by Kevin Baum

The following is a preview of one of the topics to be covered during the Leadership Training Institute seminars at the Congress of Cities and Exposition in Reno, Nev., Dec. 5-9.

Some wonder why it is so fashionable to criticize the government. Others contemplate why the government has, in many ways, become the symbol of bureaucratic thinking, waste and inefficiency. Open any book in the library, turn on the nightly news, or flip through the local newspaper and many are bound to find a comment or story about the ?fleecing of America,? government spending run amok or alleged scandal.

What?s particularly disturbing about much of this commentary is the apparent absence of meaningful discourse. When government leaders are criticized, their general tendency is to defend what they are doing, rather than to demonstrate what they are accomplishing in the lives of their citizens.

Performance management is not a new concept to government leaders. For the most part, they understand and appreciate the need for performance metrics, and encourage the collection of data. But have they truly changed the way they manage in government? Have they become performance-informed organizations, equipped with powerful stories of service improvement, policy enhancement and citizen support? Or have they simply become performance-reporting organizations ? repositories of mountains of impressive data that tell us nothing about the difference they are making in the lives of their citizens and stakeholders?

These are important questions that should not be taken lightly. On one hand, government leaders are actively engaged in the performance process, looking at and exploring the meaning of data and performance information. On the other, they are simply spectators to an ever-growing mountain of information, churning out questionable statistics that tell stories about what they are doing, rather than how they are doing.

Does their leadership reflect their management habits?

Performance leadership is different than performance management. Government performance leadership is a journey ? a continuous and iterative process that allows room for mistakes and ongoing reassessment. Performance leadership is not just about budgets and reporting. It is not about impressive charts and data. Performance leadership has, at its heart, a commitment to service improvement by becoming a learning organization.

Learning from experiences so that they can make a positive impact in the lives of their citizens and stakeholders is the ultimate and essential product of successful performance leadership by government officials. Success doesn?t occur overnight, but rather is the product of an ongoing commitment to inquiry and discovery.

Anyone can collect data. It?s what?s done with performance data that defines government leaders as visionaries ? true government leaders in a world of status quo. Today, if government leaders cannot demonstrate both compellingly and empirically that they know what they are doing, why they are doing it and what the actual and expected results will be, they will certainly lose the fight for limited support and dwindling public trust, and will continue to be the object of unwanted public criticism. To win the day, they need to change the conversation; stop talking about themselves and start demonstrating their impact. Government does make a difference. The question is: Can government officials prove it?

Details: The Leadership Training Institute is conducting 19 full and half-day seminars. The ?Building Public Trust Through Performance Leadership? seminar will take place on Tuesday, Dec. 5. For more information on all of the seminars, go to www.nlc.org or call (202) 626-3170.

Kevin Baum is the founder and principal of inCentergy, a management consulting company based in Austin, Texas.