Archive for the ‘Improving Performance’ Category

You hear it a lot, don’t you? That you should only measure what you can control. Hogwash! The most powerful measures are those that track what you can only influence.

Let’s take a closer look at how to measure to expand your influence – and get much more meaningful results.

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Are you still measuring performance results annually?

And do you wonder why people aren’t really getting much value from measuring performance?

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Imagine that you’re the manager of a department in a railway that rails sugar from the mill to the port. Your department takes orders from the mill for trains when they’re needed, to come and load up with sugar at the silos, and chug them along the tracks to dump the sugar at the port for export.

And you’ve just had a call from the manager at the sugar mill: “Where are those *%$# trains we ordered?! We’ve had to shut down production AGAIN because the silos are full. You know how much that costs us! When are you guys going to get your train problem sorted?!”

It’s not too far from the truth.

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Some people talk about stretch targets. Or BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). They represent a very large and significant improvement in performance. Pretend, for example, you were measuring On Time Delivery, the percentage of times you delivered your product or service to your customers on or before the agreed time, each month. And let’s say that currently your On Time Delivery averaged around 45%. A stretch target would be to average around 95%.

Usually stretch targets scare the living daylights out of people. They have no idea how or if it can be achieved and they don’t want the pressure of failing to meet the stretch target. Occassionally stretch targets can be motivating and inspiring, but rarely without careful leadership, a strong improvement culture or a damn good reason!

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