lead and be prepared to discuss the following two case studies. Case Study 1 Excellence in local government does not com
Posted: Wed May 04, 2022 7:53 am
lead and be prepared to discuss the following
two case studies.
Case Study 1
Excellence in local government does not come about automatically
but rather requires public managers to be highly
skilled in leading change. When Jan Perkins
became city manager of Fremont, California, in 1992,
Fremont, like many other California cities, was suffering from both
economic difficulties and the state's efforts to pull back the
property tax as a source of local gov- ernment
revenue. Yet while city employees were being laid off
and services were being curtailed, citizen demand for
quality public services remained high. More important,
in Perkins's mind, was the fact that
citizens had lost confidence in their
government. For both of these reasons,
Perkins and other city officials in Fremont recognized that
something dramatically different had to be done.
The change process started early in
Perkins's tenure, as one of her council members
proposed bringing in an outside consultant (at a cost of
$500,000) to diagnose what might be done. Especially
because a neighboring city had just done
the same thing and failed to adopt a single
recommendation, Perkins believed that greater benefits
could be obtained by working with those within
the city to figure out how the quality and productivity of the city
might be improved. A facilitated
workshop session, involving top elected and appointed
officials, was devoted to understanding "what we do, how we do it,
and why we do it." From there, the question became,
"How can we do it better? Or, more
specifically, how can we become fast and flexible,
customer
oriented, focused on results, and engaged in important
partnerships inter- nally and externally?" During the
5 years following the workshop, Perkins led a
dramatic change in Fremont's city government, a change built around
delivering high-quality services to citizens,
creating an internal culture built around continuous and
employee-driven improvement, a highly collaborative approach to
decision making and problem solving, and the creation of part-
nerships within the city and with surrounding communities.
The city's interest in customer service was given
initial impetus by com- plaints from local developers
about how long it took to get permits and other approvals to
undertake construction in Fremont. During a time when
eco- nomic development was a key issue, these concerns
were heard loud andclear, and the
permitting process was improved significantly. Similar
concerns were raised in other areas, to the
point where Perkins and her top staff began
to concentrate on developing a serious philosophical and
practical commit- ment to service quality. In part, Perkins
described the philosophy as the Nike slogan: "Just do it."
That is, the message to employees was that if they saw a
way in which the citizens of Fremont could be better served by city
govern- ment, then they should take action. "Just do it." But the
philosophy also reflected an approach similar to the Nordstrom
department store service phi- losophy-of being interested not only
in the transaction (the specific product or service being
delivered) but also in building a relationship (between custom- ers
and the business or, in this case, between citizens and
government).
The city's capacity to innovate has been aided by a much more
collaborative approach to decision making and problem solving, an
approach cutting across traditional organizational boundaries.
Whatever their positions, employees are encouraged to think of
themselves as representatives of the city and to do
what is necessary to provide citizens with the answers
they need. For example, if a planning department employee sees a
streetlight malfunctioning, then that
employee is encouraged to take action rather than just
passing off the problem as one for the street maintenance people to
discover and correct. Similarly, any employee receiving a phone
call about any topic is encouraged to "own" that question
until it has been answered satisfactorily.
This attitude also is supported by a strong emphasis
on partnerships (or col- laborative problem solving) at many
different levels in the organization. Early in the process of labor
negotiation, Perkins created joint labor management com- mittees to
consider "quality of work life" issues through a structured
problem- solving process known as "interest-based bargaining." This
collaborative process encourages participants to identify their
basic interests (before jumping to solutions) and then to engage in
collaborative problem solving to find a way of accommodating the
varied interests represented. Interest-based bargaining was so
highly successful in labor-management relations that the same
approach has been encouraged throughout city government. Training
in the process has been offered to all employees of the city, and
interest-based bar- gaining has become a standard way of doing
business in Fremont.
The same approach to building partnerships through collaborative
efforts is used as the city relates to citizens and to
other nearby governmental enti- ties. City employees do not just
inform citizens about what is going to be done to them;
they also go out and ask citizens what they want and then balance
those interests with those of the city. Beyond that, city employees
and citizens engage in interest-based problem solving even around
issues of how to design a process to involve the public. The city
engineer commented, "We do more than tell them what we are going to
do. We go out now and involve them in the design of the process
itself. The process is laid out by the people involved."
Perkins described the shift in thinking as a shift from gov-
ernment as a "vending machine," where one puts his or her money in
the slot and takes out the product or service (or kicks the machine
when it does not work), to government as a "barn raising," where
many people come together to combine their efforts to produce a
product or service that all can feel good about.
described the change process in Fremont as involving
waves of change, with each wave building over time the
quality of the city's work. Wave I involves recognizing the need to
change; building trust and relation- ships internally; specifying
the mission, vision, and values of the organization; gathering
"low-hanging fruit"; and beginning education and training around
these concerns. The key question here is, "Why do we do
what we do?" Wave II involves deepening knowledge and
skills, improving work processes, reforming the administrative
system. building trust and relationships inter- nally, and
exploring more entrepreneurial activities.
The key question here is, "How can we best serve our customers?"
