A PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT CHECKLIST

Back on March 6, 2020, the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosted a glorious party in honor of our then-new book “The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management.” (Rowman & Littlefield) There was a lot of talk in the room about some mysterious new disease that seemed to be spreading. People were bumping elbows.

On March 11^th, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic. That night the NBA suspended its season, and a national travel ban from Europe was announced.

As you can imagine, that didn’t do any good for sales of the book (which of course, was the least of the world’s problems for years to come). But one of the sections of the book, of which we were particularly proud, was a section titled Rx for Pitfalls, in which we provided a checklist of recommendations to optimize the use of performance management initiatives.

For reasons that don’t bear going into, we’ve just reviewed that section and have decided that it is as timely now as it was then. So, with some modifications from the original, here’s our advice:

·         It is important to acknowledge that performance management systems are an integral part of government – like budgeting or procurement – and not just an adjunct effort.

·         Performance management efforts are more likely to be sustainable if they are not overly identified with an outgoing political administration.  It is better for them to be identified as a tool of the city than as the former mayor’s baby.

·         Narrative explanations should be presented side-by-side with performance measurement information or other data.  This provides the opportunity to put the numbers into context and to make sure that readers understand any exogenous factors that influence results. If numbers used in performance measurement targets are thrown wildly off by a forest fire, flood or hurricane, for example, it is important to communicate that.

·         Communication and reporting of performance measurements to legislators should be kept short and to the point to ensure they are considered. Knowledge of committee schedules and study assignments are extremely helpful in determining when information may be most useful and when it will overload legislators or their staff.

·         Sharing experiences with individuals in other cities, counties and states that are involved in performance management efforts provides an ongoing support system and way to share ideas and experiences.

·         The ability to gather together with other people who are working in neighboring or even faraway governments and dealing with the same issues and frustrations has enormous payoffs.

·         Building an organized information infrastructure can help both central offices and agencies know the work that has been completed in the past that may be relevant to current efforts. Central data inventories help managers know what information from other agencies would be useful to them. Centralized easy-to-access websites that provide retrievable copies of government reports and evaluations make sure that past work is not lost.

·         Caution should be exercised when utilizing incentives as an inducement to meet performance targets. Too often, incentives, whether in contracts, pay-for-performance plans or linked to increased funding, lead to gameplaying with performance results.

·         The beginning of a new program or policy initiative is the best time to consider the data that will be needed to analyze and evaluate how well it is doing and what changes may be needed to make it work better.

·         Building up workforce data skills is a pressing need that can be accelerated through both internal and external resources, with train the trainer and mentor relationships helping to spread the knowledge.

·         Training itself only goes part of the way. Coaching is also needed to keep building skills among workers without technical training.  Networks help to encourage participants to see performance management as a living breathing process that they can support through their collaborative forums, strategic conversations, and design workshops and which will break down silos, erase feelings of loneliness and fear of change and bring joy to the performance management effort.

·         Performance management benefits from a dash of realism in what can be accomplished with the resources available. This means avoiding over expectations and over-selling of the initiative and not under-projecting staff and resource needs.

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