Leadership - 6 Essentials of Effective Performance Management

Great advice for any line of business not just Call Centers!

Performance management is often seen as some back office function run by highly technical people. Yet in reality, effective performance measurement plays a critical role in achieving business success. So what are the 6 essentials to transform performance management so that it becomes a key contributor to business success?

At the end of the day, you and your leadership team will be judged in terms of how successful you have been in achieving your business strategy. You need to measure the right things to establish whether you are on or off track in terms of achieving your strategy. You will only do this if your performance management system in clearly linked to your business strategy.

In every organisation there will be things that the business has to get right if it is to deliver the business strategy. These critical success factors are the key levers that need to be operating optimally if the desired results are to be achieved. As a leadership team, you need to be able to clearly define what those critical success factors are so that you can determine effective measures.

It is easy to believe that the more measures someone has the better the system is. The reality is somewhat different. One person can only really focus on between 5 and 9 measures at any one time. How many measures are you and your leadership and management teams focusing on right now? Would they meet the 5 to 9 measure criteria?

An excellent technique for establishing what measure you need or whether you have the right measure is to ask yourself what question you are trying to answer. If you use this as a reference point, it will be easier to see if you have the best measure. Another technique is to ask what action you cannot take without the measure.

Financial measures are the most common in many organisations. While they are important, they are generally what are regarded as lag measures. By that we mean measures that tell you after the event what you achieved. It is important to have a range of non financial measures in addition to the financial measures which focus on areas like customer satisfaction, productivity and innovation to name just a few.

As a leader, don't fall into the trap of developing performance measures in isolation. Often those closest to the delivery of the service or making the product have the greatest insights into what is most critical to success. Make sure you use that expertise to get results for the organisation.

At the end of the day, performance management can be a real contributor to organisation success. So what steps do you need to take in order to gain real benefits from your performance management system?