Robert D. Behn is a lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government specializing in governance, leadership, and the management of large public agencies.  Bob is the faculty chair of the Kennedy School's executive-education program:  Driving Government Performance:  Leadership Strategies that Produce Results and conducts custom-designed executive programs for public agencies.  He is the author of the on-line monthly, Bob Behn's Public Management Report.

Bob holds 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. He 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 of Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, where he was director of its Governors Center.

For three decades, Bob has taught numerous executive-education programs and made presentation to public officials on such topics as "Performance Leadership." He has led retreats for gubernatorial offices and cabinets in Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington, and conducted a variety of executive seminars in half the states: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), federal agencies, governmental associations, and the U.N. — and in Berlin, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Lisbon, Sydney, and Bangkok.

Bob is the author of Rethinking Democratic Accountability (Brookings) and Leadership Counts: Lessons for Public Managers (Harvard University Press).  He is a co-editor of Innovation in American Government (with Alan Altshuler, Brookings), and a co-author of Quick Analysis for Busy Decision Makers (with James Vaupel, Basic Books).

Bob's many articles and other publications on leadership, management, and governance include: "Why Measure Performance? Different Purposes Require Different Measures," Public Administration Review (2003); "Rethinking Accountability in Education," International Public Management Journal, (2003); "The Psychological Barriers to Performance Management: Or Why Isn't Everyone Jumping on the Performance-Management Bandwagon?" Public Performance & Management Review (2002); "Strategies for Avoiding the Pitfalls of Performance Contracting," Public Productivity and Management Review (1999, with Peter A. Kant); "What Right Do Public Managers Have to Lead," Public Administration Review (1998); "Branch Rickey as a Public Manager," Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (1997); "Management By Groping Along," The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management (1988); "A Curmudgeon's View of Public Administration," State and Local Government Review (1987); "The Receding Mirage of the Balanced Budget," The Public Interest (1982);  "Policy Analysis and Policy Politics," Policy Analysis (1981).

Bob's article on "Cutback Budgeting" won the Raymond Vernon Prize for the article in Volume 4 (1985) of The Journal of Policy Analysis and Management that "makes the greatest contribution to intellectual discourse on public policy and management." His "Management and the Neutrino: The Search for Meaningful Metaphors" won the Marshall E. Dimock Award for the best lead article in Public Administration Review in 1992. At the 1996 meeting of the American Society for Public Administration, Bob delivered the first Donald C. Stone Lecture: "Performance, Managerial Competence, and Democratic Accountability: The Three Challenges of Public Administration."

Bob grew up a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese.  But the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, and he moved to Massachusetts to go to college.  Then, at the end of the 1967 season, Bob went to Fenway Park for the Boston Red Sox' last game.  (If you don't understand the significance of this, Bob Will explain it to you in more detail than you want to know.)  His first op-ed piece on based, "A Professor's Ode to the Red Sox," appeared in The Wall Street Journal in October 1975.  His other newspaper pieces includes: "Red Sox Lessons for Our Elite," The Washington Post (1986); "The Next Ted Williams? I'm Your Man," The New York Times (1995); and "Before the Curse," The Boston Globe (1998).

Robert D. Behn

Robert D. Behn

Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University

79 John F. Kennedy Street

Cambridge, MA  02138

617-495-9874

redsox@ksg.harvard.edu