Q & A: Do Away With Traditional Performance Appraisals

Q: Beyond building performance dashboards, assigning “owners” to particular measures, and so forth, how do you hard-wire performance measurement into key management processes?

A: I asked this question today in the Webinar, “Beyond the Balanced Scorecard, Improving Business Intelligence with Better Metrics,” presented by Mark Graham Brown, a consultant with 25 + years experience and author of three books on performance measurement. Here’s what he said.

Do away with the traditional form of annual employee performance appraisal and replace it with a review of the organization’s performance dashboard. Make sure that performance has consequences for the employee, said Brown. A measure in the “red” should lead to negative consequences like salary decreases, and a measure in the “green,” i.e., a measure trending toward performance targets or goals, should lead to salary increases and promotions.

To make this work, ideally, an organization would need to have a sophisticated performance dashboard – Brown refers to these as “fourth generation dashboards” – that have analytics (indices) that provide a line of sight from strategic to operational measures closely related to the work and responsibilities of the employee, and not just what Brown refers to “singular” measures that are more easily manipulated. Nevertheless, I agree with Brown. I can imagine even less sophisticated performance dashboards being used effectively by skilled supervisors as the main reference in employee performance appraisals. Why should a manager who runs a unit or division that consistently fails to hit performance targets and regularly falls below legitimate benchmarks not be held responsible for those measures?

For the latest posts and archives of Made2Measure click here.

© Copyright CourtMetrics 2007. All rights reserved

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Reasons for Performance Measurement

There is a growing demand of “show me the data” from citizens and taxpayers, legislators, executive agencies, oversight boards and communities – all of whom exchange money and other support (e.g., trust and confidence) for services -- that courts can ill afford to ignore. Courts need to measure their performance to meet the demand for public accountability. But the benefits of court performance extend beyond accountability including improved prediction, better understanding and control, influence, a sharpened focus on what is important, and discovery of better practices. Objective performance data is central to good management practices like strategic planning, performance-based budgeting, Balanced Scorecards, Total Quality Management (TQM), and Six Sigma. Performance measures allow court leaders and managers, policymakers, legislators and the public to evaluate court programs’ inputs (the resources allocated), outputs (direct results of program or service activities) and outcomes (bro
Read more

The “What Ifs” Along the Road in the Quest of a Justice Index

What if we could draw an indicator of the “health” of the justice systems throughout the United States – a Justice Index - from readily available public data that is impartial, reliable, objective and comparable, let’s say the amount of time that criminal defendants spend in custody without a trial, or even without any access to legal or justice services? Or the bail amounts imposed on misdemeanor defendants?   This kind of a measure would not be perfect – no measure is – but it would be something, better than nothing. It would address questions of fairness and efficient use of public resources. That is, a criminal defendant languishing in jail awaiting trial suffers, at the least, a delay in justice. He or she is also occupying a jail bed and spending taxpayers’ money. What if we then join this measure with another meaningful indicator of the health of our justice systems in counties and states, let’s say the degree to which jurisdictions prosecute domestic violence cases.
Read more

Q & A: Outcome vs. Measure vs. Target vs. Standard

Q: Those of who write and speak about court performance measurement rely on their share of jargon -- and it's often confusing. What are the differences among the terms “outcome,” “measure,” “target” and “standard”? A: Socrates said that the beginning of wisdom is definition. We’ll see. Outcomes are the benefits or changes for the intended beneficiaries of a court’s programs and services. Outcomes may relate to knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, behavior, condition or status of the program participants or recipients of services. Examples include litigants' satisfaction with a court's courtesy and responsiveness, success of probation, time to case disposition, clarity of orders, integrity of case files, percent of mediation agreements, enforcement of orders, and perceived fairness of proceedings, as well as percent of expected expenditures and percent of revenues received. Outcomes should not be confused with the activities of those who run the court. (See the October 1
Read more