Peter Hutchinson co-founded Public Strategies Group in 1990 to be an engine for innovation in government, a company that would build on the courage of public managers and elected officials to transform their governments.  Courage to believe that "good enough for government,” could someday be a compliment. 

In 1993 they took on the challenge of running the Minneapolis Public Schools; Peter served as Superintendent. Their job was to turn around the performance of this 50,000-student system.  They did it and learned hundreds of lessons on politics, strategy and leadership.

In graduate school (public affairs), Peter told his classmates that he wanted to work in the public interest, but in the private sector.  He had the chance to pursue work where public and private interests coincide at both Cummins Engine and the Dayton Hudson Corporation, now Target, (where he also served as Chair of the Dayton Hudson Foundation.)  In both places Peter learned the importance of institutions looking outside themselves and supporting the communities that sustain them.  He also learned, when the Dart Corp. tried to take over Dayton Hudson, that any organization that delivers great results to those it serves can expect support from them in return - Dart lost!

Peter left corporate life to become Commissioner of Finance for the State of Minnesota.  He faced a budget deficit, a collapse in the national economy and an election.  He learned the critical importance of focusing on results and how to get more and better ones, as well as the incredible power of bureaucratic systems that make doing things right more important than doing the right things.

Peter’s work has allowed him to help redesign the Department of Transportation and the Statewide Accounting System for New York State, the child welfare system in Iowa, and the budget systems in Spokane, WA; Multnomah County (Portland), OR; Snohomish County (Everett), WA; and the states of Iowa, Michigan and Washington. These budget systems are a dramatic departure from business as usual. By tying money to results, these budgets increase accountability and citizen confidence by keeping what works and fixing or replacing what does not.

This new approach to budgeting was first created for the State of Washington that is now a finalist for Harvard's Innovation in Government Awards.  The process and its results are recounted in the book, The Price of Government: Getting the Results We Need in an Age of Permanent Fiscal Crisis, written with David Osborne.

In the past year we have been called upon to bring our budgeting process to private industry, and so have begun a new adventure in the world of private industry. 

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