AlanMeekings's blog

People tend to think the prime purpose of organisational performance management is learning from the past to improve the future. While this is certainly helpful, it is by no means the whole answer. Often overlooked is the other other important purpose, namely exploring the future to deliver better outcomes.

Our recent paper (see 12-11-12 MBE Control Tower Paper v2.5 Final) uses the analogy of air traffic controllers managing the flow of planes coming in to land to illustrate how hospitals around the world can optimise appointments for outpatients coming in for treatment by adopting what we call the Control Tower approach.

It also explains how this approach has been derived from generic principles underpinning the optimisation of complex service delivery performance, notably including Lean Thinking and Connected Performance.

For ease of reference, papers presented by Landmark Consulting at previous PMA Conferences and Symposia are downloadable as follows:

(1)    PMA Conference 2004 (Edinburgh): Getting the Most Out of Performance Measurement (see Paper for PMA 2004 (Final))

(2)    PMA Conference 2006 (London): ‘Plumbed-In Performance Improvement’: Accelerating Improvement and Adaptation in Organisations (see Paper for PMA 2006 – Alan Meekings – v1.1)

(3)    PMA Symposium 2010 (Loch Lomond): How to Avoid the Problems of Target-Setting (see PMA Symposium Target-Setting Paper v1.4)

(4)    PMA Conference 2012 (Cambridge): Connected Performance: A New Approach to Managing and Improving Organisational Performance (see PMA 2012 Paper (Final Version))

Yet little is known about where contact centre managers currently see themselves in the important field of performance measurement and management (PM&M) on a spectrum from poor to outstanding.

Nor is much known about future aspirations or intended timescales for improvement.

So, Simon Povey and I (at Landmark Consulting) and Paul Weald (at ProtoCall One) worked together to design and analyse a specifically tailored survey, based around Landmark Consulting’s PM&M maturity model for contact centres.

A brief summary of our findings is at PM&M Brief Survey Findings.

Details of our maturity model and the survey qeastions are at PM&M Self-Assessment Questionnaire.

Recently Tina, a new member of the LinkedIn Balanced Scorecard group, enquired if anyone would be willing to share their experience around “how to implement KPI´s from Lean-processes into BSC successfully?”

This sparked an interesting debate (see http://linkd.in/e0xEQR).

As last weekend was a holiday, I asked for extra time to share my thoughts on how to link operational indicators to a top-level scorecard, which are as follows . . .

Hello Tina,

Because my approach differs significantly from a traditional Kaplan & Norton (K&N) Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach, both in terms of underlying philosophy and supporting methodology, I need to start by saying something about my background, and hence why I see things differentlI became a management consultant in 1988 – an unexpected event, given that my views on management consultants at that time, before I became one, are best not printed.

The advocates and critics of target-setting seem unable to agree on any common ground.

On the one hand, there is incontrovertible evidence of the damaging effects of arbitrary numerical target-setting. Yet, on the other hand, there is a significant body of academic evidence supporting the benefits of goal-directed behaviour.

We have developed a paper showing how these fundamental contradictions can be resolved by taking into account seven important points:

(1) Understanding the typology of targets;

(2) Clarifying the terminology used;

(3) Distinguishing between differing uses of measures;

(4) Adopting a systemic perspective;

(5) Acknowledging the unknown and unknowable;

(6) Charting performance; and

(7) Differentiating managerial time spans of attention and added value from front line to boardroom.

By adopting the approach we propose, it is possible to secure all the benefits of goal-directed behaviour with none of the problems typically associated with target-setting.

An updated version of our draft target-setting paper (as published by Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2011) is now available at PMA Symposium Target-Setting Paper v1.4.