In 2008, the Des Moines Independent School District faced it’s lowest high school graduation rate in 11 years: a dismal 65.1%. Over the course of 6 years, the community was able to increase that rate to 82%. In 2007, Baltimore City was facing a foster care crisis. Children were coming into foster care, but they were rarely leaving for permanent homes. Over a 7 year period, the Baltimore City Department of Social Services safely reduced the number of children in foster care by 70%. Hang in there…I have one more…At one point, below 50% of children in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland were entering school ready to learn. Over the course of 11 years, the community brought that up to 91%.

Des Moines, Iowa…Baltimore City…Queen Anne’s County. Three very different places with miles between them and unique, localized challenges. But these stories have an underlying similarity. They all use the Results-Based Accountability framework to define success, improve performance, and ultimately improve the lives of their customers and communities.

Whether you’re looking to improve your own personal fitness, or to achieve something as complex as racial equity, there is a simple idea that often goes under-looked. And yet it has powerful implications on your ability to achieve success. To reach your goals, you should learn from the people who are achieving the results that you want to achieve! You probably wouldn’t want to take driving lessons with someone who’s gotten in five accidents this year, would you? It shouldn’t be any different in our work to improve the lives of children, families, and communities. If you are a public sector organization, government agency, or community looking to make a real difference in your community, it means using a results-based approach to organize your work and take action.

Results-Based Accountability (RBA for short) is one of these approaches. What sets RBA apart from other methods, you ask? Unlike other management frameworks out there, RBA actually provides easy-to-follow steps for getting from talk to action quickly. It is not just some theoretical process dreamed up by a think tank that sits on a dusty shelf for the rest of eternity. RBA has a robust foundation of evidence behind it that proves its efficacy. The cases mentioned above make up a very small fraction of the diversity of documented success stories. There is an RBA success story for virtually every public sector challenge you can think of. Teen pregnancy. Child welfare. Education. Family stability. Criminal Justice. Road safety. The list goes on and on. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Over the past 25 years, a growing number of RBA practitioners have become “champions” of the framework. These are individuals committed to spreading the word about RBA’s transformative power – not out of a desire for recognition, but out of a sense of duty for the greater good. These individuals go the extra mile to share their experiences, successes, and recommendations in books, blog posts, scholarly articles, videos, conference presentations, and one-on-one interactions with others in the field.

I believe that knowledge is a public right…not something you should necessarily have to pay for. That’s why all of us at Clear Impact have been working tirelessly to collect and document these stories in a series of tools, including our RBA Success Story Library and our RBA Video Case Studies. But the extent of material available to you extends far beyond this.

Trying to improve your community’s high school graduation rate? Pop on over to our United Way of Central Iowa case study to get practical ideas on how to improve your own. Trying to figure out how to implement an accountability system in a large government agency? Check out this new book documenting the process in Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families. Trying to figure out how to measure the well-being of your children and youth? Read this scholarly article to get suggestions.

Every situation and every place is unique. What works in one town to improve high school graduation may not work for another. But there is a difference between “services” and the “decision-making frameworks” that help us develop these services. Results-Based Accountability provides the structure and discipline necessary to develop the strategies and programs that really work. Not only does it help us utilize the knowledge and resources we already possess; it also helps us identify knowledge gaps we need to fill in order to make progress. When it comes to an overall structure for developing your improvement strategy, managing your service performance, and actually taking measurable steps towards results you want to achieve, RBA is the obvious choice.

With the amount of freely accessible knowledge on the Internet, you have the power to get your organization in check and accelerate well-being in your community. No clue how to get started? Find an organization or community achieving success and start studying their methodology. Attend a conference, workshop, or webinar. Get out in your community and talk with other leaders who are equally passionate about achieving measurable impact on a community indicator. You never know what you might discover by reading a case study or speaking with someone in the field.

clear-impact-adam-luecking About the author: 
Adam Luecking, CEO, is an author, speaker, and trainer on topics related to Results-Based Accountability (RBA) and achieving measurable improvement. He also manages executive leadership programs, consulting services and technology deployment to agencies that serve children, families, and communities with the growing Clear Impact team. In 2013, he authored the book “The Holy Grail of Public Leadership” and was named on of Maryland’s 2015 most admired CEOs by the Daily Record.