by Dave Mader, Jeff Myers and Steven Kelman, Ph.D.
The broad, sometimes little-defined concept of “change” was a defining element of the 2008 Presidential election. Now, our new President is faced with having to deliver on that promise of change in one of the most challenging economic times that the Country has faced since the Great Depression.
But what organizational strategies work best for delivering effective, meaningful change in government—and which do not? If there is a recipe for the implementation of successful change in government, what are its core ingredients?
To help agency leaders meet this challenge, Booz Allen Hamilton teamed with Harvard University Professor of Public Management Steven Kelman to identify the common methods—the best “leadership practices”—used by successful government executives to transform their agencies and achieve mission goals.
The study’s authors solicited members of National Academy for Public Administration and fellows of the Council for Excellence in Government with a simple-but-provocative request: that they nominate two federal agency leaders, from the past 18 years—George W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton Administrations—who, in the estimation of those polled, tried to make a significant change in strategy and succeeded, and two whom they believe failed.
Two hundred nominations came back. The most commonly occurring names in each camp—e.g., as “successes” and “failures”—formed the basis of the study’s remit, which took in 12 federal agencies.
Note: Although, the authors can share the identities of the some of the successes, those deemed unsuccessful will remain unnamed—although the factors and decisions that contributed to their lack of success are fair game for discussion.
While the study is obviously heavily focused on the Federal Government, the lessons learned and insights reached will offer great value and utility to a diverse range of senior managers, across both the private and public sectors. In addition, the topicality of the subject of “change in government,” and the overall interest surrounding the new administration and its effectiveness in delivering change, makes the article very timely.
Methodology: The study—conducted by a team of government-sector analysts from Booz Allen Hamilton and a Harvard University Professor of Public Management—was carried out over 18 months (concluding in March 2009) and focused on 12 federal cabinet and sub-cabinet level agencies and their leaders from the two most recent Presidential Administrations, i.e., Presidents Clinton and Bush.
During that time, more than 250 interviews were conducted—among the interviewees were federal agency planning directors, budget managers, human resources managers, operational managers, and Congressional liaisons and communications directors.
In addition, individuals from outside each agency, including relevant union representatives, OMB examiners, Congressional staff (House & Senate, Appropriations & Authorizing Committees, majority and minority parties), and GAO evaluators, were interviewed.
The authors interviewed the counterpart to each “successful” agency leader, that is, a person who led the same agency during a different Presidential administration. Thus, if the successful leader was, for example, George W. Bush’s first appointee, the counterpart would be Bill Clinton’s first appointee to the same position. These interviews provided a larger control group against which to contrast techniques used by successful leaders. Finally, to supplement oral interviews and recollections, the authors gathered and reviewed strategic plans, testimony at confirmation hearings, and other relevant, publicly available documents.
Author bios:
The article will expand on these key findings of the study:
As explored in our study, between the time they were nominated and their confirmation (a period which can extend six months or more) the most successful leaders used this period to interact with stakeholders and start to develop their strategy. The successful leaders did so proactively more often than the control group did by a ratio of more than 2-to-1.
Successful leaders generally focus on three, or fewer, defined goals. Failures often used four or more. However, it’s not as simple as limiting your number of goals. Successful agency leaders have goals that are outcome-oriented (i.e., those that result in improved results for customers, in an observable way.) Unsuccessful leaders most typically have tactical, action-based goals—“We need a new computer network;” “We need a new payroll system;” “We need a new building.” Moreover, the goals of successful leaders are intuitive (e.g., make common sense), free of unnecessary jargon, and are communicated consistently across audiences.
Nearly every successful leader emphasizes a collaborative style of developing and implementing change, while few of the counterpart leaders (those who do not attempt ambitious change) do so. Interestingly, the successful agencies also typically have a smaller percentage of political appointees than do federal agencies on average.
Successful agency leaders report focusing nearly half their time (an average of 46 percent) on efforts inside the agency (vs. outside the agency with media and interest groups). They spend the internal time building capability, providing vision and guidance, and holding people accountable. Unsuccessful leaders spend just one quarter of their time internally (an average of 27 percent).
Most successful agency leaders use performance measures to move their agenda forward, while most unsuccessful leaders do not. Where they use measures, the failures most often evaluate only cost and production, while successes more often add measures of customer satisfaction and quality. A few successful leaders chose to rely on measures developed for their “industry” by outside organizations—something akin to a Ford executive paying attention to JD Powers quality ratings rather than his own staff’s reports on the quality of the cars they make.
A sizable majority of successful leaders reorganize their agencies—not because they “want” to do so, but because they believe the organization’s structure will hinder the achievement of their goals. Leaders who end up being unsuccessful rarely reorganized their agencies.
Many leaders assume that the bully pulpit of the White House is a strong tool to change public strategy. In reality, most agencies and leaders make their case to their customers, employees and Congress without seeking active support from the White House.
The study also found several mistakes that leaders in past administrations made (and that some current leaders may now be making):
A common feature of unsuccessful leaders is that they set strategy quickly (not always by their own preference), often without good data on customer needs, stakeholder expectations, or employee ideas about what can be implemented. A poor process (or no process) for setting strategy almost always produces strategies that fail to get implemented and fail to achieve the desired results.
Successful leaders actually report spending slightly less time (about ten percent less) on the job than unsuccessful leaders. But successful leaders spend their time more effectively. For example, successful leaders work proactively with Congress and stakeholders to set the agenda, present, and justify their strategy. Their reports indicate that this requires a smaller portion of their time than is the case for a control group, who primarily deal with Congress and stakeholders reactively (defending budgets, preparing extensively for skeptical hearings).
Both successful and unsuccessful leaders focus on building employee support for change (for example, appealing to their employees’ public service motivation). However, unsuccessful leaders do not focus on improving organizational performance in general (using performance measures, strategic planning, reorganization, and focusing on just a few goals), while successful leaders do.
In choosing cases to examine, the authors sought to avoid the pitfalls of so-called “best practices” research that draws conclusions based only on successful cases. Central to the research design was the creation of a control group alongside the successful executives, so that the actions of successful leaders could be compared with those of others. The authors therefore asked experts to nominate not only successful leaders but also individuals who had "run into significant difficulties" in executing their agendas. Because the experts nominated far more successes than failures, the authors developed an additional source of comparisons to the successes, the “counterpart” to each successful leader that were mentioned above.
To evaluate the cases, a literature review was conducted to identify techniques for strategy development and implementation. The result was 34 hypotheses—each a technique for implementing a change in strategy. These hypotheses were grouped into three categories:
In order to gain cooperation from the leaders and agencies (unsuccessful and successful), the authors promised not to reveal the identities of the agencies or leaders.
Based on the data described above, the authors applied strict criteria to determine whether each agency employed the technique fully (
), partially (
) or not at all (
). Results take the following format:
* Note: An asterisk means too little data was available to conclude whether the agency did this.
In the above example, it is easy to see that the successful cases (numbered 1 through 8) established an estimate of resource constraints to guide their strategy development, while the less successful organizations (numbered 9 through 11) did so less consistently or not at all. For each of our 34 hypotheses (such as the one shown above), a consistent rating criteria was applied to each case, as shown below:
While this methodology does not allow a conclusion as to causality, it provides a robust picture of what is common across the leaders and agencies that succeeded in making a major change in government, and what differentiates them from those who did not succeed, or did not try. In this way, it can help current leaders chart their course toward delivering real change in their organization.
