Performance Measures Are Tied to Those Objectives

This is the continuation of the transcript of an in-person customer seminar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of "Ingredients for a Performance Management System to Succeed." The speaker is Christopher Wren, Principal Consultant at TFI Consulting.

We do it in a very logical way, one step at a time. Finally, strategic initiatives like performance measures are tied to those objectives because objectives are continuous improvement activities. They are what we want to get better at. They are outcome oriented, and that’s the way we measure our strategy in a with critical performance measures that are strategic.

I thought this was an interesting vision in a set of values. The company wants to become the world’s leading company creating innovative and efficient solutions for growing economies and a better environment worldwide. Our values we respect each other.

We have high integrity. We have good communications, and we operate with excellence. Anybody know what company this is? It could be any company, couldn’t it?

The message is it’s not how you write it, folks. It’s how you live it. Our advice to you is, don’t spent time worrying about the vision statement and the mission statement. Get at what’s behind those. We can always put it into the queen’s English writing. What are the elements of vision and a shared vision? What are the elements of our mission? What business are we in? Get those things right conceptually, and then the rest of this sort of falls into place.

The Necessary Ingredients for Good Performance Management

Okay. For a little bit of background, let’s talk about the necessary ingredients. What’s the main thing? What’s the main thing? We talk a lot about becoming strategy focused. I would like to think about us becoming results focused. All right. What is the end result of the strategy? What are we actually trying to accomplish? So when we work with folks, we always start with the end in mind. What are we trying to accomplish? And then strategy is our game plan or our approach to getting to that end, to get into that shared vision. Going back to the example before, after we helped them build the balance scorecard system, the management team passed the balance scorecard with unanimous consent as the strategic plan and management system for the future.

Folks, first and foremost, this is about changing hearts and minds. Secondly it’s about performance measures, and thirdly, it’s about software and technology. But if you do this well and do it right, take advantage of the opportunity, you know, that you have with engaged leadership and champions to build a management system that’s also tied into the planning process of an agency or an organization.

Don’t treat them like they are separate. These are not parallel things that go on. In most organizations we have a planning shop, and then we have a budget shop and most of the time narry the twain shall meet, right? I go around the planning shop, and I go around the budget shop. The winning organizations are the ones that have as the head of that somebody who has responsibility for both because what does it do? It forces integration of the planning and the budgeting process.

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So we’re going to keep our eye on strategy and results during the rest of this presentation. What are the necessary ingredients? Engaged leadership, emphasis on engaged. We’re not looking for leaders who are the bring me another rock kind of a leader, right? If we’re going to change hearts and minds, the leaders have to model the behaviors for the rest of the organization to see. It doesn’t work when the leader says follow me up the mountain, and oh by the way go do this stuff, unless the leader is at the front leading the pack.

A culture of results, right, what are we actually trying to accomplish? We talk too much today about transparency and about accountability, and I want to share with you how we build those and do a planning and management system. Interactive communications I haven’t seen that word much today. Interactive, folks, is two way. Okay, it doesn’t do a lot of good to publish a newsletter.

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Give a PowerPoint presentation, or stand up in front and talk to you about what's important. There should be a dialogue at the top of the communications letter, and there’s very few organizations that do we think do communications right. When we help a client we bring in an expert on interactive communications that actually helps develop our communication strategy and plan for an organization to make sure that that's done well.

Next is a culture of continuous improvement of celebrating success and recognizing and rewarding success. You look at studies on the impact of various reward and recognition systems, and money usually falls somewhere at number two, three, four, five on the list. And its always different. What strikes me as strange is the perception that managers have of how workers are going to vote. It is always different from how workers actually vote because they will rank things like communications and sharing and wellness and a mix of work and recreation and so on. So as managers we seem to have a different view of the world. So attaboys and attagirls go a long way in this business when you are celebrating the success of your planning and management system.