The Glue

Performance Management Forum for State/Local Governments

For anyone in State/Local Government interested in Performance Management, there is a free breakfast forum taking place this Friday, August 8th in Philadelphia. This is also open to any non-profit organization wishing to learn about these topics.

The focus of the forum is "Sustaining Performance During the Good Times and the Bad" and will include an impressive line-up of panelists whom you'll be able to query about best practices and ideas for overcoming challenges, even as budgets are getting squeezed.

The panelists are:

• Jeff Friedman, Deputy Director of Performance Management, City of Philadelphia, PA
• Steve Marchand, Mayor, Portsmouth, NH
• Mark Freeman, Performance Management Coordinator, City of Columbus, OH
• Chris Heflin, formerly with the City of Coral Springs (2007 Baldrige Winner) and now heading up ActiveStrategy's Public Sector Consulting Practice

The event is taking place at the Sofitel Hotel in downtown Philly. It's just a few blocks from the 30th Street Train station. Breakfast is at 8:00 am and the forum will wrap up by 11:30.

See more about the event and the topics on the agenda at the Performance Institute website.

If you're within a short drive (or train ride) from Philadelphia and would like to attend, email ward@performanceweb.org to rsvp. Though the event is no charge for Government employees, you do need to rsvp.

The Engine That Powers Balanced Scorecards

Ever wonder why some organizations are so excited about the results of their Balanced Scorecards and others decry the tool as ineffective?

Clearly, there are a number of reasons why scorecards fail, such as not having senior management buy-in, not having the top-level scorecard aligned to the strategic plan, not deploying the scorecards to all key departments, and not performing scorecard reviews on a monthly basis to drive accountability for the proper actions.

However, even when an organization avoids all of the above pitfalls,they must have the right "engine" in place, or Balanced Scorecards still won't work.

The engine behind the scorecard framework is a well-designed system of correlated, cascaded measures. These begin with top-level lagging (or outcome) measures that track performance of the strategic plan. They cascade through to mid-level measures, on to lower-level measures, and even all the way to identified root causes of under-performing measures.

ActiveStrategy Goes Mobile (And Gets Blogged by Wall Street Journal)

At our annual Client Conference last week, we demonstrated the very first enterprise performance management application for the iPhone.

This is the first ActiveStrategy product optimized to run natively on a mobile device. So why did we pick the iPhone?  There are several key reasons:

1. The user-friendly, large display shows our Dashboards and Scorecards far better than any other mobile device can.
2. Since this will be a native app on the iPhone (versus an application optimized for a web-enabled mobile device), executives can view it anywhere -- even offline. Since so many of our users are high-level executives who tend to be on-the-go, they can prep for business reviews anywhere -- even at 30,000 feet.
3. Apple recently announced their enterprise roadmap, which we believe is going to make it a far more viable option for business users in the very near future.
4. Everyone loves the iPhone. We wouldn't be surprised if a few executives out there are just looking for a reason to tell their IT shop to support them. So this can be their reason!

If You Really Want to Execute Strategy, Improve Your Business Reviews

I wrote a couple of blog posts last year about what a good structured Business Review should be (and what it should not be). Now I want to delve a bit deeper into why good Business Reviews are so critical to achieving your desired strategic business outcomes.

To move an organization from an under-performing one to an overachieving one, the culture of the organization must change. The behaviors that occur today in the organization (possibly including chaotic fire-fighting, working on low-priority issues, poor cross-functional communication, etc.) must evolve into more performance-based, strategically-aligned behaviors. Otherwise results will remain the same...mediocre.

So how do you change a culture? There is a four-step model for doing that, as follows:

Step 1: Identify the new behaviors that the new culture must have to drive improved results

Step 2: Establish processes, systems, and structures that, if followed, will drive those new behaviors

Step 3: Train, coach, and mentor employees on the proper use of those new processes, systems, and structures

Step 4: Reward and reinforce the new behaviors on an ongoing basis

Leadership Buy-In & Strategy Execution

When studying what makes or breaks an Enterprise Strategy Execution effort, it initially appears to come down to two factors:

1. the need for a sound and compelling strategy that differentiates an organization
2. the right mix of execution methodologies, performance reviews, and accountability 

However, upon further scrutiny, it becomes clear that leadership buy-in is really the essential piece. Without it, nothing within a culture will truly change. And "Business As Usual" is the antithesis of Enterprise Strategy Execution.

Since I've seen plenty of leaders who don't step up to drive Strategy Execution, let’s discuss why this happens. Why don't they "buy-in" to this proven performance-driving methodology, when they are the ones charged with ensuring that the organization improves results?

