Book excerpt: Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done

This is an excerpt from ‘Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done’ by former Governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker (Republican), now President NCAA and Steve Kadish, (Democrat) former Chief of Staff, Massachusetts Undersecretary Health and Human Services, and Senior Research Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

What Makes the Public Sector Different

In the years of working together, Steve and I had developed a methodology to move from identifying problems to achieving results—one that grew out of our experiences in government and was shaped by our experiences in the private sector. It was an approach born of necessity, because there were limited playbooks and less practical guidance for going from concept to delivery in the public sector.

In government, the high-profile focus is on policy, on legislative wins, and on budget dollars. We believe that as essential as budgeting and lawmaking are, they are only a piece of what makes government work. Our approach focuses on their necessary but sometimes overlooked companions: successful execution and implementation. We emphasize results, not political battles. Our approach maximizes the resources available and embraces the best ideas, no matter their source. It is an approach that bridges divides rather than exacerbates them.

The Results Framework

The method we rely on is not revolutionary. It’s evolutionary. It is a step-by-step process that leads to sustainable results. This replicable framework places a special emphasis on how to implement. It can be read, understood, and used immediately by those interested in improving the way the government works. It’s helpful to any public organization and to many private ones, too. At its core, the approach is about capacity and capability: about recognizing people’s capacity to lead, evaluate, propose, and act; and about an organization’s capability to focus, operate, and execute. It doesn’t reduce important, complex issues to a single, simple intervention. Instead, it is a comprehensive approach that respects the complexity of implementing needed change.

Sustained change comes in incremental steps, each building on the previous one, providing a platform for the next. It does not come from the flick of a switch. Sustained change comes from steady progress. Necessary course correction. Relentless advance leading to transformational change.

The Results Framework has four parts:

1. People are policy (hire the leaders; build a team)
2. Follow the facts (uncover points of pain; gather evidence)
3. Focus on how (what to do; how to do it)
4. Push for results (measure; evaluate; adjust; repeat)

We acknowledge that the basic rules of engagement differ between the public and the private sectors. Think about it. In the private sector, most decision-making is, well, private. Pros and cons are evaluated within the office walls. Any changes are effectively self-imposed. Unless the reason for the change is malfeasance, a massive failure, a meteoric rise, or a newsworthy one-off, the community at large doesn’t hear about it and doesn’t care. A report might appear in the business press, but for the most part the media stays away. When bad news tips into the public arena, it is typically short-lived. Spotlight on. Spotlight off.

In the public sector, policy and operational decisions play out in the open.

In the public sector, policy and operational decisions play out in the open. Every decision, every service change, is fair game to be revisited, evaluated, and challenged by regular folks, interested parties, and aggressive reporters. That is as it should be. Decisions should have impacts. They involve trade-offs, priorities, and risks that can impact thousands, if not millions of lives. Part of the decision-making, then, entails enlisting stakeholders, letting people know if they will be affected, anticipating what might go wrong, preparing a reaction, and anticipating adjustments. Successes will be taken for granted. Mistakes will be magnified. It’s an ongoing public evaluation with an alert media ready to point out failures. Constant media requests. Constant critiques. Constant responses from pundits and commentators. Though it can feel as if every day is judgment day, that goes with the territory in the public sector.

The difference in the context for decision-making is just one thing that separates government from private industry. Let’s break down some others:

• In the private sector, businesses make choices about what to do. It is inherently selective. In the public sector, the agenda is necessarily broad and often imposed from without. It can’t be selective. Many things need to be attended to simultaneously.
• In the private sector, budgets can be flexible to meet needs as they arise. In the public sector, budgets are prescribed and literally take an act of the legislature to change.
• In the private sector, internal management determines who will do the work and how it will be performed. The CEO and leadership decide on partnerships, mergers, and whether to drop or add a product. The organization is free to pursue business best practices and encouraged to do so. In the public sector, the legislature can prescribe what the work is, how it will be done, and who may perform the services. It is a negotiated result that management, aka the administration, is required to implement, sometimes with consequential limits to the pursuit of best practices.
• In the private sector, success metrics are relatively simple and driven by bottom-line results. In the public sector, the meaning of success is continually debated and discussed.
• In the private sector, survival mandates continual innovation. In the public sector, change threatens the equilibrium of the status quo and the sway of powerful interest groups. Also, the ever-present risk of failure has public consequences.
• Most important, in the private sector, if an entity fails, ready competitors usually jockey to step in. In the public sector, although many services can be performed by other players, some functions that have critical consequences for individuals and communities can be performed only by government. Government services may be a last resort or a safety net, or a common good that benefits all. And it may be that no one else will provide them. Failure is not an option.

This concept of making government work, especially for those who depended upon these services with few other options, forms the rudder of my governing philosophy. Applying this rhetoric to people’s reality means proactively working to meet the needs of historically underserved communities, removing barriers to access to services, and providing multiple ways to succeed to meet the demands of daily life and prospects for a better future. Thus, this was a critical lens for every major initiative—how to help those who needed it the most.

Strong public services are an answer to public distrust and divisiveness.

There is one more-fundamental difference, especially in the United States. At the core of our identity as a nation, our government is built on collaboration, cooperation, and compromise. Our founders believed in and structured our institutions to disperse power, authority, and decision-making.

Every step of public work is taken in concert and in constant engagement with steps taken by others. Every issue comes with myriad players, all with important perspectives, roles, and constituencies. Working with others is not just nice to do. It is necessary. No one gets their way. There is no single correct way to get things done. As a result, we need to rethink notions of opposition and to imagine new ways of working across divides.

The strength of the Results Framework is that it builds on a deep understanding of what makes the public sector different. It respects what otherwise might be considered “bugs” and makes them “features.” The focus on people, facts, how, and results moves the discussion from social media stories and urban myths to objective information, evaluation, and action. In the end, we believe that our approach is not just about solving problems, but also about renewing faith in public services. Strong public services are an answer to public distrust and divisiveness. They can be a bulwark for our community values and our democracy.

This is an excerpt from ‘Results: Getting Beyond Politics to Get Important Work Done’ by Charlie Baker and Steve Kadish. Used with permission of the publisher Harvard Business Review Press. Copyright 2022 Charles D. Baker and Steven N. Kadish. All Rights Reserved.

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