B&G REPORT.

As readers of this website know, we’re always on the lookout for exciting new programs and policies in state and local government. There are plenty of them out there. Not only do they provide fodder for this space, but we’re always pleased to share them with our friends, many of whom have come to believe that nothing good is happening in government today. But here’s our problem. After some time passes and we want to refer again to our original discovery, it’s often the case t

We’ve been obsessed with the World Cup this year. Our love for soccer emanated from the days when our daughter, who earned her doctorate two years ago, was playing the game on multiple teams. That inspired the following column, which originally ran in Governing back in 2004. We think that it still stands up. We’ve spent years giving speeches and writing articles about managing for results, explaining the fine points of establishing mission statements, goals and targets. We’

Many years ago, when we were involved in evaluating the management capacity of the nation’s largest cities, one of the areas of inquiry was performance management (which we then were calling “management for results”). This early exercise – one of the first in a line of work that ultimately led to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Government Performance Project– was largely reliant on journalistic-style interviews, supplemented with a survey instrument. When we interviewed the people

Two of the most-repeated aphorisms pertaining to performance management have long been “What Gets Measured Gets Managed,” or, optionally,...

Aristotle had it right when he wrote, “The more you know, the more you know you don't know.” We’ve come across this idea repeatedly over...