Bob is talking about the urgent need for – and benefits to be realized from - government transformation, there is always at least one person who stands up and says, “We’ve done everything you’re talking about. We’ve already re-invented ourselves.” This speaker is in essence saying – We’ve already won the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, the unspoken message behind that statement is: “We, therefore, have nothing else to learn or improve” (**2).
Actually, while winning the Super Bowl is—er—super, it isn’t much of a predictor of future success. Only one of the last seven winners repeated, New England last year. Overall, only eight of thirty-nine winners came back to win the next year.
Let me contrast that Super Bowl attitude with one encountered during a Budgeting for Outcomes workshop held for the city of Northglenn, Colorado last year. Here’s the note my colleague Camille Barnett wrote to the rest of us after spending time with the staff and leaders of this city near Denver:
“I thought I'd share with you something I observed this week while doing a workshop for the City of Northglenn. This organization has gone through a lot of change in the past couple of years, including layoffs and restructuring. They started out by saying what many say: "We haven't had time to fully absorb all the changes we’ve already been through. We are already working at a high speed. There's so much coming at us."
Camille thought she knew where this was heading. What delightfully surprised Camille was their further response, “We've already done so much. It's clear we can do more.”
See for yourself. Here is a sampling of their verbatim written comments:
- “This was an exciting, innovative and slightly scary approach to budget preparation. It seems completely in line with the path this organization is headed.
- “This budgeting process is different from any we have seen. Scary stuff. It breaks new ground. Let’s follow through.”
And, Northglenn did follow through. City Manager Phil Nelson wrote us a note recently - “The budget process went fairly smoothly. …We were able to show the majority of the Council that the BFO process not only helped them to better meet their goals, but also gave them the opportunities to move funds around to address the ever changing world of municipal finance. We put a chart together that shows how each one of our service centers spends part of their resources to meet each of the Council's adopted outcomes. This particular aspect was very interesting not only to the Council, but to employees as well. Staff is in full support of the BFO process as it truly fits our cultural change.”
I am including this story not as a story about Budgeting for Outcomes, but as a story about the power of culture. As you know, an organization’s ‘culture’ is that amorphous sense of ‘how we do things around here.’ In this case, Northglenn’s culture must be one that says, “even though we’re good, even though we’ve already done a lot we can take on more and we will take on more, if it can mean better results for the citizens we serve.” This represents a truly commendable culture of high performance.
So, if you feel you’ve won the Super Bowl lately, or at least undertaken enough to qualify, please celebrate it AS WELL AS remember this exhortation from Helen Hayes -- “What really counts is what you learn after you know it all.”
And, one last comment about the Super Bowl. If you go to the Official NFL Website, you’ll see a clock that is counting down the days, minutes, and seconds to the Super Bowl. I hope your organization’s culture sends that same kind of urgency – a type of internal clock ticking down, “Only 4 years, 20 days, and 30 minutes to transform government forever.”
*1. I’m almost right. Since 1967, the Super Bowl has only been played in February four times.
**2. See Bob’s book - Confessions of a Civil Servant: Lessons in Changing America’s Government and Military. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, for a more complete coverage of this issue.
|
