How to Turbo Charge Organizational Success by Implementing Performance Management Best Practices

In this global fiscal crisis, many business owners and executives are looking for ways to maximize organizational performance and cut costs at the same time. While this is a very difficult task for most CEOs, the truth is these goals can be accomplished with relative ease once we stop relying on technology and start focusing on our internal processes and leveraging existing assets. According to business intelligence software vendor SAS, the number two reason why performance programs fail is failure to adopt best practices. But what are performance management best practices and why are they so valuable? By definition, they are techniques or methodologies that, through experience and research, have been proven to reliably lead to desired performance results. This article discusses the value of applying performance management best practices and leveraging your existing assets for maximum performance.
Most companies have some form of performance management processes in place. It's common to baseline performance, apply a set of performance metrics, identify goals and create a plan to reach them. But where most companies fail are in the intangible processes, such as gaining employee acceptance and buy-in, aligning performance to organizational objectives, choosing the right business intelligence tools, and so forth. It's these intangibles that can bring performance initiatives to a halt. If you simply address these intangible processes while implementing your existing performance initiatives, you can significantly increase your performance success through these tough financial times.

It has become our business culture to invest large sums of money on business intelligence tools and high priced consulting for managing data and key processes that drive organizational success. We have become so reliant on these products and services as solutions that we have failed to understand the true cause of organizational breakdown, and that is our internal processes, most specifically, how we approach managing performance within our organization.

You've probably heard the saying 'what gets measured, gets done'. Well, that's true. But equally true is HOW it's measured determines HOW WELL it gets done. You can use all the industry standard metrics you can find, but if internal processes aren't in place to educate and motivate those being measured, or if different departments are executing the same functions differently, the systems you have in place will not drive peak performance. Metrics quantify high performance, but it's the best practices and processes that get you to that level.

So how are organizations supposed to adopt performance management best practices when there is not a comprehensive set documented and integrated into a logical, effective framework? I've identified 35 best practices that greatly impact the success of any performance initiative, and has an excellent, low cost tool that evaluates an organization's approach to performance management and measures how well they utilize performance management best practices throughout the entire organization. It is called the Organizational Performance and Best Practices Analysis and it maps these best practices to people, processes and systems and provides a custom step-by-step roadmap detailing your critical path to success. By fully understanding where your organization utilizes best practice processes well, you can leverage those strengths and resources to departments that need them the most.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.