putting a green field into production? The data answered that question. The trick here was to understand the story the data was telling and avoid the temptation of seeking data that validates preconceived ideas, because you will find it! You may also end up 180 degrees off.

“I learned quickly I cannot manage what I cannot measure”

In 2019 I entered municipal Government. What I discovered in our shop and in conversations with other municipalities both larger and smaller than mine is that Government often operates on a best effort basis. There is no share price to chase. No profit to be made. No customers to acquire or retain. The rule is- Do not exceed budget. Initially, that seemed like a dream come true! What I experienced though was an organization that was difficult to manage because It wasn’t maximizing its data potential. I learned quickly I cannot manage what I cannot measure.

I began introducing performance metric management philosophy to my partner agencies. They were initially excited, then skeptical. They wondered why they should make themselves accountable to things like SLAs (service level agreements). I offer this answer. Without clear SLAs and data to measure their achievement, you are missing the opportunity to celebrate all the wins in your area. Without it, I get that no one really fails, but no one experiences the great wins either. The employee engagement opportunities are significant and are being missed. In Addition, my city is heading into some financially lean times. The agencies using a framework of performance metric management can confidently make data-based decisions and understand their impacts before they go into effect. Those without it, risk having to make educated guesses.

I challenge my fellow government leaders to look at their organizations from their resident’s perspective. When they request a service, can you set an accurate expectation? Do you measure performance in such a way that you know how often you meet those expectations? Do you measure the components that go into meeting those expectations? If you do, I have probably just wasted a chunk of your time. If you do not, I will suggest you have an opportunity to create an environment where you can effectively set and meet resident and leadership expectations, while giving the team a north star. You now have a team all rowing in the same direction excited to celebrate the future wins!