Tag Archives | measures

Target vs. Goal

While most people don’t distinguish between goals and objectives in every day conversation, I find that performance management practitioners sometimes use the word goal when they really mean target. This potential confusion between objectives and targets explains why I usually recommend against using the term goal when establishing a standard performance management terminology. From my…

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Fourth of July factoids

In case you didn’t see it, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a Facts for Features release (note: destination page has been removed) in observance of The Fourth of July 2008. It’s full of unusual holiday-themed factoids you can share at your picnic. My favorite is that the baked beans you eat likely came from North Dakota; the state produced 42%…

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Alignment

Cascading Satisfaction

I often use a honeycomb as a metaphor for a connected and aligned organization. In Performance Alignment: Cascading Strategy, I defined cascading as a formal method for achieving alignment by explicitly connecting strategy to operations to tactics. When cascading works well, every individual understands how his/her objectives supports the corporate objectives. I frequently get asked how…

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Alignment Focused Organization

By now, most of us have read about organizations that attempted to improve their performance by deploying dashboards populated with financial and operational metrics only to discover that managing by numbers alone didn’t improve their performance. Instead, organizations must go beyond keeping score to ensure that everyone has a common understanding of both what they are trying…

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Automating Measurement Mania

Several years ago, I visited a U.S. government agency that tracked more than 1000 different performance measures representing nearly every aspect of their operations. The measures came from multiple operational systems, a dozen or more Excel workbooks, and several employee and citizen surveys. The entire process was automated, allowing many of the measures to be updated daily…

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Show Me The Measures

Although she’s too far away to hear me, I want to give a big shout-out to Stacey Barr from Australia who describes herself as a performance measure specialist. In the Performance Measurement Association Discussion Forum, someone named “Eke, U” asks which parameters they should use to measure the performance of a marine terminal gate. I…

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Thanksgiving Measures

As I’ve said before, performance management seems to be invading my personal life. Somehow I looked at Thanksgiving Day through the lens of the logic model: Input Measures Three extended families including 17 adults, 4 kids, and a dog Entirely too much money spent at Whole Foods Countless hours in the kitchen over several days Output Measures…

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Management by Baseball

Much to my own surprise, this week’s blog is about another book. But, unlike last week, it’s not about performance management per se but rather what we can learn about aligning an organization from the sport of baseball. Yup, baseball. The book, Management by Baseball by Jeff Angus, purports to provide “The Official Rules For…

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