Robert D. Behn

Robert D. Behn, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, focuses his research and teaching on the leadership challenge of improving performance in public agencies. He chairs the School’s executive-education program, “Driving Government Performance: Leadership Strategies that Produce Results.” Bob served on the staff of Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent, 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 at Duke and Harvard and conducted executive-education seminars for public agencies in half the states and on six continents: in Bangkok, Berlin, Bogatá, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Lisbon, Madrid, Monterrey, Oslo, Ottawa, Reykjavik, Sydney, and Wellington. (He wonders: Don’t the folks in Antarcti­ca need help improving performance?) Bob writes the on-line monthly, Bob Behn’s Performance Leadership Report. His book, The PerformanceStat Potential: A Leadership Strategy for Producing Results, will be published by Brookings in early 2014.