Are We Driving Strategic Results or Metric Mania? Evaluating Performance in the Public Sector

Abstract

A strategy is irrelevant if you cannot implement it. That is the collective realization of public and private leaders after decades of obsession with strategy and strategic thinking. That realization has led to a voracious market for ideas on execution, alignment around strategy and predictable achievement of strategic results. Many performance management systems or tools, all meant to help organizational leaders implement their strategic goals and objectives, fail to provide results. We suggest a framework in which strategic and operational goals can be translated into a handful of meaningful metrics that we define as whole goals. Whole goals can then used to drive decision-making and to hold leadership accountable for achieving measurable results. We believe the ability of a public organization to measure and evaluate its performance is of critical importance if today’s leaders and managers are expected to promote successful execution of organizational strategic goals and objectives.