If you’re in or around the performance management market, you’ve no doubt already heard about SAP’s acquisition of Pilot Software. If you only read the official press release which describes it as a “tuck-in” acquisition, you might not realize how significant an event this really was. Certainly the analysts seem supportive; John Hagerty of AMR…
Balanced scorecards should sometimes be imbalanced. Over in the PMA Forum, Alan Meeks suggests the word balance is counterproductive, as it’s impractical to assign equal weight to each of the four perspectives. He argues for a ‘genuinely systemic scorecard’ – not nearly as catchy, is it? As I replied, the original intent of the term balance was…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Sometimes I think performance management is invading my personal life. A student I have been mentoring happily announced during one of our recent meetings that she had gotten a 46 on her latest algebra quiz. I’m no math major but normally any score under 60 is a failing grade. How could she be so pleased…
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 –…
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…
While certainly not based on the scientific method, I think it’s safe to say the phrase “performance management” has become mainstream. A web search for the phrase returns over 14 million results. By comparison, a search for the phrase “customer relationship management” – a market that is at least a decade more mature – returns…