Description: This book is a comprehensive guide to an exciting new approach that managers at any level can use to transform their corners of government.
Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants an efficient government. Traditional thinking is that this requires a government to be run more like a business. But a government is not a business, and this approach merely replaces old problems with new ones. In their six-year, five-country study of seventy-seven government organizations--ranging from small departments to entire states--Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder found that the predominant private-sector approaches to improvement don't work well in the public sector, while practices that are rare in the private sector prove highly effective. The highest performers they studied had attained levels of efficiency that rivaled the best private-sector companies. Rather than management making the improvements, as is the norm in the private sector, these high-performers focused on front-line-driven improvement, where most of the change activity was led by supervisors and low-level managers who unleashed the creativity and ideas of their employees to improve their operations bit by bit every day. You'll discover how Denver's Department of Excise and Licenses reduced wait times from an hour and forty minutes to just seven minutes; how the Washington State Patrol garage tripled its productivity and became a national benchmark; how a K-8 school in New Brunswick, Canada, boosted the percentage of students reading at the appropriate age level from 22 percent to 78 percent; and much more.Review Quotes: "Robinson and Schroeder have written one of the most important books in decades on improving government performance. A must-read for leaders at all levels who want to make their organizations better, faster, and stronger."
-- Michael Hancock, Mayor of the City of Denver
-- Wendy Kortuis-Smith, founder and former Director of Results Washington, and Executive Director, Virginia Mason Institute "Finally, after all the hand-waving on how to improve government performance, a book that hits the target! Based on crucial insights from extensive research, Alan and Dean show how public-sector managers can create real, sustainable operational improvement by turning front-line supervisors and staff into the primary agents of change."
-- James Hunter, author of international bestsellers The Servant and The World's Most Powerful Leadership Principle "This fantastic book shows how to finally overcome the soul crushing effect of bureaucracy and its twin forces of complexity and powerlessness. With great clarity and insight, it chronicles the inspirational stories and counterintuitive methods used by front-line champions to fight and fix the systems our citizens depend on."
-- Ken Miller, author of Extreme Government Makeover and We Don't Make Widgets
"There's nobody better to teach you continuous improvement than Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder. This well-researched book shows government managers how to make their units flat-out more effective in the services they provide. The authors' previous books have helped so many in the private sector. I look forward to this book having even more impact in the public sector."
-- Mark Graban, author of Healthcare Kaizen, Measures of Success and Lean Hospitals