I was flying back from Cleveland this past week after teaching a class on performance measurement to a group of city and county officials. One key lesson I tried to impart to students is that measuring performance in the delivery of public service, while a worthy endeavor, is not in the same league as managing performance. The former wields the yardstick periodically; the latter strives to find new ways to align people, processes and technology to improve service delivery, customer satisfaction and the attainment of results.

Pondering Performance
As I thought about performance management in the (not-so) glorified air (and painful seating) of coach class, my mind wandered to some public opinion polls I've seen recently from Gallup, Pew, U.S. News and World Report and Davis, Hibbitts and Midghall describing the continuing erosion of citizen confidence in our elected officials ... and in our public institutions. This is not a new condition caused by the problems in Iraq, New Orleans or K-12 education. In The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis, David Osborne and Peter Hutchinson argue that our country has been at war with the public sector since June 6, 1977, when the Proposition 13 tax revolt was born in California. What is new and troubling, however, is just how far civic institutions have sunk in the eyes of the public. Public enterprises are facing a clear and imminent danger.

Responding to the citizen confidence challenge starts with getting serious about measuring the perception and satisfaction of the citizens and businesses we exist to serve. This can be done through polling, focus groups, surveys, customer boards of advisers and even walking around. What we learn from our customers tells us where we are succeeding and where we are falling short. Where we fall short tells us where we must get serious about managing performance.

Sometimes the performance shortfall is fairly small and can be fixed by tweaking or augmenting the existing system of people, processes and technology. In other cases, the performance deficit is so large that remodeling or tweaking can't cure it. It can only be addressed by serious innovation - by introducing entirely new ways of doing business. Quite simply, successful innovation begets performance, so innovation should be at the top of the mind for CIOs, and other public managers and leaders.

Holding the Horses
There are often multiple impediments that conspire against innovation. Today's climate of defensiveness by government is certainly one factor. Organizational and political leaders in most places are very risk averse. Lack of a clear understanding of citizens' expectations can be another. So, too, is the shortage of courageous leaders willing to take on the burden and responsibilities of innovation. You have to be fanatical about innovation to really make a difference and, as Sir Winston Churchill once wryly observed, a fanatic is one who "can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

Perhaps the most significant factor is the culture of government, as illustrated by the late historian Elting E. Morison in Men, Machines, and Modern Times.

At the beginning of World War II, the British Army was still using light artillery from the Boer War and World War I. These field pieces had been around for more than 40 years, but by the late 1930s and early 1940s, they were pulled by trucks instead of horses.

Some officers sensed that the performance of these weapons could be improved by increasing their "rapidity of fire." A time-motion expert was engaged to suggest ways to simplify the firing procedures. "Puzzled by certain aspects of the procedures, he took some slow-motion pictures of the soldiers performing the loading, aiming, and firing