The focus of New Public Management on measurement and indicators fits in a long tradition of measurement and state building. Yet, in recent years, disenchantment with performance management grows. More often than not, target regimes produce dysfunctional consequences. Yet, while the performance of performance target regimes is wanting, performance management is being reinvented. Rather than a system of accountability, performance management should prompt learning and dialogue. Performance management as a learning system therefore may well be the next idea whose time has come.