Alan G Robinson - Practical Innovation in Government: How Front-Line Leaders Are Transforming Public-Sector Organizations

Practical
Innovation
in Government

Practical
Innovation
in Government

HOW FRONT-LINE LEADERS
ARE TRANSFORMING
PUBLIC-SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS

ALAN G. ROBINSON and DEAN M. SCHROEDER

Practical Innovation in Government

Copyright 2022 by Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

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First Edition

Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-0178-1

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-0179-8

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-0180-4

Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-0181-1

2022-1

Book producer and text designer: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama Cover designer: Kim Scott/Bumpy Design

To the people on the front lines of our
public-sector organizations.
With their creativity and ideas,
we can transform government operations.

We never set out to write a book about improving government operations. We were drawn in slowly as we learned more and as the potential of what we were discovering became increasingly apparent. Throughout our careers, our work has centered on high-performance organizations. Until recently this meant that we studied and worked primarily with private-sector companies.

But a few years ago, we became aware of some impressive improvement efforts in public-sector organizations. Fascinated, we started to visit them and look into what they were doing. Gradually, as we identified and visited more such organizations, it became clear that the highest performers were using approaches that, although rare in the private sector, were proving astonishingly effective in a government setting. In fact, some of these organizations had attained levels of efficiency and service that rivalled the best private-sector companies anywhere.

For decades, most books on improving government operations have assumed that the only way to do this is to make sweeping changes, such as dismantling bureaucracy, privatizing services, reengineering budgeting and purchasing processes, or eliminating cumbersome rules and policies. Underlying this line of thinking is that in order to be more efficient, government needs to be run more like a business. Unfortunately, this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones.

What we discovered in our research was compelling. The organizations we studied had dramatically improved their performance within existing government constraints. In other words, their methods accepted government on its own terms, with its needed checks and balances, its complex public mission, its inherent political character, its diverse stakeholder demands, and with its operating goals that transcend narrow financial concerns. And the interest in improvement came from across the political spectrumthere was no pattern associating the improvement initiatives with any particular political orientation. What we were seeing was practical innovation in government.

In the beginning, we had expected to find that successful improvement and innovation efforts in the public sector would look very much like they did in well-run private-sector companies, perhaps with some contextual adjustments. But we found these initiatives using a fundamentally different approach, and it was a game-changer. Rather than most improvement efforts being driven by middle and upper managers, as is typical in the private sector, the primary champions of change in the high-performing government organizations were low-level managers and front-line employees.

As we learned more, what had begun as a personal curiosity turned into a book that simply had to be written. Written for front-line supervisors and managers interested in dramatically improving the performance of their units by creating an engaged workforce. Written for higher-level government managers and elected officials looking for a practical way to transform the operations of a large department, a city, or even an entire state. Written for the professionals, senior staff, and thinkers about government who have the ear of public-sector leaders and managers. And finally, written for students of public administration, who are the future of government.

The books stories and insights are drawn from extensive field research and interviews with people at all levels of the organizations we studied. Our goal is to demonstrate the enormous potential of front-linedriven improvement for you and your organization, to inspire you to try it yourself, and to provide you with a well-grounded and realistic guide to help you succeed in improving your own part of government.

We hope you find Practical Innovation in Government both useful and enjoyable.

W hether people want more government or less government, they all want efficient government. Unfortunately, public-sector organizations are generally not known for their operational excellence. Recently, however, a small but growing number of public-sector organizations around the world have demonstrated that it is possible to dramatically improve performance in a government setting. We spent six years studying improvement efforts in over seventy government organizationsranging from small departments to entire statesin five countries. Some were struggling or had already failed. Others were just getting started or had made limited progress in specific areas. But a handful of high performers had developed truly world-class levels of efficiency and service. Our intent was to discover how these high performers had succeeded in transforming themselves when so much of government has not.