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…
Archive | alignment
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…
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)…
Reinventing Local Government
Every once in a while an idea comes along that’s so simple but so compelling that it sticks in my head for days. It also makes me wonder, “Why the heck didn’t I think of that?” An exchangeable tank for your gas grill fits the bill. So does the iPod. But not the Internet –…
Performance Management’s Value
Yesterday a colleague asked me “Is there any tangible value in deploying a performance management system?” The question took me by surprise because she wasn’t asking if there was any value in automating using a software package but rather whether there was any documented value in performance management itself. I assured her that performance management…
The HP Way
Ask someone to describe the culture of companies in Silicon Valley and you’re likely to get responses like “unstructured”, “entrepreneurial”, and “decentralized.” Ask for examples of how they differ from their East Coast counterparts and you might hear about Friday afternoon beer bashes, T-shirts and jeans every day of the week, or the proliferation of…