After my posting on call centers, I received an email from a reader submitting his own recent experience with a call center. The story is so funny – and such a classic example of lack of alignment – that, with the reader’s permission, I decided to share it with you. I edited the email for…
Archive | 2006
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…
Measuring Customer Satisfaction
As I talk to organizations about their performance management journey, one of the most common questions I hear is “What’s the best way to measure customer satisfaction?” I often reply with a question of my own “Why do you want satisfied customers?” My question is usually unexpected and even jarring but I am encouraging them to think…
Call Center Metrics
If you’ve heard me give a performance management presentation, you know one of my favorite topics is the pursuit of improved performance in call centers. When I first started using them as my prototypical example several years ago, organizations were in the midst of moving call centers offshore. Less expensive human agents and AI-based electronic agents…
Revisiting Dirty KPIs
Based on my blog statistics, one of the most popular performance management articles I’ve ever written is Dirty KPIs: an article is about the challenges of using a metric based on activity rather than outcome. During one of my workshops, I recommended that an attendee use the outcome measure ‘% reduction in complaints about street…
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…
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…
The Performance Power Grid
Because performance management is such a popular term these days, you would expect lots of books being published pushing esoteric new methodologies or describing successful client implementations. I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked into my local bookstore and discovered “Performance Management for Dummies” on the shelf. Oddly, however, this hasn’t happened. There really aren’t…
Dirty KPIs
At a recent performance management workshop, I asked an attendee for an example metric he was using to track performance. The attendee, who worked for a city’s public works department, immediately replied “# of miles of streets cleaned.” Before I could ask any questions, he proudly added “and we cleaned more than 1000 miles last…
Teaching the Elephant to Dance
Do you need an informal way to convince your coworkers that your organization could benefit from performance management? That the principles of managing by walking around could improve your organization’s alignment? Here’s a poem that was written more than 150 years ago that might help: The Blind Men and The Elephant John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)…