Wave Ill involves rethinking the organization's structure, making
the boundaries between departments more permeable, providing
seamless service delivery, and deepening trust and relationships
both internally and externally. The key question here is, "Who does
what?" Finally, Wave IV involves forming part- nerships with other
agencies and groups, integrating the community's vision and the
organization's vision and creating interdependencies between the
community and the organization, steering and rowing, and asking the
ques- tion, "What is next?" In this case, Perkins's waves of change
have become an integral part of managing the city's business.
(This real-life case study is drawn from a larger study by
Denhardt and Denhardt [1999) of leading change in American local
government. The entire report is available either in hard copy from
the IBM Center for the Business of Government or online at
www.businessofgovernment.org.)
Case Study 2
In 1993, a newly elected county treasurer in Maricopa County
(Arizona) came forward and essentially told top administrators and
the board of supervisors, "Well, guess what, you guys are out of
money. You have no cash. Not only that. but you are probably $100
million in the hole." According to Tom Manos, the current chief
financial officer, "It was bad that we were that bad off. But it
was worse that that we didn't know. I've looked at monthly finan-
cial reports from that time and from those you'd think everything
was peachy." But financial games were being played and the county
was nearly out of money. Not
surprisingly, Governing magazine described Maricopa
County as a "poster child for bad government."
According to then chairman of the board of supervisors Betsey
Bayless, there began a series of very intense sessions that first
resulted in the termi- nation of the county administrator and the
chief financial officer. All employ- ees were put on a 5-day
furlough-that is, unpaid leave for 1 week, in order to
cut the payroll down. There were also major job cuts. It was a very
diffi- cult period, one in which, according to one interviewee,
"You'd turn over a rock and something ugly would crawl out." Sandra
Wilson, deputy county.
measures in six pilot departments. The board passed a
Managing for Results policy in September 2000, requiring that
participation in the program would be necessary for future funding.
Today the Managing for Results system inte- grates planning,
budgeting, reporting results, evaluating results, and making
decisions about future actions. In
2002, Governing magazine in cooperation with Syracuse
University identified Maricopa County as one of the two
best- run county governments in the United States.
(This case study was completed by Robert and Janet Denhardt and
pub- lished in 2005 under the title, "Maricopa County: A Case Study
in Rapid Organizational Change," by Arizona State University's
School of Public Affairs and Maricopa County, Arizona.)
qoustion
Based on your reading of these cases and your own
experience, answer the following questions. How do public
managers assess the need for change in their communities?
How do they envision change? How do they lead change? How do they
create a culture of change-that is, a culture in which
change and innovation are valued and not avoided? How do the two
cases differ in the approach to organizational change that was
taken?
two case studies.
Case Study 1
Excellence in local government does not come about automatically
but rather requires public managers to be highly
skilled in leading change. When Jan Perkins
became city manager of Fremont, California, in 1992,
Fremont, like many other California cities, was suffering from both
economic difficulties and the state's efforts to pull back the
property tax as a source of local gov- ernment
revenue. Yet while city employees were being laid off
and services were being curtailed, citizen demand for
quality public services remained high. More important,
in Perkins's mind, was the fact that
citizens had lost confidence in their
government. For both of these reasons,
Perkins and other city officials in Fremont recognized that
something dramatically different had to be done.
The change process started early in
Perkins's tenure, as one of her council members
proposed bringing in an outside consultant (at a cost of
$500,000) to diagnose what might be done. Especially
because a neighboring city had just done
the same thing and failed to adopt a single
recommendation, Perkins believed that greater benefits
could be obtained by working with those within
the city to figure out how the quality and productivity of the city
might be improved. A facilitated
workshop session, involving top elected and appointed
officials, was devoted to understanding "what we do, how we do it,
and why we do it." From there, the question became,
"How can we do it better? Or, more
specifically, how can we become fast and flexible,
customer
oriented, focused on results, and engaged in important
partnerships inter- nally and externally?" During the
5 years following the workshop, Perkins led a
dramatic change in Fremont's city government, a change built around
delivering high-quality services to citizens,
creating an internal culture built around continuous and
employee-driven improvement, a highly collaborative approach to
decision making and problem solving, and the creation of part-
nerships within the city and with surrounding communities.
The city's interest in customer service was given
initial impetus by com- plaints from local developers
about how long it took to get permits and other approvals to
undertake construction in Fremont. During a time when
eco- nomic development was a key issue, these concerns
were heard loud andclear, and the
permitting process was improved significantly. Similar
concerns were raised in other areas, to the
point where Perkins and her top staff began
to concentrate on developing a serious philosophical and
practical commit- ment to service quality. In part, Perkins
described the philosophy as the Nike slogan: "Just do it."
That is, the message to employees was that if they saw a
way in which the citizens of Fremont could be better served by city
govern- ment, then they should take action. "Just do it." But the
philosophy also reflected an approach similar to the Nordstrom
department store service phi- losophy-of being interested not only
in the transaction (the specific product or service being
delivered) but also in building a relationship (between custom- ers
and the business or, in this case, between citizens and
government).
