Preckwinkle’s attempt to make Cook County work

“In God we trust. All others, bring data.”

That quotation is one of the more memorable pieces of advice offered by the late W. Edward Deming, a legendary management consultant who believed strongly in statistical research.

Because of it, many wrongly attribute to Deming one of today’s most popular management axioms: “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In truth, Deming never said any such thing and as a matter of fact, viewed that philosophy as dangerously simplistic.

Management, he believed, is much more complex than that. Further, he believed that some of the most important numbers needed to manage are simply unknowable, or at least so difficult or expensive to gather that they may as well be.

So when it comes to improving performance, measurements aren’t a be-all and end-all. It’s possible, as with anything else, to go to the extreme and end up keeping records for the sake only of keeping records. Measurements aren’t everything.

But at the same time, the right ones are important. Good record-keeping can help both diagnose previously unrecognized areas for improvement and provide problem-solving clues that are useful in developing strategies for that improvement.

As we listened last week to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle unveil the county’s new performance management system, we found ourselves marveling on many levels at the change taking place in a government operation that for so long had been run politically rather than professionally.

Preckwinkle’s approach underscores the idea that measurements are tools that help drive change; this is so commonly understood these days in most businesses, and most local governments we encounter in the suburbs, that the amazing thing

is almost nothing of fundamental job performance was measured in Cook County government in the past.

Indeed, Preckwinkle’s initiative is collecting numbers that will serve as the benchmarks for improvements in the future. Her early success has been aided by a supportive county board and surprisingly cooperative department heads and elected officers (for the most part; we don’t understand the elitist foot-dragging of Chief Judge Timothy Evans, who so far has refused to participate).

But those measurements are only a part of the performance management system. It promises also to set goals and expectations for improvements, use data to inform and drive the budget process, structure collaboration between offices and involve the public in a transparent review of key performance levels.

This is a night-and-day shift in the way Cook County operates, one that suggests Preckwinkle means business, one that could energize the county workforce, one that promises true performance to taxpayers who are paying the bills, one that could serve as a model for other governments aiming to right misdirected operations.

It is tough and common-sensed discipline.

It is, indeed, a marvel.