Performance Management & Strategy Execution Blog: The Glue

Using Spreadsheets for Performance Management: Why They Work and Why They Don’t - Part 3

Note: This is a new series in which I'll be discussing the pros and cons of using spreadsheet tools for performance management. See the intro/background post and part 2 (it's everywhere and it's easy).

Part 3: Pros – Excel is powerful and flexible.

Long ago, on my first day of my first job, I made a fool of myself. My new boss was describing some things I’d be doing and used the phrase “add new breaks to existing reports.” I asked what breaks were. He looked at me stunned and said “Good lord, haven’t you ever written a program?”

Well I had written lots of programs to get my degrees in Computer Science. But in school we wrote programs that did things. In the real world, most people wrote programs that generated reports. Sure there were tools to help, but creating a report basically meant writing a program to get, assemble, format, and print data.

Skip forward to today. Yes, lots of people still write programs to generate reports. But I’d bet most reports are made with Excel. That “break” the tripped me up is simply a column subtotal. Excel makes it easy to have any number of levels of subtotals. You can show all levels, pick your level, or drill though levels. You can automatically color code different summary levels. You can specify headers and footers.

Excel makes it easy to generate reports with nicely formatted data and charts. There are built in templates to get you started. You can create just about and chart you can thing of and tweak it’s colors, data points, legends, series labels, and on and on and on.

Mere mortals can even pull data from databases to generate reports. Heck, some people use Excel as a database. It works great for disciplined managers who can get a report exactly like the want it as well as for type of manager that changes what they want to look at every month.

Excel is also more powerful than most people think. If you are really adventurous (or crazy) you can have spreadsheets with 1,048,576 rows and 16,384 columns. That would give you enough cells to record the name of every person on earth. And the names of their pets.*

So Excel is a flexible, powerful reporting solution. Next time we will see that it is also an analysis tool. Then we will see how this ease of use, flexibility, and power induces an unwarranted sense of security for people trying to use it to really drive business results.

In the meantime, if you'd like a sneak peek into some of the challenges organizations face trying manage scorecards and dashboards in Excel, check out our "Top 10" list of signs your scorecards have outgrown Excel.

*(believe me, I did the math)

Scorecards in Government: How Carson City Went From "0 to 60" Fast

Join us this Wednesday, August 26th for a free webinar case study of one small government -- Carson City, NV, population 58,000 -- and their rapid implementation of scorecards, performance measures, and ActiveStrategy Enterprise software to automate the framework.

This session will be helpful for any public sector organization -- as well as other organizations with lean resources -- interested in "kick starting" a performance management and measurement effort.

The webinar runs from 2-3 pm Eastern Daylight Time this Wednesday (8/26). To register follow this link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/685658001

Despite very limited resources, Carson City government has gone from having only a loosely defined strategy and a predominantly reactive culture -- to having a comprehensive top-level scorecard, several cascaded scorecards, and a total of almost 700 new performance metrics automated and reviewed in software -- all in less than one year.

During this webinar, you'll hear directly from Linda Ritter, the former City Manager who is managing this effort for Carson City as a special project. She’ll talk about why and how she got the effort started, who has been involved, and what results they’ve seen to date.

We’ll include time at the end of the session to answer your questions.

If you’re unable to attend the webinar live, but are interested in the topic, please register anyway. We’ll send you a link to view the recording after the webinar.

Lessons from a Successful Turnaround at One Public Hospital

Today, in a Wall Street Journal Health online article titled “Mending the Hospital Safety Net”, the author talks about a hospital that turned itself around financially  -- not through government monetary infusions, but by applying internal discipline, creating focus, and enforcing accountability.

This story resonated with me because of the emphasis on changing the culture to one that is based upon ensuring successful strategy execution.

Here's an excerpt explaining CEO James Valenti's take on what worked:

"He says he did it by using the "the private-practice business model" and applying it to the public hospital: he demanded individual accountability and financial accountability; he developed a clear strategic plan, and recruited people who could execute the plan; he changed the culture from one of inertia, defeat and pessimism, to one of excitement and belief in the future."

The article goes on to describe how far Valenti went to ensure his strategic plan would succeed -- which required support from all of its diverse stakeholders. He made "up to three speeches a day to different community groups, selling them the hospital's mission and strategic plan. He won over the city council, the hospital board, law enforcement and the public with his singular vision of where the hospital needed to be."

Why was this hospital able to achieve success when so many others can't? Clearly Valenti's leadership and unwillingness to accept business-as-usual was key. But just as importantly, he articulated a clear plan and ensured it was executed well.

As this turnaround at one El Paso hospital shows, pairing the right strategic focus with accountability for results, is the right medicine for ailing institutions of all kinds.