Convene with Purpose

When governments have the fundamentals, they are clear about what they want to achieve, how they will achieve it, and how they will know when it is achieved. When they have strong teams and strong analysis feeding decision makers, governments can add evidence to the suite of ingredients that factor into sound decision making. But increasing the effectiveness of governments based on evidence requires sound management, which inherently requires routinely convening the managers.

Convening with purpose is NOT having meetings for meetings sake. High-performing governments convene decision makers around a very clear purpose: crime reduction, snow removal, emergency management, school openings, etc. They bring the entire team together to have an honest and collaborative conversation about shared objectives and obstacles. At the end of those discussions, actions get assigned and tracked.

Stat programs are one examples of purposeful convenings, but they aren't the only type. In this section, we will use the Stat model to explain the virtue of convening with purpose, so you can shape a model that fits your organization's culture and decision making process.