All Posts Tagged With: "performance measurement"
Conference on Performance Management & Measurement
If your leaders are looking for insight into issues they are facing, want to learn about strategies for managing change, can benefit from case studies about structured and successful improvement approaches, or are curious about how to integrate Baldrige , especially in the areas of strategic planning and performance measurement, then sign them up for ActiveStrategy’s 2011 conference on May 3rd and 4th in Philadelphia. Click on the blue banner on the right for details. Enter Baldrige11 on the registration page to receive $100 off the cost of the conference.
Held since 2004, the conference features case-study presentations that describe real-life issues and how organizations are dealing with them. It’s a smaller conference—usually around 100 people—that encourages asking questions, discussing problems, and exploring solutions. You will walk away with practical and proven ideas for dealing with your most challenging issues.
Most of the presenters use ActiveStrategy software to turn strategic plans into measurable results, but you don’t have to be an ActiveStrategy client to benefit from the experiences of the presenters, which include:
- Clayton Fitzhugh, executive VP of share services for Catholic Health East, will talk about “A Leader’s Role in Performance Excellence.”
- Allison Diego, assistant director at the Miami-Dade County Park & Recreation Department, will describe her department’s journey to receiving the Florida Sterling Award.
- Scott Walters, vice president of national accounts for AlliedBarton Security Services, will speak on “Using Performance Metrics to Win Business and Manage Customer Relationships.”
- Leaders from Aria Health will talk about “Measuring and Managing Performance from All Angles.”
- Col. John Harris, assistant adjutant general…
A Baldrige Approach to Performance Measurement
Miami-Dade County, which is the focus of the free webinar being offered by ActiveStrategy (click on the banner on the right to find out more) integrated Baldrige through its participation in Florida’s state Baldrige program, the Florida Sterling Award. The City of Coral Springs, which won the Baldrige Award in 2007, also began its Baldrige journey with the Florida Sterling program and, like Miami-Dade County, it used ActiveStrategy software to automate its balanced scorecard.
You can see a diagram of the City’s performance measurement system at the end of this article. You can read more about the City’s system and the performance measurement systems of six other Baldrige Award winners in our free report, “How Baldrige Award Winners Measure Performance.” Just follow the arrow in the column on the right to sign up for this free report.
The City’s measurement system links all activity to the strategic plan and business plan, defines success in measurable terms, measures success, and uses data analysis to improve processes.
For example, the City noticed that its crime rate was creeping up slightly in 2006. It compared that trend to regional and national trends and found that, while its rate was lower than neighboring communities, the City’s upswing was not part of a general upward trend. Further analysis of its data showed that one particular type of crime, larceny, was the primary cause of the upswing. By focusing on larceny, the City uncovered and broke up an identity theft ring, which reversed its crime rate trend.
Key intended outcomes in…
20Oct2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhen Innovation and Planning Collide
Are a systematic strategic planning process and a formal strategic plan detrimental to innovation and agility?
I’ve recently worked with an entrepreneurial company that has more than two thousand employees worldwide and annual revenues approaching a half-billion dollars—and it has no strategic planning process. Its “strategic plan” is whatever the founder and CEO decides to pursue, which means the plan has many consistent elements year to year plus a stream of new ventures that aren’t even on the radar screen when the year begins. It’s a highly innovative, flexible, and agile company that has grown by 15% or more a year for nearly three decades. Such results suggest that its “strategy” is working.
From a Baldrige perspective, however, I can see how a more systematic approach could be beneficial, especially in the areas of:
- Involvement by more participants. More voices in the discussion would help clarify the issues and the opportunities and engage more people in owning the plans they help design.
- Inputs to the process. A more formal approach to gathering and analyzing critical information upon which any plans are based would minimize the risk of missing something important.
- Alignment. A company aligns its people with what it is trying to accomplish through a strategic plan and performance measurement system. If you have neither, the risk is that resources are being wasted on irrelevant activities.
- Communication. A strategic plan and the deployment of that plan through action plans communicates what is important to the company. Without that communication, uncertainty is more likely as people react to whatever…
The 3 P’s: Starting Points for Integrating Baldrige
Where do you start? You want to make your organization more competitive, better able to meet customer needs, less inclined to mistakes, but you’ve been doing things the same way for years and you’re not sure where to begin.
When I get this question, I suggest starting with one or more of the 3 P’s: processes, people, or planning.
