Going through a planning process now. Performance measures are always defined to support the needs of sponsors, governmental bodies, boards, etc. That’s fine, since they are the only constituencies that will ever look at a strategic plan. Better “measures” are those that at least attempt to consider the visitors and community served by the museum. But even the best attempts at surveys are awful, no matter how much time is invested in creating them or how earnest front line staff is in coaxing visitors to share their thoughts.
Thank you for sharing this great piece. Yes, the ideas that “steerers” and “rowers” can be effectively separated has proven to be a great fallacy. Likewise the notion that it is a simple thing to bring “competition” into service delivery when in many cases from the start this will devolve into a single firm able to exploit the “hold-up problem” of sunk investments by the (now hollowed-out) state.
Going through a planning process now. Performance measures are always defined to support the needs of sponsors, governmental bodies, boards, etc. That’s fine, since they are the only constituencies that will ever look at a strategic plan. Better “measures” are those that at least attempt to consider the visitors and community served by the museum. But even the best attempts at surveys are awful, no matter how much time is invested in creating them or how earnest front line staff is in coaxing visitors to share their thoughts.
Lots of other things wrong with Reinventing Government/New Public Management. My thoughts on this, as related to the pandemic in Australia https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2021/september/1630418400/john-quiggin/dismembering-government
Thank you for sharing this great piece. Yes, the ideas that “steerers” and “rowers” can be effectively separated has proven to be a great fallacy. Likewise the notion that it is a simple thing to bring “competition” into service delivery when in many cases from the start this will devolve into a single firm able to exploit the “hold-up problem” of sunk investments by the (now hollowed-out) state.