The Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop A pre-workshop message to help you get the most out of the workshop! This is a summary transcript of the audio message which you can listen to at www.staceybarr.com/pmbwpreworkshopmessage.html Hi and welcome. I m Stacey Barr, the Performance Measure Specialist of www.staceybarr.com and creator and host of the Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop. This is just a little pre-workshop message for you, to help you prepare and get the most out of your upcoming in-house Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop. The Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop has been going since 2006, and we run it both as public workshops and also in-house workshops, like yours is. It s all about the essential steps in the process of measuring performance, steps that I ve developed and refined and facilitated over and over again with my consulting clients since the late 1990s. Performance measurement has been the focus of my work since the early 1990s, when I left my job as a research statistician to become the Measurement Consultant at Queensland Rail. I got to learn about business process improvement and discovered how to generalise my statistical qualifications into the organisational performance measurement field, which at that time was really only just taking off, with the launch of the Balanced Scorecard. Ever since then, I ve found that people have the same basic struggles with measuring performance no matter what sector or industry or organisation size. And it s been this hands-on experience with so many different clients that has helped the Performance Measure Blueprint evolve to what it is today. The most common reasons for these struggles are:
The 3 biggest reasons people struggle with performance measurement Reason 1: Your strategic or operational plan is full of weasel words. Open up your strategic or operational plan, and compare its objectives or goals with these statements: "To align internal resources and business processes to support strategic objectives while remaining focused on continuous improvement by embracing innovative approaches" "Deliver effective, efficient and expert regulation." "Enhance the learning outcomes of students." "Optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of our core processes." "Refine and accelerate the client team approach" If these sample objective statements sound familiar to you, then your strategy isn't measurable! It's filled with words like effective, efficient, productive, sustainable, engaged, innovative, key, outcomes - and I'll bet you've got no idea how to meaningfully measure it! Reason 2: You've been using brainstorming to find measures and KPIs. It usually goes something like this: You have an objective in your business plan that reads like this "Optimise the efficiency and effectiveness of our core processes". Then you brainstorm measures and end up with these things listed down the flipchart page: customer satisfaction implement Lean methods to improve processes errors rework standards need to do benchmarking get it right first time and so on...
Hmmm. None of them really do it for you. And the truth is, most of them aren't even performance measures! They're milestones or improvement ideas or just quasirelated words. So you just pick the one that gets the most votes and type those words up in the KPI column in the business plan. It probably never gets any further than that (no data, not reported, not used to help decision making). Reason 3: People in your organisation hate measurement, and do it just because they have to. When asked to create measures, or come to a measures workshop, your colleagues have really good excuses: I have "real" work to do! Measuring has never worked in the past, so why should it work now? I don't have time to do all the data collecting and reporting. I already know what's going on, I don't need measures to tell me. Yeah whatever, let's just get it over with. (And the half-hearted and futile brainstorming begins...) People's avoidance of measurement is because of how they see measurement. It's threatening, it's boring, it's time-consuming. It pins them down to targets they don't feel in control of reaching. It trivialises the results they really produce. And this is what the Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop will help you to do: overcome the most common struggles with meaningful measuring performance, so you can have measures that focus you on what matters most, measures that give you the feedback you need to stay on track toward your goals, and measures that help you find the leverage to improve your results to reach your goals. Structure of the 2-day Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop The Performance Measure Blueprint is the implementation process for PuMP, which is my methodology for designing and improving performance measurement systems. The Performance Measure Blueprint has 8 practical sessions, each covering an essential aspect of performance measurement implementation: Session 1: performance measurement is a process, not an event In this first session of the workshop, we ll discuss:
The real purpose of performance measurement and what a performance measure is, really. Many people have different ideas about what performance measures are, and get confused with all the terminology like KPIs, metrics, indicators and so on. We ll overview the Blueprint steps of performance measure implementation which you ll model your own implementation on, so you can see the big picture before we delve into the detailed techniques. Session 2: results mapping how to make your strategy measurable In the second session of the workshop, we ll discuss: The 5 or 6 things that make a strategy (i.e. your goals, objectives or priorities) hard to measure meaningfully. Many of these problems are designed into the planning process without us even realizing it. I ll teach you the PuMP Results Mapping technique to make strategy measurable and far easier to cascade throughout your organization. You ll start practicing using the Results Map for your own strategy, to make it measurable. Session 3: measure design how to select meaningful & feasible performance measures In the third session of the workshop, we ll discuss: The most typical approaches people take to selecting measures, and why they fail to produce good measures. Yes, brainstorming is one of them! I ll teach you the PuMP Measure Design technique to deliberately create or select measures that are meaningful, relevant, cost-effective, and will drive the right behavior. You ll start practicing using the Measure Design template to design your own measures, or if you prefer, to test the goodness of the measures you already have. Session 4: measure gallery how to help people buy-in to performance measures In the fourth session of the workshop, we ll discuss: Why people don t buy in to performance measures, what sends them running for the hills when they re asked to produce KPIs. We ll discuss several strategies that work together for letting buy-in happen naturally and sustainably, as opposed to pushing performance measurement onto people.
