This executive program, which is organized by IESE Business School in association with Harvard Kennedy School, examines the challenges of political leadership – how public executives can establish goals, revitalize bureaucracies, motivate people, create organizational capabilities, communicate ideas, measure results, and demonstrate that enhanced performance is a result of the effective fulfillment of their responsibilities.

• Provide the tools for producing results, defining strategies and racheting up performance, motivating and leading public employees.

• Developing the ability of articulating an organizational mission, establishing objectives, measuring results, and rewarding performance.

• Working through other agencies and private organizations and non-profits, revitalizing a bureaucracy and improving citizen support.

• Based on real cases, learn to improve the decision-making framework for public administration agencies.

The program’s contents and cases are built upon four main areas: leadership, strategy, motivation and results.

Leadership
The key element in leading a public agency – what it takes to improve performance – is a leadership team. This group of top executives shares the responsibilities and tasks of leadership. They articulate a mission, foster new strategies, establish targets, generate resources, motivate people and teams, reward success, and create an environment in which every individual feels a personal responsibility for the agency’s performance.

Strategy
To improve accomplishment of established goals, public executives need a strategy. They must define the nature of the improved performance and set out the approach that the agency will take to achieve it. Strategy isn’t just about means. It is about employing the best means for achieving results and how rethinking both results and means might create consequences that citizens truly value.

Motivation
Improved performance doesn’t just happen. People make it happen. But, again, these people don’t just happen to make it happen. They need direction and motivation. They need leaders who can establish an agenda that focuses on results, who can convince individuals and teams to pursue these targets energetically and intelligently.

Results
Public agencies and public executives are charged with producing results. Good intentions aren’t good enough. Good decisions aren’t good enough. Good analysis isn’t good enough. Good planning isn’t good enough. Good systems and processes aren’t good enough. Even good ethics aren’t good enough. All of these, by contributing to results, can be helpful. The results, however, are what count.

Driving Government Performance is an intensive program exclusively designed for senior public executives with responsibilities in the areas of results and performance, and proven experience of managing and establishing public policies.

Professor Robert Behn Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Professor Behn earned a B.S. in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and an S.M. in engineering and a Ph.D. in decision and control from Harvard University.

Professor José Ramón Pin
Head of the department of managing people in organizations and the director of IRCO (The International Research Center on Organizations) at IESE and academic director of the Executive MBA.
Ph.D. in Political Science and Sociology, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca.

The program will essentially use the case methodology to discuss real problems that public organizations face. The proposed methodology aims to establish a bidirectional process of permanent learning, which must, at all times, be relevant to the main matters of interest.

The Harvard Kennedy School is a global leader in public executive education.

Today, the Harvard Kennedy School has evolved into one of the world’s most eminent social science research institutions – housing 15 research centers and institutes, and more than a dozen executive education and degree programs – with worldwide reach and influence. More than 27,000 Harvard Kennedy School alumni reside in 137 countries and serve in a wide range of positions in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

Since 1958, IESE has delivered first-rate business education programs to nearly 32,000 executives from 90 countries, and it has been ranked amongst the best graduate schools for years.

IESE has a faculty which is made up of more than 160 professors from 25 countries, holds 26 Research Centers and Academic Chairs, and teaches executive programs in 10 different countries. IESE hosts a meaningful variety of activities related to the public administration area, including, the Public Management Leadership Program ( Programa de Liderazgo para la Gestión Pública), custom programs for diverse public agencies, the Public Management Leadership Forum (Foro de Liderazgo para la Gestión Pública) and the Public-Private Sector Research Center.

IESE’s first strategic alliance with Harvard goes back to 1963. Harvard’s professors counseled IESE during the launch of its MBA program, which proved to be such a fruitful experience for both sides that the partnership has since continued and been strengthened through a Harvard-IESE Advisory Committee.