In God We Trust, All Else Are Required to Bring Data
--W. Edwards Deming
I love you. Do you have evidence to support your statement?
--Anonymous
If at first you don't succeed, hide all the evidence that you tried
--Steven Wright
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Message from Craig...
* *Watch Stacey describe evidence based management in government here
Evidence-based management in any sector is difficult to execute well, and in local government, there is the added challenge of politics and politically-motivated decision-making. As a City Manager/Administrator you are responsible for two things: (1) Day-to-day operations/running the business; and (2) Setting, or influencing the direction of the business to achieve community outcomes.
Each of the responsibilities brings different challenges to data-driven decision-making. In one setting you can largely control the environment and the decisions, in the other, you can use your best professional judgment and technical skills, and watch as carefully documented and supported recommendations are ignored.
We'll examine what evidence-based management means, provide you with resources for additional exploration, discuss the differences in small and large organizations, and debate the impact of politics, activism and bias.
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Evidence-Based Management & Data-Driven Decision-making
If you want to know the impact of your/your City's leadership on the organization or the community, you have to prove it. And to prove it, you have to measure it. What your gut says, what "they" say, is not proof. A finished improvement project, change initiative or capital investment is not proof. For proof, we need objective measures of the results that these investments were supposed to achieve.
We use data and evidence to help us make decisions. We use evidence to determine whether we've succeeded, or made a difference. In both cases, this starts with a clear purpose and specificity regarding our desired outcome. The best way to accomplish this is to 'start with the end in mind', as Stephen Covey says. This enables frameworks and targets to be set so measurement can occur.
A few simple questions are usually enough to launch you forward and keep you on track:
QUESTIONS: What is our purpose? What does a successful outcome look like? What do we know? How do we know it? What do we need to learn? Where will we go for answers?
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Professional Challenges
Managing a local government is similar to running a company with many business lines--you have a wide variety of disciplines with specific expertise required. As a manager, you may feel that you are at the mercy of the department experts--usually Department Heads, regarding the "right" information, data and evidence for decision-making and for assessing progress and success.
A prime, and very relevant current example is Police. Specialized training, equipment and tactics can be difficult to sort out and oversee. Rules of thumb such as "Officers per thousand" and "Use of force continuum" may not only seem logical, but may appear in professional journals and easily searched sources.
However, as with all evidence-based management, you must start with your purpose, your desired outcome and how you 'know what you know' (or don't know). Then, you must hold the experts accountable for showing you the data and evidence rather than justifications based upon their "years of experience" or "professional judgment".
This can be a lonely, and difficult path to follow. You may get strong push back from a seasoned (often older than you) Department Head, sometimes extending to political maneuvers and arguments over whose facts are correct.
Finally, the role of politics. It's difficult enough to stand up and hold a Department Head accountable for a decision based upon data, but when an election is around the corner, or a sizeable segment of the community is clamoring for a choice that does not square with the evidence, evidence is often the loser. Doubly difficult if you have palace intrigue thrown in and a department head or labor union is working against you and feeding the political machine contrary "evidence". Democracy, unlike well supported evidence, is not pretty.......
QUESTIONS: Have you felt inadequate challenging an expert who prefers using their "judgment" rather than evidence? How do you determine the best evidence to use for a major decision? How has politics impacted your ability to use evidence-based decision-making?
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Q4 2020
We're heading into the home stretch for 2020--is that good or bad? Please, let it be good! We've settled into a somewhat comfortable pattern of virtual meetings, however, I'd like to make sure that we are mindfully planning the last quarter. I know that we're not exactly able to predict and plan as we have in the past, however, let me know if you want to keep meeting virtually, and if so, what you want to do about November, which is our retreat month, and December, which is our annual social?
Send me a note via Teams. I'll also check in with you at the meeting.
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And Now For Something Completely Different
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The Akimbo podcast is highly recommended in general, but the Sept. 1 episode is a good one--for many reasons:
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