THIS IS A DISCUSSION BOARD PLEASE DO NOT ADD A COVER PAGE OR A HEADING!
This is not an essay, these are disccusion board questions
so they have to be answered individually.
Lecture Notes for the Discussion Board
The Big Picture:
As we approach the end of the semester it is important to focus on the topics of turbulence, technology and preparing for the future. We have spent a good deal of time in this class learning about different leadership theories and performance measurement strategies that could be applied to public, private and non-profit organizations. This survey of ideas and practices is necessary to ground student understanding in these topics prior to moving on to higher order problems. One such area of study is preparing an organization and its people for sudden, unexpected changes. Certainly this is a condition all organizations are grappling with at this particular point in time.
Turbulence is a condition where external factors surrounding an organization shift unexpectedly. This is a reality that must be accounted for, even if the changes cannot be known for certain ahead of time. As a result, leaders are tasked with becoming part oracle, part visionary and part strategist to effectively foresee and address such swings in the environment. They are also required to be part organizer, part educator, and part guide to their followers. In short, their jobs now not only include running an organization in the here and now, but also understanding what it might be like to run that same organization in the future – five years out, ten years out, and even fifty years out. To do this sort of planning, assuming stability in the environment is clearly a mistake. One must assume stability punctuated and disrupted by periods of turbulence, and even the opposite – turbulence that is punctuated and disrupted by periods of stability.
The Close Up:
Given that this is an ongoing problem for leadership, it is also an ongoing problem for performance management. While performance measurement systems are built to count, examine, and analyze data in order to achieve goal and mission attainment, there is an assumption that what is being counted and analyzed has some ongoing relevance to the world the organization is operating within. What happens when that world changes abruptly? Do the indicators cease to be useful to running the operation? Do they have to be assessed because of the new situation, or even abandoned? Do new measures become important at the expense of the old? Are some old and new indicators relied upon simultaneously? Or do all of the above become true?
Return to the performance measurement cycle for guidance here. We start with the mission statement then we build indicators, collect data, analyze the information, report findings and then manage for results. In this scenario the more material we collect, and the more we collect consistently over time, the better we are able to lead our organizations. As leadership becomes evidence based, and sometimes, even data driven, focused strategies can be designed and put in place to tweak small improvement or pursue larger ones. But can this system withstand a shock, and still provide valuable direction? It can if strategic thinking and strategic leadership have been employed early on in the process.
Creating an understanding among followers that things change is the responsibility of the leader. Foreseeing what might change is the leader’s task as well. Given this preparation for change, people and performance systems can become flexible enough to survive shocks. They will then be able to grow and respond to challenges quickly. Indicator results can be reviewed within a shifting context, and can be matched to relevant concerns in the new environment – or understood as markers of what needs to be changed if no longer useful. In the portion of the process where decision-makers use performance information to manage for results, they will be able to account for needed alterations and adjustments in the system in order to continue satisfying the mission going forward. The entire system does not have to be thrown out with the bathwater when turbulence hits. If built to be flexible, and explained as such by leaders to followers, turbulence is not a death knell for an organization or program. Turbulence is simply a challenge to all – the organization, the program, the leader, the followers and the performance measurement system.
The Particular:
We all must prepare for unexpected shocks that create change in organizations. Leaders must think about what could happen in the future that will dramatically alter their existence, and begin to strategically plan. How could any leader have seen these things coming? Well you might be surprised to know that in many cases the potential scenarios that played out had been thought about before hand – even if the impacts of the crises could not be fully addressed when they actually struck.
Part of strategic thinking and strategic leadership is to envision change. This is often done somewhat ritualistically with ongoing SWOT analyses, carried out by high level members of a leader’s management team. SWOT analysis reviews the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the development of a new or ongoing enterprise. A forward thinking leader will benefit from applying this framework of analysis to the organization under study, as well as its external environment. The point is to ascertain, early on, whether or not the venture can succeed (or continue to succeed) – and how to create the conditions for such success if that is possible.
SWOT, used as part of a broad strategic planning process, can be employed to clue leaders into what they should be monitoring in the external environment going forward. As such, clever and careful leaders will see where their efforts at boundary spanning turn up important information about possible future shifts and shocks. Armed with such knowledge, leaders cannot only begin to guide their followers on the possible futures that lie ahead but they can also begin building into their performance measurement system tracking indicators (if they can be designed) that will serve as early warning systems. With big data mined by artificial intelligence more effectively in the years ahead, this prospect offers unique opportunities for advancing our understandings of how to leverage performance systems to stabilize organizations and individuals during times of change. Taken as a whole, such an improved response to turbulence and the future renders both more understandable. It also gives leaders a fighting chance to get ahead of trouble, and create buffers to soften shocks.
The articles assigned for week 12 include:
Kettl, D. F. (2018) The Big Deal About Big Data. National Academy of Public Administration.
Safir, I.N. (2019) Using Artificial Intelligence As a Tool for Your Local Government. ICMA Blog.
Both can be found via Internet searches.
THIS IS A DISCUSSION BOARD PLEASE DO NOT ADD A COVER PAGE OR A HEADING!
This is not an essay, these are disccusion board questions
so they have to be answered individually.
1. Identify one issue you are interested in where you can explain the connection between leadership and performance measurement. Explain how, if at all, the course has helped you understand this relationship.
2. This week we are examining advances in technology that are impacting the world of performance measurement. What other things do you think we need to be keeping in mind as topics for the future in this course? What should government leaders be on the look out for as we go forward?
3. Don Kettl talks about big data being something of a game changer for government performance systems in 10 important ways. Out of his list, which do you think is the most important? And which do you think is the least important? Why?
4. After reading the Safir Blog post about the use of artificial intelligence in local government, do you think there are issues government needs to be concerned with regarding this emerging technology? Safir only discusses benefits. Are there costs?
What could go right here? What could go wrong?
5. What did you find to be the main lessons from this week’s discussion board, lecture notes and readings?