Performance deficit: Why public managers need to focus on it: public executives face multiple performance deficits. By focusing on a few key ones, they can drive their agency to do the analytic work necessary to learn their causes and the operational work necessary to eliminate them.(Commentary)

Today, all public agencies have performance measures--lots of performance measures. They have to. Their stakeholders want measures. The legislature is insisting on measures. The budget office is requiring measures. Today, if you are a public executive, you need to have some performance measures.

In fact, the more, the better. If my budget shop or legislature was demanding performance measures, I would ask: "How many do you want?" Then, I would give them three or four times as many

Why? Because some of these many measures will always go up. I can take credit for this. Sure, some measures will go down. But, I can offer logical explanations (call them excuses) for why this happened.

Next year, of course, different measures will go up; different measures will go down. So, I will take credit for the ones that have improved: "See, I responded to your concerns, shifted my priorities, and the results demonstrate my leadership." And I will offer new, creative explanations for the measures that have gone in the wrong direction.

The more measures a public agency has, the easier it is for its managers to claim that they are doing something. Of course, with more measures, it is easier for critics to claim that these managers are doing little.

Neither will be wrong or right. Indeed, with too many measures--and it doesn't take very many measure to have too many--it is impossible to determine whether the agency is improving or not. For while some of the measures are inevitably going down, others will (unless the agency is wholly incompetent) be going up. For the public manager with many measures, these probabilities obscure cause-and-effect relationships and thus provide protection.

To improve--and to demonstrate that it is improving--the agency needs some performance targets. Such targets not only provide a standard against which to measure success. They also motivate people and , when achieve, provide a sense of accomplishment.