I know there may be many reasons, but let’s talk about the top three, as I see it:

1. They DON’T personally feel the pain from the company's “burning platform” (i.e. a lingering high-level organizational problem that significantly hinders current or future performance)
2. They DO feel the pain of a burning platform, but don’t understand that Strategy Execution is the solution 
3. They DO feel the pain of the burning platform and realize they need to execute strategy better, but just don’t know how to do that

A Performance Management Conference Yields Gems & Duds - Part 2

In my previous post, I shared an overview of what I thought was the biggest gem to come out of a recent Performance Management conference for local government. Now on to a presentation that left me scratching my head...

"The Dud" was a puzzling presentation that came from a major city mayor’s office official.  It asked a very intriguing question: Is there a real relationship between citizen satisfaction scores and the outputs and activities governments pursue?  In other words, do people become happier with their government when the right things are done?

His initial example looked at the relationship between citizen satisfaction of the police department with the reduction in the crime rate.  The chart and data showed that the crime rate seemed to have little impact on satisfaction.  So, his question of, “do satisfaction scores matter?” really popped with this slide. 

However, it made me wonder why there is a presumed connection in this example?  Most people never interact with the police.  Personally, I don’t connect my satisfaction with police to the crime rate (if I was a robbery victim, for example, and was visited by a courteous, responsive officer who followed up on my report, I would be very "satisfied" with the police, despite the rate of criminal activity).   

A Performance Management Conference Yields Gems & Duds

Last week, I attended a Performance Management conference designed specifically for state, county, and local governments.  There were a few gems and a few duds, both of which contributed to my take-aways. Today, I'll recap what I felt was the biggest gem.

The Gem of the event came from the City of Miami Beach. 

The folks in the budget office of Miami Beach have been at it for some time.  So from a strategy execution methodology, they have the model down quite well.  This isn’t really news. 

What really struck me was their story from this past year.  As some may know, the state of Florida recently went through a politically-driven change to its property tax system –- resulting in significantly reduced tax revenues for county and city governments.  Miami Beach was no exception to the revenue drop, and for its size, it took a major hit.

So, Miami Beach had the unique opportunity to utilize its wonderfully developed strategy execution system to manage a strategy of downsizing.  How can downsizing be done in a strategic way to minimize the negative impact on citizen outcomes and services?  This was their challenge.

Recognizing Performance Excellence - Congrats to Coral Springs

The entire ActiveStrategy team sends out our hearty congratulations to our client, the City of Coral Springs, who was recently recognized with the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the top honor a U.S. company can receive for quality achievement and performance excellence. 

For those not familiar with the Baldrige, this is an extremely comprehensive program that evaluates organizations in these areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and business results.

Coral Springs is one of only five recipients of the 2007 awards and is the first state or local government in the nation to receive the award. This is the first year non-profit organizations could apply for the award, after testing a pilot program in 2006. The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. early next year.

Coral Springs, located in Broward County, Florida, is also a two-time winner of the Florida Sterling Award, a state program based upon the Baldrige. These awards are a testament to the City's efforts, as well as the significant results achieved, during their ongoing journey toward performance excellence.

This journey began in 1993, when Coral Springs began using a business model that takes customer input and data analysis into consideration before mapping initiatives in the Strategic and Business Plans. The City develops process improvements while comparing results to Fortune 500 businesses and top local governments.

Having worked with many other Baldrige applicants and winners in the past, we know how difficult it is to even receive a site visit, let alone win the award. Keep up the excellence!

Why Software as a Service Will Change Performance Management

In case you haven't heard, Software as a Service (a.k.a. SaaS, rhymes with Jazz) is the hot new thing in Silicon Valley.  Simply put, this is where a vendor provides access to an application via a secure Internet link and charges on a monthly or quarterly basis (usually by user).  There are lots of technology improvements that differentiated this from the old Application Service Provider (or ASP) model, but the ideas are similar.

For the client this means quicker implementations with less up front investment and lower costs to maintain the application.  It also means quicker results.  With the success of companies like salesforce.com and Netsuite most of the old IT concerns about application and data security are melting away. 

We have used salesforce.com internally since our company's inception, so we're customers of this type of service.  And for our customers, we've always offered our Strategy Execution software application as a monthly or quarterly service.  Based on our experiences and those of our clients, I think there is going to be a huge move to SaaS offerings over the next few years.  Let me illustrate with a tale of two projects...

Strategy Execution Grows Up

This week I attended the Ventana Research Connections Conference, where the 2007 Performance Management Leadership Awards were presented.  I'm glad I went, not only because our clients won two of the top three awards, but also because I saw even more evidence that companies are accelerating their understanding of "performance management" -- in fact, I think this maturing trend is becoming a flood.

At our client conferences over the past several years, the discussions and questions have evolved from "how do you do this?" into lively exchanges around much more mature topics, like how to encourage culture change and how to drive/sustain long-term improvement. We now have large organizations sharing best practices from multi-year implementations.  The Ventana folks confirmed during their wrap-up that they are seeing the same things.