Partially due to corporate sustainability reasons and partly due to old-fashioned cost savings, I’ve been thinking a lot about virtual events lately. The idea behind virtual events is pretty simple – rather than flying thousands of people to a single destination to discuss a series of topics, you have these discussions on-line. While simple in…
Archive | Business
Trusted Information
I was deep in conversation with an executive about how to make scorecards more actionable when he said something like: I understand that I should focus on KPIs that are red and trending down but, honestly, I don’t trust the data. This is perhaps the true Achilles Heel of Performance management. If end users don’t trust…
Timing of Blogs
One of the advantages of using WordPress for my blog is it has a decent amount of built-in reporting. For example, WordPress ranks entries by the total number of page views since they were first posted. Unfortunately, the built-in reports are limited to last 7 Days, 30 Days, Quarter, Year, and All Time. This means it’s difficult…
Web2.0 workforce performance management?
I’ve been called a Web 2.0 thinker but I sure hope that Geek&Poke’s humorous send-up isn’t what happens to workforce performance management: (Thanks for the idea, Michaela)
Unhealthy Measures
It seems like every few months someone tries to claim performance management is bad for organizations. The latest one comes from Phil Dourado who writes, “Target-based systems distort everything and most people’s behaviour.” Phil bases his indictment of performance management on several stories about the UK’s National Health Service in which “brilliant, dedicated people [are] pushed…
Improving Performance at USPS
At a recent performance management conference, I attended a talk by the Manager of Strategic Business Planning at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) who described how they used performance management concepts to dramatically improve the agency. I showed up at the talk with skeptical attitude, as the post office does not have the best reputation…
Reviewing Call Center Performance
I often use call centers as my default example when describing how better objectives and metrics can help improve performance. It’s not that performance in call centers is always poor. It’s just that executive management often regards the call center as nothing more than required overhead that burden the bottom line. Call center sometimes unwittingly…
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…
A Caution on Using Traffic Lights for Performance
If you’ve attended one of my performance management workshops, you know I caution against using the traditional traffic light metaphor to represent performance. Yes, the visual is nearly universally understood (green = good, red = not good) and simple communication is indeed a key to improving performance. However, in many business situations, three states are…
Operational, IT, or Financial?
In response to my earlier post titled “What’s In A Name”, a reader named Stephen agrees that financial and workforce performance management are different things but asks: “… what’s IT performance management or operational performance management? Is the product [needed to support them] any different?” Point taken, Stephen. I used the terms but never defined them. Outside…