In light of the two conferences--Managing for Performance and the Mission-Driven Management Summit-- Ascendant held last week and the discussions around performance management in our education systems as well as the nonprofit and government sectors, I was surprised to read an article about new steps New York State is taking in today's Wall Street Journal, "State to Target Cheating by Teachers."

According to the article, "the day after state lawmakers approved a measure under which student scores on state tests will count for up to 40% of teachers' annual evaluations," they created "an investigative unit to combat cheating by aiding local districts and probing the most egregious cases."

Outcome-oriented philanthropy, the focus on achieving tangible strategic results as a result of philanthropic contributions, has become a dominant topic in the mission-driven arena. Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes..... This renewed focus on results is laudable. But we have to be careful not to focus on outcomes at the exclusion of all else.

Peel back almost any case study of a failed organization, and you'll see, more than anything else, an example of a failure of alignment. Alignment, at its simplest, is the entire organization working towards a common goal. It seems so simple, but in practice is really difficult to achieve. Why is this? Is it just some perverse quirk of human nature? Or can alignment happen?

A recent survey by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic found that America's teachers are open to the idea of being held accountable for their students' progress through multiple measures. Bill and Melinda Gates describe those findings and the work their foundation is doing to help teachers improve their craft in an article in the Saturday, October 22, Wall Street Journal.

They make some great points about the difficulty in developing measures of the profession, or "craft" of teaching. "We have all known terrific teachers," the Gates' write. "You watch them at work for 10 minutes and you can tell how thoroughly they've mastered the craft. But nobody has been able to identify what, precisely, makes them so outstanding."

A recent debate stirred up by a Wall Street Journal sports article got me to thinking about the importance of choosing measures to determine the impact performance is having on your organization.

To summarize the article from Aug. 13, "The Obvious MVP ... in 1991," for you, it argued that the New York Yankees' Curtis Granderson would be the favorite for the American League's Most Valuable Player (MVP) award if it were 1991 because he was tied for first in runs batted in (RBI), second in home runs, led the league in triples, and even had 22 stolen bases. However, over the last 20 years, the major statistics (measures) by which MVP voters gauge a baseball player's value have shifted, largely due to the Sabermetrics movement led by Bill James and Billy Beane.

Last week I took a class titled "Public Speaking Mastery," a two-day course designed to help people polish their public speaking skills. It was a great course for a consultant who has to speak in front of groups of people all the time and is always looking to hone his skills.

However, the performance measurement part of my brain asked, "How will I know if I actually learn anything from this course? How will I know if I improve over these days?" I wanted to know what the measure was for improved public speaking ability.

Now that the lockout is officially over, the amount of conversations revolving around football has picked up significantly. Football is something that I enjoy very much and like talking about whenever I get the chance. As a consultant, I also enjoy conversations centered on strategic management and the excitement that comes with each client. Over the weekend, I was talking to a friend about my job and, as most conversations between two, twenty-four year old males do, the topic eventually turned to football. In some odd way, this got me thinking about the similarities between football and strategic management. I know, a weird comparison, but stick with me and I think you will see where these thoughts came from.

Laura Downing, one of our founding partners, knows that I have a serious thing against averages. Every time someone says "the average went up", or the "average went down" she looks over to see my face contort in horror. So what's the big deal with averages?

We were recently working with a client on their Balanced Scorecard report and noticed something very interesting. While they had 6 years of data recorded, they only wanted to show the last two. Being a little bit of a performance geek, I had to ask why they were hiding those other 4 years, especially as the trend represented by the previous two years did not match the longer trend.

"It's great to be among my fellow Performance Management Geeks." An apropos opening by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) at the 2011 Performance Symposium presented by the Department of Defense with the Performance Improvement Council. Senator Warner was one of many influential speakers who delivered high impact presentations to an audience of Lean Six Sigma Black Belts, Performance Improvement Officers and every other flavor of performance management professional that you will find across the federal government. As a proud member of the Performance Management Geeks club I wanted to capture some of the key messages and takeaways from the symposium and share them here.