Leading for Innovation: And Organizing for Results

9.4. Some Clear Results

Under our plan, private companies were not the only ones to compete for contracts; government agencies competed too—and often won. To aid them in their efforts, the city provided workers with private consultants to help them prepare their proposals and offered incentive pay when city workers outperformed their contracts. In addition, we never laid off union workers as a result of competition; instead we found them jobs with our contractors or trained them for new jobs elsewhere.

With a new culture of competition taking root, and new accounting tools in place, we began to see some innovative results—and some significant cost savings. By opening up to competition such municipal services as wastewater treatment, trash collection, ...