Master of Public Administration Program Collaboration and Performance Management in Network Settings: Mark T. Imperial, Ph.D. Master of Public Administration

Master of Public Administration Program

Collaboration and Performance Management in Network Settings:

Mark T. Imperial, Ph.D.Master of Public Administration Program

University of North Carolina at WilmingtonWilmington, NC [email protected]

http://people.uncw.edu/imperialm/index.htm

Lessons From Three Watershed Governance Efforts


Research Design

• Project was funded by the IBM Center for the Business of Government

• Builds on an earlier study funded by the National Academy of Public Administration

• Relies on over 100 field interviews with individuals involved in watershed governance

• Data were supplemented with archival records, program documents, and follow-up phone interviews

• Systematic qualitative techniques were used to examine these data and identify lessons


Report Focuses on Two Mutually Reinforcing Governance Strategies

• Collaboration - Two or more organizations work together to deliver services and produce more public value than could be produced when organizations act alone

• Performance management - Includes goals, performance measures, monitoring, and reporting processes designed to improve service delivery and enhance network accountability.


What is a Watershed?


Lake Tahoe


Tampa Bay


Tillamook Bay


Why measure performance?

Performance management systems help public managers, politicians, and the public to gauge the effectiveness of service delivery by documenting:

• What was done?

• How well was it done?

• What difference do these activities make?

“What’s measured gets done”


Clients for Performance Information

• Legislators: want to demonstrate that programs are working or that tax dollars are being widely used.

• Stakeholders: want measures to hold agencies accountable for their performance – or lack thereof.

• Journalists: like stories that compare performance of various jurisdictions on such things as test scores or crime statistics.

• Managers: Want information about how their program is working but fear recriminations for poor performance


Lake Tahoe

Example ETCC’s:Thresholds & Indicators 1991 1996 2001 Trend

Water Quality

Turbidity (shallow) A A A =

Clarity N N N +

Phytoplankton N N N -

Tributary water quality N N N +

Recreation

High quality recreation experience U U N +

Capacity available to General Public A A A +Positive Trend (+), Negative Trend (-), No Trend (=)

Nonattainment (N), Unknown (U), Attainment (A)


Tampa BayTampa Bay developed specific, measurable goals for water quality and habitat restoration including:

• Reduce or preclude additional nitrogen loadings by 17 tons per year to “hold the line” at 1992/1994 levels.

• Recover an additional 12,350 acres of sea grass over 1992 levels while preserving the bay’s existing 25,600 acres

• Preserve and enhance the bay’s 18,800 acres of mangrove/salt marsh habitats, including the 28 sites designated as priorities, through purchase or easements.


Tillamook Estuaries Partnership

Targets for critical habitat goals include:

• Enhance 200 miles of forested riparian habitat by 2010

• Upgrade 50% of all tide gates by 2010

• Conserve and restore 740 acres of tidal wetlands by 2010

• No decline in eelgrass beds due to degradation or loss

As one participant recalled:

“Our concept is focus on what you want to achieve, get people around the table, and do something. Quit planning.”


What are the rationales for performance management?


Evaluation & Accountability

• Common for managers to resist performance measurement and making information available even though politicians, journalists, stakeholders and citizens want it

• Resistance is amplified in network settings when organizations have competing values or objectives

• Network participants may be more willing to accept performance management when they are one of many organizations responsible for achieving outcomes


Steering, Coordinating, & Priority Setting

• In network settings, performance management is more about steering, coordinating, and priority setting than control

• Steering occurs by integrating policies, setting shared goals and priorities

• Performance management can also help avoid “random acts of environmental kindness” by encouraging systematic efforts to address specific problems


Motivational Tool

• Establishing performance measures that are specific and difficult but also realistic and achievable helps– Focus attention

– Encourage action

– Mobilize effort

– Increase persistence

– Motivate the search for effective strategies

• Performance management grabs the attention of staff, managers, potential collaborators, and citizens

• Helps sustain momentum and generates peer pressure to fulfill commitments


Promoting & Celebrating

• Collaboration research is replete with advice to “celebrate success” and “promote accomplishments”

• Performance management aids in these efforts

– Releasing performance reports provides photo opportunities, media coverage, and an opportunity to highlight other accomplishments

– Demonstrating success can attract new resources and partners

– Marking accomplishments and promoting success promotes “band wagon effects”


Learning & Enhanced Governance

• Learn why programs are working (not working)

• Learning occurs at different levels– Managers/staff: Learn about how individual policies/programs

work by looking at disaggregated data

– Organizational: Learn how to collaborate and work together – collaborative know how

– Network/societal level: performance management demonstrates can stimulate the diffusion of innovation and other forms of policy-oriented learning

• Encourages policy changes to improve performance


Challenges for Public Managers

• Performance management raises questions of competing interests and values– Not always easy to establish environmental performance

measures due to value conflicts

• Complexity, cost, and attribution problems

– Lack of longitudinal data on environmental conditions

– Complexity of natural processes

– Difficulty in establishing cause and effect relationships

– Long lag times between action and environmental changes


Challenges for Public Managers

• Accountability is a ‘two-edged’ sword– Constant tension between autonomy and accountability

– Too much accountability can be a disincentive

– Report on collective progress and avoid singling out individual agencies

• Leadership is critical– Respondents often pointed to the importance of leadership

– Leadership comes in many forms - Entrepreneurs, coordinators, facilitators, fixer/brokers, Devil’s advocate, and Champions

– Need a champion for performance management


Recommendations for public managers using collaboration of

performance management to improve network governance


Recommendation #1

Use collaboration when it produces more public value than can be achieved by working alone.

– It is best viewed as a means to an end

– Avoid embracing collaboration because it makes people feel better than conflict or competition

– Unlikely to be a useful strategy for zero-sum games

– When it highlights common values and interests, participants can often find productive ways to work together


Recommendation #2Interorganizational partnerships promote collaboration and performance management in network settings

– Partnerships vary in formality, membership, and complexity

– Routine interactions exchange information, develop relationships, build trust, explore opportunities for joint action

– Provide a mechanism for setting collective goals, establishing performance measures, and discussing information generated

– Membership may require agreeing to goals/measures and participation in monitoring


Recommendation #3

Design performance management systems that serve the needs of network participants

– Produce information useful to network participants

– Avoid the tendency to measure everything – be strategic

– Focus on problem(s) of common interest

– Operate within existing resource constraints

– Simple, cheap systems are easier to maintain

– Out put measures should connect to outcomes


Recommendation #4

Use performance management to promote and enhance collaborative processes

– Structure goals and measures to create a shared sense of purpose

– Measures should be understandable and easy to communicate to the public

– Systems should create regular and repeated interactions to develop peer pressure and trust

– Design systems to steer and coordinate network activities towards shared goals

– Use systems to celebrate success and promote accomplishments


Recommendation #5

Avoid the tendency to be overly ambitious

– Start small and expand over time

– Collaboration is often subject to “collaborative inertia” and is a trial and error process

– Performance management has finite resources, you can’t measure everything – focus on key problems where there is an opportunity to steer, coordinate, and motivate


Questions?

Documents

Master of Public Administration Program Collaboration and Performance Management in Network Settings: Mark T. Imperial, Ph.D. Master of Public Administration