Phew! Another first week of March has come and gone and so has Ascendant’s 2013 Mission-Driven Management Summit—our 5^th annual conference on strategy and performance management for mission-driven organizations.

While we like to think the summit is a success every year, I believe this year we had a fantastic conference at the National Press Club and even managed to put it on in the face of the Snowquester—the early March snowstorm than never really materialized in Washington, DC.

Way back before there was Wikipedia and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, or even Ask Jeeves there were these quiet buildings in towns, cities, and schools across the country called libraries.  You may even remember being in one at some point if you are over 30 years old.

Anyway, the point of these “libraries” was to provide information in the form of books (and magazines and newspapers) to the general public – or students and faculty in the case of school and university libraries – basically for free.  And, acquire your collections through funding you received either from property taxes, tuition, or donors who understood the importance of maintaining free and open access to information.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the pleasure of supporting the Office of Management and Budget as one of our clients here at Ascendant. A lot has been accomplished in those 18 months, but one of the coolest achievements was finally launching Performance.gov. A website dedicated to showing the “performance side” of the federal government. In other words, it’s how the government is cutting waste, streamlining operations, and improving performance.

Admittedly, it was a long process bringing together the largest agencies in the federal government to report publically on top issues and priorities. But, it was worth it! If you follow our blog, check out Melanie’s post earlier this month to learn more about Performance.gov. Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post on essentially the same topic is because I was recently telling someone about the website and she asked me, “so what, why should I care?”  

It was an interesting question. Why should you care? My response – you should care because it tells the story of the impact that YOUR tax dollars are having on the American people. One of my favorite examples of this story is the Department of Interior’s goal of cutting violent crime in Indian communities across the country. High crime rates on some Indian reservations have been a concern for some time and DOI decided that they were going to change that. So, using performance metrics and review meetings to guide the effort, DOI developed a pilot program to reduce the violent crime of four specific communities with the highest crime rate.

The original goal was to reduce the crime rate by 5% and many considered that to be an ambitious goal at the time. To kick off the effort, Interior began collecting and analyzing crime data, identified trends, and began allocating resources to the areas of highest need. As the program progressed, regular reviews of the data became the norm, law enforcement strategies were continuously evaluated, and the communities were engaged on the front lines.

All of this effort began to pay off. By the end of 2011, the initiative had far exceeded its goal by reducing crime in these communities by a whopping 35%.  Now that is a performance story! Reducing violent crime on Indian communities by 35%! That means, through the Department of Interior, YOUR tax dollars have had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of people in Indian communities throughout the country.

So, back to the original question of - “why should I care?” I think this story is a perfect example of why you should. It shows real impact for real people. I’d like to encourage anyone reading this blog to check out Performance.gov and find similar stories of YOUR tax dollars at work.  

The Saturday, Jan. 26 Wall Street Journal, had a great essay by Bill Gates about the power of good measurement systems.  To me, there were two key aspects of Gates’ argument that “[y]ou can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal—in a feedback loop.”

First, he points out its importance to innovation.  Precise measurement instruments, Gates paraphrases William Rosen as saying, allow inventors to see if their incremental design changes led to improvements.  The lesson being: Without feedback from precise measurement, Mr. Rosen writes, invention is “doomed to be rare and erratic.”

Some of you may have heard on Jan. 16 that Morgan Stanley announced a new way of distributing some of its highest-paid employees’ bonuses (see the front page of the Jan. 16 Wall Street Journal).  The bank’s plan—which would affect thousands of brokers and investment bankers, among others—would pay out 2012 bonuses greater than $50,000 in four installments over three years.

A result of the financial crisis, the deferred compensation plan is the latest idea developed to try to manage the performance of those who work on Wall Street.

Success should be judged by results, and data is a powerful tool to determine results. We can't ignore facts. We can't ignore data. -President Barack Obama, July 24, 2009

The quote that says it all. In 2009 the federal government acknowledged the importance of data, of informed decision making, of tracking performance, and in 2010, the federal government did something about it. The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 was passed. The act required federal agencies to set 2-year Agency Priority Goals, use data-driven measures to gauge success and to make this all available on a public website. Now, just two years later, the site is playing a critical role in the movement towards increased government transparency. Together, the 24 agencies have 103 Agency Priority Goals, 8 Cross Agency Priority Goals (goals that are impacted by a set of agencies such as Exports), and 6 Cross Agency Management Goals. The website represents a new zenith of information availability, transparency and accountability within the government. Performance.gov allows anyone and everyone to see what is being done to improve cybersecurity, reduce gang violence, prevent foreclosures and provide insight into a multitude of other pertinent issues. The general public can now see what their taxes are being used for- and whether they’re doing a good job or not. During a briefing, Shelley Metzenbaum, associate director for performance and personnel management of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters “what we’ve now done is give you information about those goals: we explain why the goals were chosen, the strategies with each goal, we explain the progress we’ve made with them, and if there were problems, we explain those.” The website provides and in-depth look into what the government actually does and the continued process of self-assessment and improvement that is now underway.

