It’s been a while since I’ve blogged a book but on the plane back from Germany I stumbled on an email that Nenshad sent me back in Feb with an excerpt from Chapter 9 of “Beat the Odds: Avoid Corporate Death and Build a Resilient Enterprise” by Robert A. Rudzki. In a section called measure…
Archive | performance management
Performance Anxiety
Bernard Marr must be a believer in my theory that catchy headlines promote increased readership. How else to explain that the long-time performance management guru resorted to the titillating title “Performance Anxiety” for an otherwise solid article on the potential perils of poorly implemented performance systems? Bernard observes that “performance management initiatives were often so…
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…
I beg to differ
There hasn’t been enough debate on this blog recently so I’m hoping this post will stir things up a bit. Over at the other guys, Frank wrote a post titled EPM and Strategy Management that I had to read four or five times to understand. Even now, I’m not completely sure what he’s getting at. My confusion…
Planning vs. Budgeting
Openly, I get annoyed when people use the term planning to describe budgeting. While the terms planning and budgeting are often used interchangeably, they’re not the same thing. Budgeting is how you allocate resources (typically financial) to reach specific objectives. Budgeting helps you create an estimate of income and expenses for a specific time period. Budgeting manages money…
Achilles’ other heel
Avisen certainly intrigued me with a post called The Achilles heal (sic) of Performance Management. It’s widely agreed that many performance management projects deliver less value than originally promised. The issue is so endemic that a colleague once asked me “Does performance management have any value?” Imagine my disappointment when, after wading through nearly 1000 words of…
Measuring (Lack of) CRM Usage
One of the most common complaints about customer relationship management (CRM) systems is that individual reps don’t use them. This isn’t very surprising to me, as many CRM deployments are designed to give visibility to management or to streamline the ops person’s ability to forecast, rather than to add value to the individual rep. Organizations try…
Measurement Missteps
Although I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I used to, one of my favorite parts of my job is helping organizations avoid measurement missteps. My focus is on strategy articulation, not strategy formulation. While other consultants focus on helping organizations figure out where they should go, I use performance management techniques to make…
Bad KPIs, bad behavior
I received the following email about my Love/Hate Boss post: Your recent comments about relationship between boss styles and KPIs really hit home but in a different context than you described. My boss is currently developing KPIs for me and my team to judge our 2008 performance and he asked me for input. When workers…
The Risk of Spreadsheets
Unless you were trapped on a desert island over the last few months, it’s unlikely that you missed the Société Générale scandal and the resulting teeth-gnashing about the need for stricter controls and oversight in the financial services industry. While I’m all for better access and process controls leading to improved segregation of duties, I…