Many senior government leaders who have attempted to achieve ambitious goals have been quite successful, though others (sometimes very visibly) have not succeeded. What do those who succeeded do differently? Is their success just a matter of luck? What (if anything) do the most successful public sector leaders have in common across agencies with very different missions? To explore these questions, the authors use a reputational approach to identify success, relying on independent experts to nominate leaders from the two most recent completed presidential administrations. In order to understand what successful leaders do differently, the authors also use a control group for comparison. The authors test a range of hypotheses based on the public management literature. Successful leaders do a number of things that control group members generally do not. Examples of these techniques are general good management techniques, including using a strategy planning process, using performance metrics, and working proactively to gain support from external stakeholders. By contrast, change management techniques, which we had expected to distinguish successful leaders, are also used by unsuccessful leaders. Thus, their use does not differentiate the successes.
How are senior government executives who attempt to execute an ambitious vision requiring significant strategic change in their organizations able to succeed? How do they go about formulating a strategy in the first place? What managerial and leadership techniques do they use to execute their strategy? In this paper, these questions are examined by comparing (so as to avoid the pitfalls of "best practices" research) management and leadership behaviors of a group of agency leaders from the Clinton and Bush administrations identified by independent experts as having been successful at executing an ambitious strategy with a control group consisting of those the experts identified as having tried but failed at significant strategic change, along with counterparts to the successes, who had the same position as they in a different administration. We find a number of differentiators (such as using strategic planning, monitoring performance metrics, reorganizing, and having a smaller number of goals), while other techniques either were not commonly used or failed to differentiate (such as establishing accountability systems or appeals to public service motivation). We find that agencies that the successes led had significantly lower percentages of political appointees than the average agency in the government. One important finding is that failures seem to have used techniques recommended specifically for managing transformation or change as frequently as successes did, so use of such techniques does not differentiate successes from failures. However, failures (and counterparts) used techniques associated with improving general organizational performance less than successes.How are senior government executives who attempt to execute an ambitious vision requiring significant change in their organizations able to succeed? How do they go about formulating a strategy in the first place? What managerial and leadership techniques do they use to execute their strategy? In this paper, these questions are examined by comparing management and leadership behaviors of a group of agency leaders from the Clinton and Bush administrations (1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) identified by independent experts as having been successful at executing a strategy involving an ambitious vision and significant organizational change with a control group consisting of those identified as having tried but failed at significant strategic change, along with counterparts to the successes, who had the same position as they in a different administration. This paper uses the term "strategy" as it is used in Moore (1995) to include both a set of goals (vision) for where an executive wishes to take an organization, and a plan for how to achieve those goals.1 Such a plan involves both successfully receiving authorization and funds from the organization's external political environment, and improving internal operating capacity inside the organization.The shorthand "success" will be used through...
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