Performance.gov was designed to deliver “a view of the progress underway in cutting waste, streamlining government, and improving performance.” The website’s layout allows you to browse by agency or by the following areas of focus- acquisition, financial management, human resources, technology, performance improvement, open government, sustainability and customer service. You can now access an Agency’s priority and strategic goals, their plans for accomplishing them, and even their financial reports.

This is just the beginning. Performance.gov asserts that “over time, we will add more information from agency strategy plans, performance plans and reports, and we will produce this information in formats that allow users to see trends, look at goals contributing to common themes, see programs contributing to common goals, and cross-reference other related data.”

Performance.gov sheds a light on where tax-payers’ dollars are being spent and how key issues are being solved, but this is not its only function. The site represents a new approach to problem solving by the agencies. They each honed in on specific and important goals and were able to improve the methods used to track progress. So, while there is still room for improvement (as is always the attitude in performance management- growth and learning, right?) the site is definitely a good start. 

While the term “vlog” traditionally refers to video blogs, I’m referring to this post as my first vlog as shorthand for a “venting blog.”  Today, I had (actually, I’m having because I’m still in the midst of it) one of the more frustrating customer service experiences in recent memory. At 7:59pm I am waiting for a delivery that I was told would arrive between 7:45am and 11:45am this morning.

The question this issue begs is:  Who is accountable?  I called the delivery company at 11:50am when it hadn’t arrived yet and I hadn’t heard from them.  The customer service rep called the driver who said it would be delivered by 3:00pm.  The rep, when she saw my account, told me that they never should have told me 7:45-11:45 and that she was sorry.  Great.

Ted’s blog from Friday reminded me of one of the key moments in Ford’s turnaround as Bryce Hoffman described it in American Icon – and, no, we aren’t that nerdy that we have an Ascendant Book Club – not yet anyway.  When new Ford CEO Alan Mulally began holding his weekly management reviews with the executive leadership team, he was always getting good news – which was a bit suspicious as he had assumed leadership of a company trying to stay out of bankruptcy.

Mulally’s management reviews went on for weeks – maybe even months, I don’t completely remember – while he continued to receive rosy reports from his leadership team.  Until, that is, Ford Americas chief Mark Fields, who wasn’t sure if he was going keep his job at Ford under Mulally’s regime anyway, decided that he would “go out in a blaze of glory” and see if “this guy is for real” and true to his word that all he wanted was honesty.

If you have met me or spoken to me about the Balanced Scorecard, I’m sure you have heard me say “the Balanced Scorecard is just a framework for managing your strategy.  It should make managing and achieving your strategy easier.  If you are spending more time on the framework than on your strategy, you are not doing something right.”  So, this week, I was finishing the book “American Icon” by Bryce Hoffman, and I came across a passage that reminded me of another book called “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande.  So, what do these books and the Balanced Scorecard have in common?  To me, they are both a reminder that you can’t just have a Balanced Scorecard or just have a strategy.  You actually must do something with it in order to achieve your strategic goals.

Let me clarify a little bit.  The Checklist Manifesto is a book about how creating a simple checklist can help you perform really well.  The two primary examples in the book are about flying a plane and performing surgery in a hospital.  If you have a simple checklist, then you will know the other people in the surgery room, be on the same page for the actual operation, and know many of the primary risks that can go wrong.  The American Icon is about how Alan Mulally came into Ford and saved it from the financial crisis when the other two major auto manufacturers in the US had to be bailed out by the government.  Mr. Mulally instituted weekly management reviews with data driven decision making.  So the paragraph from American Icon that brought it all together for me was one where Hoffman was quoting Mulally.

“You’ve got to trust the process.  You need to trust and nurture your emotional resilience,” he said. “Do you have a point of view about the future? Check. Is it still the right vision today? Check.  Do you have a comprehensive plan to deliver that? Check.  If you get skilled and motivated people working together through this process, you’re going to figure it out.  But you’ve got to trust it.”

So when I read that passage, I thought to myself, do you have a strategy map?  Does the map still reflect the strategy of the organization?  Are your measures and initiatives supporting this map?  Have you aligned divisions and departments around the strategy?  Are you having regular strategy review meetings?  Yes, then you have a much better than average chance of achieving your strategy.

It sounds easy, but this quote from Mulally is from when he is 4-5 years into this process.  It takes work to ingrain a process and get people to trust that it will work.  It took the <a href=http://www.ascendantsmg.com/blog/index.cfm/2012/9/24/What-do-Alabama-Football-and-the-Balanced-Scorecard-have-in-Common>Alabama Football</a> team 3 years and now it is executing like clockwork.

As for the checklist, imagine you went into every strategy review meeting with a checklist.  I’m sure you are doing strategy review meetings either monthly or quarterly.  Before the meeting, have you sent out information in advance? Check.  Have you identified the issue? Check. Do you have the right people in the room to make a decision about the issue?  Check. Do you have a process for following up from the decision with both actions and communications? Check.  OK, you are well on your way to executing your strategy.