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10 Conducting the Meetings How can the regular, frequent, and integrated PerformanceStat meetings be conducted to ensure that they both reveal opportunities to enhance performance and drive such improvements? Most people in the world learn things faster when they know they’re going to be tested on them. jack maple, Deputy Police Commissioner, New York City Police Department1 When they [Prime Minister Tony Blair’s key advisors] spoke to me about education policy, it was usually to press me for new and bolder ideas. No harm in that, of course, but I used to say to them, “Why don’t you also ask me whether we have implemented existing policy effectively and whether it is making a real difference on the ground?” sir michael barber, Head of Prime Minister Blair’s Delivery Unit2 Attention on deck!” a man in uniform bellows. Everyone stands. In from the back room, strides the New York City commissioner of correction. It is 8:00 on a Thursday morning in a double-wide trailer on Rikers Island—the beginning of the monthly meeting of “CorrectionStat.” Actually, no one calls it “CorrectionStat.” The official name is TEAMS, for “Total Efficiency Accountability Management System.” Still, think of it as CorrectionStat . For it is the Correction Department’s adaptation of CompStat. In lower Manhattan, it is a Friday morning, a little before 9:00. People are gathering for the monthly meeting of “ProbationStat.” The commissioner of probation mingles with the department’s staff and visitors, asking questions about both their professional and personal lives. Again, no one calls it “ProbationStat.” The official name is STARS, for “Statistical Tracking, Analysis, and Reporting System.” Still, think of it as ProbationStat . It, too, is an adaptation of CompStat. “ 172 10-2527-5 ch10.indd 172 4/10/14 4:27 PM Conducting the Meetings 173 At the meeting on Rikers Island (in the middle of the East River, between the Bronx and Queens), over half the people are in uniform. Two stars on their shoulder . Or three stars. The chief of the department wears four stars. The wardens of the city’s 14 facilities wear one star.3 It is a military-style organization with a daily head count of approximately 13,000 inmates and annual admissions of roughly 100,000 individuals. The department has nearly 11,000 employees of which approximately 9,500 are uniformed correctional officers.4 The city’s Department of Probation is, however, quite different, for it is staffed primarily by social workers.5 The department’s staff of approximately 1,200 work out of 17 offices (four each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, three in Queens, and two on Staten Island).6 They supervise 85,000 probationers, 60,000 adults and 25,000 juveniles. Between 2003 and 2009, when someone bellowed “Attention on deck!” the commissioner of correction who emerged from the back room to chair the monthly TEAMS meeting was Martin Horn. Over these same years, the commissioner of probation who conducted the monthly STARS meetings and mingled with the staff beforehand was Martin Horn. For six years, Horn was the top executive of both departments, chairing both versions of PerformanceStat. Both TEAMS and STARS are direct descendants of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) CompStat. Nevertheless, Horn understood that his two organizations were very different. The quasi-military nature of the Department of Correction required, he recognized, not only a very formal meeting, but also a very formal executive. In contrast, yelling “Attention on deck!” at social workers would have subjected a probation commissioner to derision and disdain. Horn could not run ProbationStat the way he ran CorrectionStat. He could not run either of his PerformanceStats the way NYPD ran CompStat or the way the Human Resources Administration (HRA) ran JobStat. Each department is part of the same government; yet they are different. Thus Horn needed to adapt the PerformanceStat leadership strategy to the culture of each. Meetings and Purpose Collecting, organizing, analyzing, and distributing performance data—none of this is enough. People will ignore the data, particularly data they don’t understand , data they can rationalize as biased against them, data they feel unable to influence. The director and managers of any subunit may find the data embarrassing ; these data may subtly suggest or explicitly reveal that the subunit is performing poorly. Moreover, these data do not tell them how to improve. Indeed, it 10-2527-5 ch10.indd 173 4/10/14 4:27 PM [18.116.36.192...

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