P&P June 2016

locally speaking

By Ken Miller

Foxholes or Firing Squads Rethinking Government Accountability

M anagement-by-Fear is the in conference rooms of every size, governors are looking at cabinet members’ performance measures and demanding to know why the curve isn’t bending. There are city managers berating department heads because the trend line is going in the wrong direction. There are federal appointees making up excuses for why the green light turned yellow on their dashboard. Again, nobody calls it Management-by-Fear. It’s called accountability, managing for results, dashboards, scorecards, and STAT, to name a few. Different names, same assumption: The way we get better results is to hold people accountable for measurable goals. Unfortunately, current fad. Across the country,

soldiers fromWorld War II. My grand- father had fought in the war, but, like so many of his generation, he had chosen not to speak of it. I had no idea what he went through until I saw the incredible work of Stephen Ambrose, Steven Spielberg, and Tom Hanks in the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers.” This graphic, eye-pop- ping series followed Easy Company from the storming of Normandy Beach through the liberation and the eventual end of the European conflict. Each episode of the 10-part series showed a key battle through the eyes of one of the true-life characters. You saw what they saw and felt what they felt through some amazing acting and directorial magic. What was most memorable, however, were the last

not only do these accountability systems rarely work (affixing blame instead of fixing systems), they also produce devastating side effects (gaming the measurement system and increasing fear like we have seen in D.C. and Atlanta standardized test score scandals). I used to believe very strongly in accountability systems. As a govern- ment executive and a consultant, I created and implemented every one of the buzzwords from the previous paragraph. And none of them made a bit of difference. Not because we didn’t do them right. Rather, it’s because we have gotten the notion of account- ability all wrong. My view on accountability was greatly changed by the stories of

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Policy&Practice June 2016