TV REVIEW : A Pep Rally for Efficiency

“Excellence in the Public Sector, With Tom Peters,” airing tonight at 10:25 on Channel 28, finds the author of the only management book ever to find its way onto the national best-seller lists hosting a pep rally for efficiency, a celebration of success.

“Excellence” goes cross-country to showcase five examples of cost-cutting and productivity in government and nonprofit organizations, ranging from Phoenix’s entire municipal government to the relatively tiny National Theater Workshop of the Handicapped.

And small wonder, what Peters finds works in the public sector are the same things that work in the private sector:

-- The Naval Aviation Depot in Alameda, Calif., which was threatened with closure three years ago, has made huge quality and productivity gains by “treating the employees like shareholders” and “putting them in charge of their world.”

-- New York City’s Department of Juvenile Justice, which has “empowered the staff” and encouraged them to “change management ideals” and develop new models, is getting significant results with young offenders where others have failed.

-- The City of Phoenix, which treats its 2 million citizens “as stockholders” and creates partnership teams in each department that let the workers solve their own problems, is saving millions of tax dollars each year.

Peters is a bit hyper as a host, hammering the viewer over the head with ideas that are straight from his books, and the show is one-sided--we never see if these ideas have failed in other situations--but, on the whole, “Excellence” is a well-paced show worth a look.

Now, if we can only get the local bureaucrats to tune in. . . .

Bureaucrat A: “Hey, did you see that show on PBS last night, called ‘Excellence in the Public Sector’? They had a lot of good ideas we can use.”

Bureaucrat B: “Yeah, it was good. I got so charged up that I issued an eight-page memo asking for a government-funded study into increasing cost and efficiency in my department.”

Bureaucrat A: “Um, not bad. Maybe we should get a commission going as well, make it an ongoing sort of thing.”

Bureaucrat B: “That’s the ticket. We’ll talk about it later--let’s go to lunch.”