Start with Processes. The Baldrige model is a process model because the work of an organization is done through processes. Organizations that haven’t taken a formal approach to process management usually spend way too much time firefighting because their processes are out of control, or they blame people when their processes fail. Neither is a prescription for long-term success.
You can develop a process orientation by first identifying your key work processes, which Baldrige defines as your most important internal value creation processes. If you’re not sure where to start, look at what products and/or services you provide to your customers and figure out the internal steps that design, produce, and deliver those products and services. Then consider the support processes that make these customer-driven processes possible, such as your key processes in sales, marketing, finance, human resources, IT, etc. Once you’ve identified your value creation processes, assign a process owner responsible for each, usually a senior leader with the authority to allocate resources and remove obstacles. Form process improvement teams to map each process, identify areas to improve, and determine in-process and end-of-process measurements. Provide training to the teams in how to do this…
12Oct2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedFREE REPORT: Baldrige Award-Winning Performance Measurement
The fourth Category in the Baldrige Criteria asks questions about how your organization measures, analyzes, reviews, and improves its performance using data and information. You can get a free report on how seven Baldrige Award winners answer these questions by entering your name and email address in the box in the third column.
The report shows a diagram of the measurement system and the balanced scorecard used by the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center.
It presents the five-step measurement process used by Heartland Health and shows how it aligns its key measures.
The report includes the City of Coral Spring’s performance management system and talks about the performance agreements the city uses to align the strategic plan with its measurement system.
It lists the criteria MidwayUSA uses to select comparative data.
It describes the types of analysis that Cargill Corn Million performs and how its leadership team sets priorities for improvement.
It shows a diagram of the organizational performance reviews conducted by Premier.
It lists the criteria Iredell-Statesville Schools uses to select its key performance indicators and the process senior leaders use to review performance.
You can also learn about the common elements these award-winning organizations share and how you can use them to create an effective approach for your organization.
Sign up for your free report today and you will automatically receive free copies of the first two reports in this series on performance management and process management.
Sign up today!
22Sep2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedCommunicate Information Effectively
How do you make data and information available?
This question from the Baldrige Criteria assumes that you have good answers for the questions that precede it on selecting, collecting, aligning, integrating, and analyzing data and information, because if you don’t do these things well, there won’t be much of value to communicate. But if you have sound processes in place, the critical step in an effective performance measurement system is getting the right data and information in the right hands at the right time.
Very few organizations spend time on how they communicate key data and information. For most, it’s numbers on a chart. A few balanced scorecard followers use a stoplight approach alongside the numbers: green light means on target, yellow light means not quite, red light means trouble. A small percentage shows trend lines and benchmarks for their key measures to give users context for current performance. And that’s about it when it comes to communicating data and information, which is why it is always refreshing to discover a creative way to share information.
GE is awarding $200 million to ideas that help build the next generation power grid. It is accepting ideas in three categories: renewables; grid efficiency; and eco homes/eco buildings. You can read about the more than 1,800 ideas that have been submitted thus far—the Ecomagination Challenge ends September 30th—by clicking here.
GE has taken an innovative approach to communicating this information. Each idea is a dot. The dots turn on an axis that begins with the first day…
8Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMeasuring Teacher Performance
A recent report that the Los Angeles public schools will start publishing test scores by individual teachers has touched of a storm of protest. The so-called value-added gauges are intended to provide data on how well teachers improve the test scores of their students over the course of a school year.
An academic report by the Economic Policy Institute argues that “the nonrandom assignment of students to classrooms and schools—and the wide variation in students’ experiences at home and at school—mean that teachers cannot be accurately judged against one another by their students’ test scores, even when efforts are made to control for student characteristics in statistical models.”
Although that makes a lot of sense, I understand where the push for value-added gauges comes from. As a parent, I’ve never felt that the effectiveness of my children’s teachers has been evaluated in any meaningful way. Average and incompetent teachers return, year after year, to inflict their ineptness on their students. Lacking any reportable measures of competence, they are unaccountable for their performance except as part of an aggregate school’s overall performance. Teachers need to be accountable for the quality of their work, but measuring that quality has been elusive.
The EPI report offers alternatives that rely less on test scores such as “systematic observation protocols with well-developed, research-based criteria to examine teaching,” but, as the report observes, “American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers.” And this is only getting worse as shrinking budgets cut funds needed for…
1Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
