Case Study #35: Obama’s Home Office on Pennsylvania Avenue Is Positioned to Drive High Performance Government

One of the changes I alluded to in the announcement post was that I moved to DC to pursue a career in politics. Just kidding! That wasn’t very funny, I know. What is funny is that quite a few people ask ME for directions as if they think I KNOW where I am going around here (note to self: Buy a GPS).

Speaking of my excellent sense of direction, I got completely lost on my way to a birthday party in DC. I ended up near the White House, several blocks away from the celebration. The White House looked so beautiful and peaceful that evening, so I took in the view for a few minutes before I hailed a cab to get me to my final destination.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Case Study #35 is about the White House, specifically the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB isn’t a brand; It certainly doesn’t innovate, manufacture or distribute products. It doesn’t turn a profit. How is the OMB an example of Stratelysis?

Securing investment for any strategy requires the selling of the strategy to those who have the money to pay for it. As cross-functional teams are formed, NDAs are signed and data is pulled, a few people get the fun job of internal sales. In several cases, business plans are thoughtfully developed by a consortium of subject matter experts, mostly with promising numbers, irrefutable research and maybe a few bullet points about risks and contingencies.

I came across a document published by the OMB called Performance and Management. To deliver high-performance government to the American people, the President appointed a Chief Performance Officer to pursue three performance management strategies:

1. Use Performance Information to Lead, Learn and Improve Outcomes
2. Communicate Performance Coherently and Concisely for Better Results and Transparency
3. Strengthen Problem-Solving Networks

The document proceeds to lay out the Agency High Priority Performance goals. For the most part, each government agency provided their mission statement, near-and-long term strategies and performance goals to execute the strategies. Last night (yes, on Saturday), I counted over 100 unique metrics for 23 different agencies. For several of the agencies, the performance goals in the Performance and Management document represent a subset of all of their total performance goals.

I learned some very good lessons from this document:

Lesson #1: Everyone and anyone affected by strategies should be addressed in strategy statements.

Lesson #2: Strategy statements that are succinct, compelling and inclusive will trump a fancy, multi-colored, chart-heavy presentation.

Lesson #3: Data without context is garbage.

Lesson #4: There is no need to force metrics against all strategies; Some strategies can be measured while others can’t. That doesn’t mean that an un-measurable strategy should be abandoned if its effectiveness can be proven in non-quantitative, perhaps, empirical ways.
I am confident that OMB is structured to successfully deliver high performance government to the American people, but it can’t hurt to still stress the following:

Agency Alignment: Monitoring over 20 agencies with 100+ unique metrics is not an easy job. Designing the organizational support for the Chief Performance Officer to keep agencies accountable to high priority performance goals will be very important as a high performance government is created.

Reaction to Change: Various external and internal changes can affect the execution of an agency strategy. The OMB must establish specific rules and conditions by which a goal can be increased, decreased or eliminated. It may also considering establishing specific rules and conditions by which an entire strategy can be completely revised. In the private sector, for example, several companies drastically reduced their product sales forecasts during the Great Recession.

Dashboards: This is one of the greatest inventions I have ever seen. Agency contacts connected to their OMB counterparts should have an online, collaborative tool where information about the goals is exchanged during a specific time every month. For example, the agency contact submits the data and the OMB uploads the data into a dashboard where the agency contact can immediately see how they are tracking against their high performance goals.

External Communications: As agencies are executing on goals, OMB should leverage the local and national media to communicate wins against those specific goals. Giving constituents and stakeholders the visibility into how their taxpayer dollars are being used will improve the trust levels they have with the government.

This is definitely easier said than done, but at least there is a mandate from above to lead the government into a behavior of accountability and transparency with their “customer base”: The American people. Regardless of who wins in the upcoming election, this mandate should not only be upheld, but reformed as the people who are part of it see opportunities for improvement.