THE SEATTLE SYNDROME LIVES ON

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 in Seattle about their efforts at measuring performance in the early 1990s, they told us about all the frustrations and were somewhat apologetic that the city hadn’t advanced further in this effort. It was one of the first interviews we did and so we mentally marked Seattle to be evaluated as one of the weakest.

But then reality intruded, as we interviewed people in dozens of other cities, and discovered that Seattle was really one of the best of the pack. The fundamental difference was that Seattle leaders were far more sophisticated in the field and saw that there was so much more work that needed to be done. Leaders in other cities that were laggards compared to Seattle thought that they were doing a jim-dandy job. Indeed, ignorance was bliss.

We coined this phenomenon the “Seattle Syndrome,” to stand for states, counties and cities that misjudged their own work because they didn't know how far they’d come compared to other entities. We also used it to apply to governments in which leaders self-evaluated themselves as strong, when they were doing much less than others and couldn't accurately perceive how much more there was to achieve.

With apologies to Seattle, we’ve continued to talk about this “syndrome” over the years as it relates to a variety of governments and topics. In recent months, for example, we’ve been doing scores of interviews about artificial intelligence, learning how different cities and states are using that new tool. While pretty much all the folks with whom we’re chatting understand that there’s lots of progress to be made, many have told us that they consider the work they’re doing to be cutting edge, when in fact, the cutting edge is leagues away from where they are now.

We’ve noticed over the course of time that this is often an issue among city councilmembers and mayors who don’t know exactly what other cities are doing and so are more than happy to pronounce their own entities as national leaders, even when that’s far from the truth.

Ultimately, the problem is that there’s far too little reliable data that allows cities to benchmark on one another and get a good sense of where they stand in the pack. It’s somewhat less of an issue among the fifty states, where a variety of organizations do a good job covering comparative information. Take Pew’s Fiscal 50 or the National Association of State Budget Officers, which publishes regular reports that are chock full of reliable information for users to compare one state with another.

That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of fascinating reports that come out praising the work that’s being done by exemplary cities. But they tend to focus only on the ones that stand out and leave the average and below average places wondering where they stand in the world. This is more of an issue for smaller cities and towns than larger entities as many of the reports focus on places with larger populations.

For a number of reasons that don’t bear going into, in recent months, we’ve been increasingly involved in research that focuses on small to medium-sized entities, and we often ask the question: “How do you compare to other cities of your size?” The answer almost always is that they don’t know. That’s not their fault, really. Few entities have the resources to do diligent comparisons with multiple other places.

There’s another wrinkle here. Some organizations that do deep digs into the cities’ work are reticent to break out the data from the individual places they look at – preferring to aggregate the data to give readers an overall sense of where they stand. The individual places may be privy to the data about their own accomplishments or deficits, but there’s no great incentive to be ambitiously transparent.

Consider this: Many press releases cross our desks on a regular basis, which proclaim a mayor’s announcement of an accomplishment worthy of note. But the only time the press releases are full of critiques they tend to come from politicians who are intent on tearing down their opposition. And, for obvious reasons, these have to be taken with a grain of salt.

At least when it comes to the financial sector there’s some data (even if there’s a dearth of interpretation as to what exactly it means), but when it comes to other areas, like performance management, human resources, procurement or technological savvy, much less is known.

Before we conclude, we want to invite you into our car on a long trip back from a friend’s home last weekend. We were (as is often the case) discussing our work, and the idea came up that there’s room in the world for a continued comparative look at the internal practices that drive performance in a hundred cities or so. No ranking. No grades -- but a careful look at the tools cities use to manage the business of government and drive results.

Any takers?

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