I ll teach you the PuMP Measure Gallery technique as one of the strategies you can use to quickly build buy-in and generate excitement around performance measures. You ll start planning how a Measure Gallery could help encourage more buy-in for your measures. Session 5: measure definitions how to detail the implementation of performance measures In the fifth session of the workshop, we ll discuss: The shaky assumptions that lead to so many measures never being brought to life (i.e. never get reported or used). I ll teach you the PuMP Measure Definition technique for specifying exactly how each measure should be implemented and to build your corporate performance measure dictionary, so you can eventually remove all the duplication and wasted effort that goes into collating data for reporting. You ll start practicing using the Measure Definition template to define one of your own performance measures. Session 6: reporting measures how to design useful and usable performance reports In the sixth session of the workshop, we ll discuss: The problems that most performance reports and dashboards have that stop them from being useful and being used. Some of these problems come from some of the most popular features and graphs that the software provides. I ll teach you the PuMP Report Design technique for designing useful and usable performance reports that gives special consideration to layout and structure and graph design and to what information to include and exclude, so your performance reports become indispensible food for decision-making. You ll start practicing using the PuMP Report Design technique to redesign or design from scratch a very engaging and actionable performance report for your measures. Session 7: using measures how to integrate measures into strategy review and performance improvement In the seventh session of the workshop, we ll discuss:
What happens to prevent performance measures from being properly used in decision making. I ll teach you the PuMP Using Measures technique that focuses on the essential behaviours we need to develop as new habits for interpreting and responding to our measures, so we stop reacting to trends that aren t there, and start focusing more specifically on getting performance to truly improve. You ll start practicing using the PuMP Using Measures technique to design your ideal performance review agenda. Session 8: implementing and integrating your performance measure blueprint In the final session of the workshop, we ll discuss: Tips and suggestions for implementing the Performance Measure Blueprint, based on the experiences we ve had over many years of using it. You ll work on your take-away action plan, so you know exactly what you ll do to start implementing what you learn. That s quite powerful when you know the very next thing to do, it dramatically increases the chances you ll do it. So you can see that in each of these sessions, we ll be doing a combination of discussing the important issues, learning a technique to deal with those issues, you ll practice applying the technique for real, and we ll reflect on some tips to help you continue to apply the technique back at work. It will be very interactive and informal plenty of time for you deepen your knowledge and skill and ask questions and share ideas. And this is important, because like the majority of people who have already been to a Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop, I want you to feel a solid level of confidence to put the Blueprint into practice very quickly. And with that in mind, there are a few tips I can share with you now, to help you prepare before you come to the workshop, to increase your chances of implementation success. Thinking now about how you will first implement what you learn at the workshop If you go back to work with the goal of transforming your whole organisation s or business s measurement system at once, you re virtually doomed to fail.
We ve discovered time and again that those people with the greatest success started small first, and let the scope of their PuMP implementation grow naturally with the momentum and excitement and success they built up from those small beginnings. Think about the following before you come to the workshop: choose a team ready for measures your team or another team choose a focus: o a particular goal or strategy o a high priority or known problem o a project or initiative with no clear outcomes think about your first implementation as a pilot fast and focused, maybe just a 6 week sprint to test and practice the PuMP Blueprint set time aside to get started in the week following our workshop to at the very least plan the details of your implementation, using the process and techniques and templates you ll get at the workshop What to bring along with you Your organisation s or team s strategic or operational or business plan (your current goals, objectives and targets). Your existing performance measures or KPIs either a list of them, their definitions, or graphs or tables of their current and historic results. Your current performance report the document you use to report progress against your goals, objectives and initiatives. Your latest performance review agenda where you and your colleagues or team get together to review progress against your goals, objectives and initiatives. I hope you thoroughly enjoy your in-house Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop, and that it gives you the boost you need to get meaningful measures much faster and easier than ever before. If you have any questions in the meantime, simply email me at staceybarr@staceybarr.com or call me on 0408 883 458. End of message.