All Posts Tagged With: "performance reviews"
99% Above Average
Call it the Lake Wobegon effect after Minnesota’s very own Garrison Keillor, that fictional place where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
Only in this case, they’re not children: They are the chairmen of 722 nonprofit hospitals, and 99% of them think their hospitals fare at least as well as a typical hospital on standard quality measures, according to a survey published in Health Affairs. Even worse, 100% of the chairmen of hospitals that perform the worst think they are at least as good as a typical hospital. (“Only 1% of Hospitals Are Below Average,” Jacob Goldstein, WSJ Blogs, November 9, 2009)
It’s hard to know what’s most appalling about this ignorance:
- The chairmen don’t know how their hospitals perform on standard quality measures, information that is available to anyone on the Internet.
- The chairmen don’t know what “typical” performance is—also available on the Internet.
- No one has bothered to share this information with the people who bear some responsibility for their hospitals’ performance or, worse yet—
- The chairmen don’t care.
The Baldrige Criteria ask how you evaluate the performance of your board members. I would add questions about how the board reviews the hospital’s quality performance to that evaluation. The Criteria also ask how you use these performance reviews to develop and improve the board. Based on the survey, one easy way to improve your board is to tell it how your hospital performs on standard quality measures. While you’re at it, share data on…
12Feb2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHow to Deploy Your Strategic Plan
Iredell-Statesville Schools won the Baldrige Award in 2008. In its application, available here (pdf), it demonstrates the alignment of its success factors, strategic goals, action plans, HR training and development, leading indicators, and results. It does this through the table shown below.
Each of the district’s 17 strategic goals is assigned an owner who is responsible for a district improvement plan that addresses the goal. Action plans that support the improvement plan are then developed within the owner’s department.
The owner reports on progress on the plan quarterly to senior leadership using the key measures listed in the table below and a rubric aligned to the factors by which Baldrige evaluates a process: approach, deployment, learning, and integration.
I-SS has more than 100 leading indicators for monitoring performance on short-term action plans that it tracks monthly. According to the application, “Each action plan is integrated with a PDSA approach, so that each plan must have three evaluation measures that measure completion and fidelity to the overall approach of the PDSA and an evaluation measure that impacts the overall goal.”
To see how all of this helps I-SS achieve its strategic goals, read its Baldrige Award-winning application summary (pdf).
Succession Planning at P&G
Procter & Gamble is a role model for succession planning. In an article in Fortune (November 20, 2009), Jennifer Reingold quotes Moheet Nagrath, P&G’s global human resources officer, who said, “Today I could show you the next generation of successors to current leaders, the generation after that, and the generation after that.”
The successors are listed in the company’s Talent Portfolio, a binder containing the names of P&G’s leaders compared to one another over six years on financial performance and the ability to lead and help others lead. Approximately 120 of P&G’s 135,000 employees reach general manager status and become part of the Talent Portfolio. They are evaluated every six months by their bosses, lateral managers who have worked with them, and their direct reports on a GM Performance Scorecard, which has one page of financial measures and another page assessing leadership and team-building abilities. There are at least three possible candidates for each major job, including CEO.
Although this formal process has been in place since 2001, P&G’s emphasis on hiring and retaining the right people can be traced to 1947 when CEO Richard “Red” Deupree said, “If you leave us our buildings and our brands but take away our people, the company will fail.”
The Baldrige Criteria ask how you accomplish effective succession planning for management and leadership positions. P&G has an effective, systematic response. The Criteria also ask how senior leaders create a sustainable organization. P&G’s Talent Portfolio, and its culture of valuing people, should sustain the company for years to…
16Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe 90-Day Action Plan
One of the contributions of healthcare’s participation in the Baldrige process has been the 90-day action plan, which is now being used by more and more businesses, educational organizations, and nonprofits.
The 90-day action plan is a systematic tool for deploying a strategic plan. Before it came along, organizations often had trouble reviewing performance to plan during the year with the result that initiatives were not completed and goals were not met.
Organizations use the 90-day action plan to break annual goals and objectives into the quarterly actions necessary to achieve them. By reviewing performance on the 90-day plans, senior leaders ensure that actions are on track or they can more quickly intervene to get them on track.
Baptist Hospital, Inc., which received the Baldrige Award in 2003, was one of the first to popularize 90-day action plans. Its award application summary describes the process:
Leader annual goals…are translated into 90-day action plans to facilitate goal accomplishment. 90-day action plans for BHI leaders are formulated or updated each quarter. This process for updating or reevaluating action plans on a quarterly basis enables the organization to be flexible and agile in accomplishing or reassessing longer-term goals and objectives. The 90-day action plan process is the fundamental and fully deployed method used to evaluate progress toward accomplishment of goals and address other strategic issues. Senior officers also maintain 90-day action plans, which are called senior management priorities. At quarterly retreats, the senior officers evaluate progress toward accomplishment of their own goals and formulate changes as appropriate.
The Baptist…
3Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
