Banishing Bureaucracy & The Reinventor’s Fieldbook MERGED

We’ve merged our two most popular books into a single online publication available below.

About Banishing Bureaucracy & The Reinventor’s Fieldbook
Since we published Banishing Bureaucracy in 1997, we have considered it the most important of our books, more important even that Reinventing Government, which was a bestseller in 1992 and is much better known. Reinventing Government described a new form of governance emerging as the industrial era gave way to the information age – a post-bureaucratic, innovative, responsive form of public institution – and it inspired many people to try to transform their bureaucracies. But Banishing Bureaucracy is the book that lays out the path to success.

If Reinventing Government drew a rough map of the new world of governance emerging in the late 20th century, Banishing Bureaucracy began to put routes on the map, to help reinventors follow the pioneers and stake their own claims in the new world.

The Reinventor’s Fieldbook begins to fill in the essential details on that map. This book explains in detail the terrain you will encounter, the obstacles you will face, and the equipment and know-how (tools and competencies) you will need along the way.

We are confident that this merged online resource will be helpful to people throughout the public sector, whether you work in school districts, special districts, counties, cities, states or provinces, or national governments.

Click on the links below to download pdf sections from these books.

Introduction

Finding Your Leverage

• 1: The Five Cs – Changing Government’s DNA
• 2: Levels of the Game – Targeting The Strategies
• 3: Gut Check – What it Takes to Use the Strategies

The Five Strategies

The CORE Strategy – This strategy helps organizations get clear about their core purpose and strategies, eliminate activities that not longer serve those purposes, and organize the rest so that each department and agency is able to focus on one or two clear missions.

• 4: Creating Clarity of Purpose
• 5: Using Strategic Management to Create Clarity of Direction
• 6: Clearing the Decks – Eliminating Functions That No Longer Server Core Purposes
• 7: Uncoupling – Creating Clarity of Role by Separating Steering and Rowing

The CONSEQUENSES Strategy – This strategy creates consequences – mostly rewards, but also negative consequences – for organizational performance. It makes performance matter, in inescapable ways.

• 8: Introducing Consequences for Performance
• 9: Enterprise Management – Using Markets to Create Consequences
• 10: Managed Competition – Using Competitive Contracts and Benchmarks to Create Consequences
• 11: Performance Management – Using Rewards to Create Consequences
• 12: Performance Measurement – The Critical Competence

The CUSTOMER Strategy – This strategy makes public organizations and employees accountable to their customers, by giving those customers power –either to take their public money to other services providers or to hold their service providers to clear standards of service.

• 13: Putting the Customer in the Driver’s Seat
• 14: Competitive Customer Choice – Making Customers Powerful Through Choice and Competition
• 15: Customer Quality Assurance – Making Organizations Accountable for Service Quality

The CONTROL Strategy – This strategy cuts the red tape that so often prevents public managers and employees from innovating, by reforming administrative systems (budget, personnel, procurement, accounting, and auditing) to give managers the power to manage; by empowering frontline employees to improve service to their customers; and by empowering communities to solve more of their own problems.

• 16: Shifting Control Away From the Top and Center
• 17: Organizational Empowerment – Giving Mangers the Power to Manage
• 18: Employee Empowerment – Giving Frontline Employees the Power to Improve Results
• 19: Community Empowerment – Giving Communities the Power to Solve Their Own Problems

The CULTURE Strategy – This strategy changes the habits, hearts, and minds of public employees, to help them embrace accountability for results and continuous improvement of customer service.

• 20: Developing an Entrepreneurial Culture
• 21: Changing Habits – Creating a New Culture by Introducing New Experiences
• 22: Touching Hearts – Developing a New Covenant Within Your Organization
• 23: Winning Minds – Changing Employees’ Mental Models

Using the Strategies

• 24: Using the Strategies – Aligning the Strategies
• 25: Courage to Reinvent