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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
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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
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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.
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What is a Watershed?
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Lake Tahoe
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Tampa Bay
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Tillamook Bay
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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”
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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
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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)
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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.
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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.”
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What are the rationales for performance management?
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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
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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
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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
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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”
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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
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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
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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
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Recommendations for public managers using collaboration of
performance management to improve network governance
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Questions?