Robert Behn

Lecturer in Public Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
Office Address
Taubman-360
Mailing Address
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Mailbox 114
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Contact
Phone: 617-495-9874
Fax: 617-496-1722
Email: redsox@ksg.harvard.edu
Robert Behn

Profile

Robert D. Behn, Lecturer in Public Policy, is faculty chair of the School's executive program, Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results. Bob specializes in governance, leadership, and the management of large public agencies and conducts custom-designed executive education programs for public agencies. He has served on the staff of Governor Francis W. Sargent of Massachusetts, as a scholar in residence with the Council for Excellence in Government, and on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Bob is the author of Rethinking Democratic Accountability (2001) and Leadership Counts: Lessons for Public Managers (1991), and "Why Measure Performance: Different Purposes Require Different Measure" (2003). Bob's most recent publication is Performance Leadership: 11 Better Practices That Can Ratchet Up Performance(2004). Bob holds a BS in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in decision and control from Harvard. He is the author of Bob Behn's Public Management Report.

Courses

Spring

  • MLD-604 Performance Leadership: Producing Results in Public and Nonprofit Agencies

Media Expertise

Robert Behn welcomes media inquiries on the following subjects:

Additional experts may be found by clicking on each subject listed. You may contact faculty directly or if you need assistance contact the Communications Office at 617-495-1115.

Research

For a complete list of faculty citations from 2001 - present, please visit the Harvard Kennedy School Research Report Online.

Selected Publication Citations:

  • Academic Journals
    • Behn, Robert. "Designing PerformanceStat: Or What Are the Key Strategic Choices that a Jurisdiction or Agency Must Make When Adapting the CompStat/CitiStat Class of Performance Strategies?" Public Performance and Management Review 32.2 (December 2008): 203-232.
  • Book Chapters
    • Behn, Robert. "The Adoption of Innovation: The Challenge of Learning to Adapt Tacit Knowledge." Innovations in Government: Research, Recognition and Replication. Ed. Sandford Borins. Brookings Institution Press, 2008, 138-158.
  • Magazine and Newspaper Articles
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why All Public Officials Need to Remember that Efficiency is a Ratio." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. January 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Public Executives Must Fulfill Citizen's Basic-Services Imperative." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. February 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Public Executives Should Beware the Dysfunctional Org Chart." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. March 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On the Difficulty of Predicting Managerial Performance." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. April 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why, To Improve Performance, Measurement Is Rarely Enough." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. May 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why It Is Necessary to Set Expectations for Performance Audits." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. June 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Public Executives Need to Avoid Dashboards as Data Dumps." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. July 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On the Value and Seven Different Details of Shining a Bright Light." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. August 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Every Evaluation Begins with the Question: Compared with What?" Bob Behn's Public Management Report. September 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On the Different Perspectives on The Gotcha-Game Debate." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. October 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Citizens Need to Establish the Performance-Target Ethic." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. November 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "On Why Public Executives Should Start Drafting A Final Report Years Early." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. December 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "The Split Personality CPO." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. January 2009.
    • Behn, Robert. "No Perfect Performance Measure." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. February 2009.
    • Behn, Robert. "The Data Don't Speak for Themselves." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. March 2009.
    • Behn, Robert. "Sometimes Weird Works." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. April 2009.
    • Behn, Robert. "Recognizing Novelty." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. May 2009.
    • Behn, Robert. "That's Funny." Bob Behn's Public Management Report. June 2009.
  • Research Papers/Reports
    • Behn, Robert. "The Seven Big Errors of PerformanceStat." Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, policy brief, February 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "PerformanceStat as a Leadership Strategy: It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got that Follow-Up." Paper for Twelfth Annual Conference of the International Research Society for Public Management, Brisbane, March 2008.
    • Behn, Robert. "Collaborating for Performance: Or Can There Exist Such A Thing As CollaborationStat?" Paper for Thirtieth Annual Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Los Angeles, November 2008.