Robert D. Behn

Robert D. Behn

Submitted by on Tue, 02/27/2018 - 12:58

Robert D. Behn, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, focuses his research and teaching on the leadership challenge of improving performance in public agencies. He chairs the School’s executive-education program, “Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results.” Bob served on the staff of Massachusetts Governor Francis W.

What All Mayors Would Like to Know About Baltimore’s CitiStat Performance Strategy

Submitted by on Thu, 03/12/2009 - 20:00

Dr. Behn prepared this report to summarize and present the questions most frequently posed to citiStat staff and to Mayor Martin O'Malley. The report explains how CitiStat should be viewed as a management strategy rather than a management system. When viewed as a management strategy, Dr. Behn argues, the program can be replicated and customized to each mayor's individual needs and priorities. A key insight is that there is no single, right approach as to how to develop a successful management performance and accountability structure.

Performance Leadership: 11 Better Practices That Can Ratchet Up Performance

Submitted by on Thu, 03/12/2009 - 20:00

In the report, Professor Behn moves away from the conventional tenet of public administration to "make the managers manage." Instead, he offers an approach that encompasses eleven "better practices" that he has observed in use by successful public managers over the years. This approach focuses not on individual attributes and virtues, but rather on activities or practices which can spur improvements in program performance.

Lecturer
Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government
79 John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
617-495-9874

redsox@hks.harvard.edu

Robert D. Behn, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, focuses his research and teaching on the leadership challenge of improving performance in public agencies. He chairs the School’s executive-education program, “Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results.” Bob served on the staff of Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent, as a scholar in residence with the Council for Excellence in Government, and on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and of Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, where he was director of its Governors Center. For three decades, Bob has taught numerous executive-education programs at Duke and Harvard and conducted executive-education seminars for public agencies in half the states and on six continents: in Bangkok, Berlin, Bogatá, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, Madrid, Monterrey, Oslo, Ottawa, Reykjavik, Sydney, and Wellington. (He wonders: Don’t the folks in Antarcti­ca need help improving performance?) Bob writes the on-line monthly, Bob Behn’s Performance Leadership Report. His book, The PerformanceStat Potential: A Leadership Strategy for Producing Results, will be published by Brookings in early 2014.