All Posts Tagged With: "performance measurement"
Reality Check in Japan
Making assumptions about the world around us is human nature. We have a sense for how the world operates and we interpret information and events based on our experiences and expectations. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, calls these assumptions “leaps of abstraction.”
We make leaps of abstraction at work all the time. We assume we know what our customers require, what engages our employees, the source of a problem, and our marketplace and competitors. Because our assumptions may not, in truth, reflect reality, acting on them can cause all sorts of problems, and learning the truth through sound data and information can challenge our most dearly held beliefs.
This is what happened recently in Japan. Japan has a reputation for producing many of the world’s oldest people due, it has long claimed, to superior diet and a commitment to the elderly. It assumed it excelled in this area—until police found the body of one of the country’s centenarians, a man believed to be 111, who had been dead for more than thirty years.
The shocking discovery challenged a long-held belief, prompting officials to verify the status of the other centenarians in the country. According to an article in the New York…
16Aug2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMeasuring Training Effectiveness
One of the most vexing challenges in completing a Baldrige assessment is showing meaningful results for workforce and leader development. Most organizations can show the percent of employees who received a certain type of training. Many can summarize data from surveys of people who completed specific training. A few can provide hours of training per employee.
Very few can identify results that show how effective their training is.
The Baldrige Criteria ask how you “evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of your learning and development systems.” Examiners expect to find measures of effectiveness and efficiency, the results of which should appear in Item 7.4. Not many organizations have a good answer for the question or relevant data to put in the Results section.
In “Putting a value on training” (McKinsey Quarterly, July 2010), Jenny Cermak and Monica McGurk explain why this data is so important, noting that “90% of respondents to a McKinsey Quarterly survey said that building capabilities was a top-ten priority for their organizations. Only a quarter, though, said that their programs are effective at improving performance measurably, and only 8% track the program’s return on investment.”
At a time when building capabilities in existing employees is critical but the resources to do that…
10Aug2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBuilding a Company on Baldrige
Baldrige stories turn up in unlikely places, like the article, “Striving for quality has real payoffs,” on Computerworld (April 20, 2010). Al Kuebler describes his experiences getting hired as the CIO for a start-up business that was organized, built, and operated according to the Baldrige model.
During his job interview, Kuebler learned that efficient IT service delivery would be required, but that the most important measure of IT performance would be ensuring that every business function had the information it needed to make better, faster decisions for the customer.
Kuebler started his work on this issue where he needed to start: with his customers. His IT team met with each business component to establish their business needs. They then “created a diagram of the overall flow of essential information for the entire business and each component within it.” They verified their diagram with each business unit before presenting it to senior management.
This dialogue was enlightening. “I knew precisely, for the first time in my career, how the business made its profit and in what ways the IT function’s performance was a factor in generating client satisfaction, growth, and profitability,” wrote Kuebler.
The company Kuebler helped launch was AT&T Universal Card Services, which won the…
22Apr2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMy Personal Baldrige: Measurement
Management by fact is a Baldrige core value. Organizations struggle with this to the point that the average scores for Category 4 in Baldrige applications—Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management—have traditionally been lower than any other Category.
Performance measurement has improved over the last decade with the proliferation of balanced scorecards, but individuals continue to struggle with measuring performance. Part of it is a natural resistance to measurement, the fear that, if I measure my performance, somebody is going to use the results of those measures against me. That’s a justifiable concern, but it ignores the opportunity to use the results of those measures to demonstrate your value to the organization. If you are lucky enough to have a boss who understands performance measures and how the results of those measures can be used to improve and not to punish, then identifying personal performance measures can help you do your job better. If you have a boss who will beat you over the head with them, save yourself the aggravation unless you can keep your personal measures private.
Remember that it’s hard to personalize Baldrige without a little learning and effort, and the Baldrige model is not designed to prescribe an individual’s role,…
29Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedPay Yourself First
It’s easy to acquire tunnel vision. There are jobs to do, projects to complete, and meetings to attend. Your organization is probably running lean, which means you’re responsible for your job as well as big chunks of work from coworkers who’ve moved or left. It’s hard to find the time to do anything well, much less learn and grow. Like the organization, you are sacrificing long-term considerations for short-term necessities. Focus on what’s in front of you. Get through the day.
Financial planners tell their clients to pay themselves first with every paycheck. Take a small amount from each check and put it in savings. Even when money is tight. Even when you have urgent needs in front of you. Don’t squander your future by being short-sighted. Pay yourself first.
The same concept applies to your work life. Take a few minutes from each day and use it to increase your value. Step back from the tunnel and broaden your understanding of how your entire team, department, and organization work. Identify your customers and what they require and how you can make them more satisfied and loyal. Learn how the processes you are part of function and how you can improve them.…
28Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedGet the Information You Need
Do you have the information you need to do your job? Do you have what you need to make critical decisions?
IBM asked these questions of business leaders in a business analytics and optimization study published in April 2009. One-half said they didn’t have the information required to do their jobs. One-third reported that they frequently lacked the information needed to make critical decisions.
IBM defines analytics as “the use of information to find patterns, identify new possibilities, create scenarios, make predictions, and prescribe actions.” Optimization is “a process that entails analyzing opportunities and constraints and then driving decisions about them deep into the organization.”
In August, IBM surveyed nearly 400 business leaders worldwide about how they use information and apply business intelligence. It compared top performers—top quintile based on self-reported performance relative to their peers—and lower performers in the bottom two quintiles. Twice as many top performers as lower performers had mastered three basic characteristics of information management:
- Aware. They were able to gather and use information from inside and outside the enterprise.
- Precise. They could sort through and extract the most relevant aspects of information.
- Linked. They were able to align information with business objectives and across functions.
Organizations that integrate the Baldrige model also…
28Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedAligning Individual Performance with Your Mission and Vision
In most organizations, the mission and vision have little to do with what gets done day-to-day. Even if employees know what the mission and vision are—and very few do—they fail to see how their work contributes to achieving them. Instead, departments, teams, and individuals focus on different things, on what the boss tells them is important or the company decides to target that year or the latest problem needing to be fixed. Rather than pulling together toward shared goals, they are pulled apart by shifting priorities and diverging objectives.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of Baldrige Award recipients is how well they align people, plans, and processes with the mission and vision of the organization. Every department, team, and individual not only knows what the mission and vision are, but they also understand what they must do to support them. The connection between an employee’s work and the mission and vision of his/her organization is documented and measurable.
Poudre Valley Health System, which won the Baldrige Award in 2008, calls this its “Global Path to Success.” Like other Award recipients, it uses its strategic plan and balanced scorecard to cascade its vision, mission, values, and strategic objectives throughout the organization, as shown…
23Dec2009 | Steve George | 2 comments | Continued
