The thread holding these concepts and practices together is dynamic leadership. As cities become more responsive and practitioners turn to digital governance, an effective leader remains the driving force that puts digital tools and smart solutions to work. Behn explains that "in trying to understand any effective PerformanceStat, too many people seek to catalog the explicit components of the organization's system. Thus, they fail to appreciate the leadership team's subtle tacit behaviors." Such tacit knowledge evades explanation; it can only be shown, not told. Accordingly, a chief executive -- whether a program coordinator, department head or city manager -- must produce what Behn identifies as the "human components of organizational competence." These include a results-focused mindset, an analytical-learning bent, a diversity of leadership roles and purpose-driven persistence.
A competent organization is formed by competent members. In the traditional model, public employees are given a set of prescribed responses to situations they may encounter. But these rules, when applied to specific contexts, often defy intuition. Common sense and innovative thinking cannot be codified. Government in general, and Stat programs in particular, are most effective when the bureaucratic overseers allow civil servants to use discretion. This makes it possible to identify "positive deviants" -- those individuals who are doing their work better, whether they know it or not, and who hold the key to discovering what works in the highly contextual frame of a specific jurisdiction. Likewise, the poorest performers can be identified and enabled to improve. The Stat process reframes accountability, too often thought of as a finger-pointing game of benchmarking performance, into a model of personal responsibility, organizational learning and productivity growth. "To be truly effective, to help all subunits improve their results," Behn argues, "a PerformanceStat has to be more about learning than about accountability.
Such learning requires thorough employee feedback. When managers deftly blend criticism and encouragement, feedback is motivating. Motivation boosts effort, and effort improves outcomes. These outcomes, in Stat programs, are in turn subject to evaluation as action, feedback and motivation are streamlined into a permanent cycle. This loop fosters efficiency, but it must be maintained until it becomes habit. "Ratcheting up performance is an addiction strategy," Behn tells us. For that addiction to catch on, it needs a committed champion who will work with and through the entirety of the organization.
The word "potential" in the book's title is an apt disclaimer for the promise of PerformanceStat. Behn details some of its successful iterations -- as CitiStat in Baltimore, BlightStat in New Orleans and MentalHealthStat in Los Angeles, for instance -- but is also careful to explore instances in which it did not add value. In fact, Behn does not describe the idea of PerformanceStat so much as he performs it. With a compelling mix of context-heavy story-telling, integrated analysis of civic data, and insistent discrimination of cause and effect, his delivery follows the leadership strategy he outlines from the outset.
The result is a guide for understanding PerformanceStat in totality, from its theoretical framework all the way down to the arrangement of the meeting room, so that practitioners can learn from examples and apply the strategy to governments large and small, agencies national and local, and everywhere in between.
