Advanced Practice 2: Organizations Managing For Results
Managing for Results, Not Just Outputs, Even in the Sewers of San Jose
San Jose’s Department of Streets and Traffic changed how they measured success and changed their strategy to manage for it, achieving better results. Sewer cleaning crews had been rated on how many miles of sewers they cleaned, which caused crews to maximize their output by cleaning only clean sewers as opposed to dirty ones that would slow productivity. Thus, the high mileage of sewers cleaned each year in San Jose came at the expense of the more important result of keeping sewage from backing up into people’s homes and business. The department’s director, Wayne Tanda, changed that focus by measuring success differently, to the percent of sewers that were clear and not clogged, altering the sewer cleaning strategy by switching goals from racking up a large output of work, to achieving discernible results for the community: fewer clogged sewers.
How San Jose Manages Sewer Cleaning for Results
The San Jose Department of Streets and Traffic’s improved approach to sewer cleaning follows a straightforward managing for results cycle with a single feedback loop.
When they began to articulate and measure what was most important, they could then assess results and analyze where sewers were clean, where they were clogged, and what they were clogged with. As a result, the department was able to step outside its previous one-size-fits-all model and plan actions to respond differently to the varying sewer conditions in different neighborhoods. The managing for results cycle is completed by implementing their planned actions, measuring and then reassessing results, feeding that information back into operational plans, and making service adjustments to continue improving results.
Citizen Roles in Community Improvement
Consistent with Advanced Practice 2, citizen roles are not especially robust here, but the San Jose Department of Streets and Traffic did find it useful to help citizens in targeted neighborhoods move beyond being passive stakeholder-customers to play more active roles to improve results. The department began to engage people in neighborhoods where sewers were often clogged with grease, educating them in proper ways to dispose of grease in order to reduce the size of the problem. In doing so, the department helped citizens become collaborators or “coproducers” in improving conditions in their own neighborhoods by helping to solve their sewer backup problems.
Additional Community Improvement Themes
Consistent with Advanced Practice 2, San Jose’s Department of Streets and Traffic shows strength in two improvement themes: the use of performance feedback and linking desired results with strong accountability and resources to achieve those results. With systemic use of feedback of measured performance information, the San Jose sewer cleaning program determines its progress in clearing clogged sewers, adjusts its service strategies by location and reallocates resources to where they’re needed most, and responds to measured changes in sewer conditions throughout the city to continue to improve community conditions. Also, the department director uses the results-focused measures of success to hold sewer cleaning crews accountable for achieving results.
- See a full List of Examples and Case Studies in Results That Matter
- Go to the Overview of Effective Community Governance or read Chapter 1 of Results That Matter for more on the advanced governance practices of the Effective Community Governance Model and related key community improvement themes.