The city's capacity to innovate has been aided by a much more
collaborative approach to decision making and problem solving, an
approach cutting across traditional organizational boundaries.
Whatever their positions, employees are encouraged to think of
themselves as representatives of the city and to do
what is necessary to provide citizens with the answers
they need. For example, if a planning department employee sees a
streetlight malfunctioning, then that
employee is encouraged to take action rather than just
passing off the problem as one for the street maintenance people to
discover and correct. Similarly, any employee receiving a phone
call about any topic is encouraged to "own" that question
until it has been answered satisfactorily.
This attitude also is supported by a strong emphasis
on partnerships (or col- laborative problem solving) at many
different levels in the organization. Early in the process of labor
negotiation, Perkins created joint labor management com- mittees to
consider "quality of work life" issues through a structured
problem- solving process known as "interest-based bargaining." This
collaborative process encourages participants to identify their
basic interests (before jumping to solutions) and then to engage in
collaborative problem solving to find a way of accommodating the
varied interests represented. Interest-based bargaining was so
highly successful in labor-management relations that the same
approach has been encouraged throughout city government. Training
in the process has been offered to all employees of the city, and
interest-based bar- gaining has become a standard way of doing
business in Fremont.
The same approach to building partnerships through collaborative
efforts is used as the city relates to citizens and to
other nearby governmental enti- ties. City employees do not just
inform citizens about what is going to be done to them;
they also go out and ask citizens what they want and then balance
those interests with those of the city. Beyond that, city employees
and citizens engage in interest-based problem solving even around
issues of how to design a process to involve the public. The city
engineer commented, "We do more than tell them what we are going to
do. We go out now and involve them in the design of the process
itself. The process is laid out by the people involved."
Perkins described the shift in thinking as a shift from gov-
ernment as a "vending machine," where one puts his or her money in
the slot and takes out the product or service (or kicks the machine
when it does not work), to government as a "barn raising," where
many people come together to combine their efforts to produce a
product or service that all can feel good about.
described the change process in Fremont as involving
waves of change, with each wave building over time the
quality of the city's work. Wave I involves recognizing the need to
change; building trust and relation- ships internally; specifying
the mission, vision, and values of the organization; gathering
"low-hanging fruit"; and beginning education and training around
these concerns. The key question here is, "Why do we do
what we do?" Wave II involves deepening knowledge and
skills, improving work processes, reforming the administrative
system. building trust and relationships inter- nally, and
exploring more entrepreneurial activities.
The key question here is, "How can we best serve our customers?"
Wave Ill involves rethinking the organization's structure, making
the boundaries between departments more permeable, providing
seamless service delivery, and deepening trust and relationships
both internally and externally. The key question here is, "Who does
what?" Finally, Wave IV involves forming part- nerships with other
agencies and groups, integrating the community's vision and the
organization's vision and creating interdependencies between the
community and the organization, steering and rowing, and asking the
ques- tion, "What is next?" In this case, Perkins's waves of change
have become an integral part of managing the city's business.
(This real-life case study is drawn from a larger study by
Denhardt and Denhardt [1999) of leading change in American local
government. The entire report is available either in hard copy from
the IBM Center for the Business of Government or online at
www.businessofgovernment.org.)
Case Study 2
In 1993, a newly elected county treasurer in Maricopa County
(Arizona) came forward and essentially told top administrators and
the board of supervisors, "Well, guess what, you guys are out of
money. You have no cash. Not only that. but you are probably $100
million in the hole." According to Tom Manos, the current chief
financial officer, "It was bad that we were that bad off. But it
was worse that that we didn't know. I've looked at monthly finan-
cial reports from that time and from those you'd think everything
was peachy." But financial games were being played and the county
was nearly out of money. Not
surprisingly, Governing magazine described Maricopa
County as a "poster child for bad government."
According to then chairman of the board of supervisors Betsey
Bayless, there began a series of very intense sessions that first
resulted in the termi- nation of the county administrator and the
chief financial officer. All employ- ees were put on a 5-day
furlough-that is, unpaid leave for 1 week, in order to
cut the payroll down. There were also major job cuts. It was a very
diffi- cult period, one in which, according to one interviewee,
"You'd turn over a rock and something ugly would crawl out." Sandra
Wilson, deputy county.
measures in six pilot departments. The board passed a
Managing for Results policy in September 2000, requiring that
participation in the program would be necessary for future funding.
Today the Managing for Results system inte- grates planning,
budgeting, reporting results, evaluating results, and making
decisions about future actions. In
2002, Governing magazine in cooperation with Syracuse
University identified Maricopa County as one of the two
best- run county governments in the United States.
(This case study was completed by Robert and Janet Denhardt and
pub- lished in 2005 under the title, "Maricopa County: A Case Study
in Rapid Organizational Change," by Arizona State University's
School of Public Affairs and Maricopa County, Arizona.)
qoustion
Based on your reading of these cases and your own
experience, answer the following questions. How do public
managers assess the need for change in their communities?
How do they envision change? How do they lead change? How do they
create a culture of change-that is, a culture in which
change and innovation are valued and not avoided? How do the two
cases differ in the approach to organizational change that was
taken?