Recently I meet with our department heads to make sure each department clearly understood their mission. I wanted to make sure we’re all heading in the right direction and each employee understands their individual roles and how that role supports the overall mission of Astonish.
To that end, I picked up a great book on performance metrics by Wayne Eckerson. My ultimate goal is to attach clear metrics to each employee’s performance. Once these metrics are in place, we can proactively measure the success or failure of each department.
Eckerson points out 9 benefits of performance dashboards:
- Communicate Strategy
- Refine Strategy
- Increase Visibility
- Increase Coordination
- Increase Motivation
- Give a Consistent View of the Business
- Reduce Cost and Redundancy
- Empower Users
- Deliver Actionable Information
There is so much to say about each of these points, but I’ll just talk about one.
Take the “refine strategy” benefit for example. If all the stakeholders understand their mission and the performance metrics that are attached to their specific mission, an inherent feedback loop for your overall strategy is created. Poor performance metrics will warn the leaders of the company that either (a) their strategy is flawed (b) the employees that are responsible for implementing that strategy are not able to do so. In either case, this is GREAT information to have.
This is just one benefit.
I encourage you to ask yourself if your company has clearly defined performance metrics. If you don’t why not start today by writing down what you see as the critical metrics for your organization. Be sure to check out our comprehensive post on how to make the most of an employee performance review.