Tag Archives: metrics

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competitive measurement

Competitive Measurement, Does It Motivate?

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Metrics and measurements may be your key for monitoring performance. Does competitive measurement provide motivation?

Brutal truth, some people like to compete.

There is often some concern about competing within the same organization. Competing for sales numbers, efficiencies, and even for promotions.

It’s true, it can be a delicate balance. Internal fighting is not good and the competitive spirit pushed too far can cause trouble spots for ethics.

What do you think, is competitive measurement healthy for the organization?

I believe it can be as long as it is properly managed.

Competitive Measurement

When we set metrics and we start to measure we are typically pushing to new levels. Whether it is in sales, quantity, or quality. It could also be in customer count, customer satisfaction, or lifetime value.

On the other hand, when we measure nothing, how do we know for sure that there is improvement? If there is no metric, the status quo seems like a probable path.

If you are using metrics and measurement to guide performance have you considered other aspects connected with performance?

What about things like worker engagement, stress, or employee turnover?

Certainly, those are metrics. You could even go a little further, with things like resiliency or happiness.

The Human Experience

The point is really this. When you invoke that competitive spirit and bring out the motivation and drive to stretch, reach, and conquer goals, don’t forget about the human side of those measurements.

When management squeezes out the human side with numbers things seem to work for a while. Yet, after a while some humans will lose connection with the purpose.

If the purpose is only to hit the number, then no one really cares about the person.

A scary place to be.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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meeting problems

A Problem with Meeting Problems

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There are a lot of reasons why meetings are held. Sometimes it is about ensuring a message is heard and understood. In other cases, it is about problem solving. Are meeting problems bringing you down?

When you look to the task force, the committee, or the project management update there is a direct objective in mind. Objectives should be connected to goals, metrics, and measurement.

Picking Low-Hanging Fruit

Part of the meeting then is about calling out the goals and objectives and gathering updates about status and measurements. Items that are deficient or not yet completed are open for discussion.

People may bring excuses or try to cast blame, yet often, many problems are being solved each day. The difficult reality is that the tough problems tend to linger. If they were easy to solve, they probably would have been solved by now.

Instead of a meeting about updates, you may be having a meeting about the challenges, the hard parts, or the sticking points.

Procrastination often leads to doing the simplest tasks first. It is a form of picking the low-hanging fruit.

Meeting Problems

Better may be to address the toughest parts up front.

A tough part broken down into smaller pieces is of course easier to manage and creates a sense of progress and accomplishment. Instead, often, the tough part is set aside. It is not broken down into smaller pieces. It’s just waiting.

Waiting on problems to fix themselves sometimes happens, yet for most of our workplace challenges this seldom occurs.

A problem that isn’t going to get fixed easily is often more about the assumed depth, energy required, or collaboration effort than it is about its size.

Meeting problems are often tough because the easy parts are nearly always tackled first. If you want to improve the efficiency of the meeting come prepared to tackled the big problems in smaller pieces.

Old news, yet, have you considered the flow of your meetings?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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measuring performance

Measuring Performance In Your Workplace

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Do you know where you stand? Often when we need to accomplish something the best way is through regular measurement. Are you measuring performance in your workplace? If yes, how?

There is an old saying, “What gets measured gets done.”

Motivation or Goals?

Sometimes the biggest reason for an apparent lack of motivation or energy from the team is because of vague goals or measurements.

Write a blog post for our Company webpage this week.

Write a 300-word blog post for our Company webpage, and please send it to me for review by the end of the day on Thursday.

There is a difference. Is this delegation? Sure, it could be considered delegation but it also includes metrics.

When we create attention to a detail or attach a specific timeline that is observable it helps improve focus. Improved focus creates results. If our focus is on nothing, we’ll likely get nothing.

The performance of nearly anything and everything can be measured. Even some of the soft stuff.

Measuring Performance

In manufacturing or service firms we may measure defect rates. This could include quality failures, merchandise returns, or even social media chatter.

Customer dissatisfaction can be very costly to any business. Metrics for measurement are critical. What do customers say? What percentage of customers will refer you?

Time is a popular measurement, so is the capital investment required per employee.

Certainly, there are common financial measurements such as sales revenue, gross profit, and balance sheet data.

Goals and values are closely connected to workplace performance. What you draw attention to will often receive the most effort.

Never underestimate what employees will deliver when the focus switches from drama and excuses to measurement and metrics.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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benchmarking strategy

Benchmarking Strategy And The Edge Of Technology

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Things around us seem to be moving quite fast. Rapid change somehow has become the norm, at least for many. What is your benchmarking strategy? Are you working off the latest or processing on dated belief?

Experience as a Tool

Experience is a wonderful tool. While it may seem odd to label experience a tool, it is something we use to constructively solve problems. Are you drawing upon your past experiences to create a path for the future?

If yes, good, because it certainly can be constructive. At the same time though, individual experience can sometimes be a roadblock.

We have several ways to create metrics or measurements for project evaluation or future strategy. We can measure against past performance (our data), we can measure against benchmark data (public information), or we can measure against management expectations.

What are you measuring against? None of these, one of these, or maybe a combination?

Compared to History

Things are changing rapidly. Our technology and information are a driver for rapid change. In the past 125 or 150 years we have seen an incredible pace of change.

The best way to go to the market to buy or sell products 150 years ago was likely a horse and wagon.

Today going to the market is accessible for buying and selling from a small device held in your hand. Technology which has developed and accelerated in just the past twenty years, some would suggest in the past ten.

An ever present dynamic to all of this is the access to technology. In some cases, it is a willingness to access it.

Benchmarking Strategy

New benchmarks will be set today. Tomorrow more new benchmarks. The day after, the same. We can find many of them on the internet.

Your work group, department, and leadership team will choose whether to access the latest benchmark data or not. What is the benchmarking strategy you are using?

When you strong arm strategy from your personal experiences, you tend to create a future based on the past.

Get out and see what is happening on the edge.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+


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measure productivity

How To Measure Productivity Through Metrics

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Overwhelmed, too busy, and unsure of exactly how to save yourself? Join the crowd. People everywhere are concerned about improving personal efficiency. How you measure productivity is a good place to start.

Metrics

Most measurement begins with metrics. In our digital world personal productivity often includes metrics centered around email processing. Ask someone how busy they are and chances are good that their inbox will enter the conversation.

Doing whatever pops up and identifying that you are busy may be a fact. However, you shouldn’t confuse the fact that you are busy with productivity.

I had to process over one hundred new email messages.

My boss sent me six new to-do’s in the last half-hour.

I didn’t have time to answer your message, I had to process three days of backlogged email.

When helping businesses form strategy I often suggest that many individuals and businesses can get caught up in “firefighting.” This is a tactical approach to solving problems which can slowly erode strategy.

Metrics, such as the number of email messages processed may be valid, but don’t make the mistake of confusing metrics and measurements with productivity.

Keeping Busy

Proving that we have a lot of motion and that we are busy should never become a metric.

The digital relationship builder can amass new social media friends, connections, views, clicks, likes, and shares but that doesn’t necessary mean that they’ve built a single new relationship. The numbers are there. Is the relationship?

We can make metrics improve which will cause busy work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve created progress or value.

Measure Productivity

Often the most confusing part about strategy is understanding the difference between tactics and goals. Seldom is there a need to make executing a tactic a goal. That is more about motivation rather than strategy.

There is a related concept to measuring productivity. Many people believe being busy is a measurement of accomplishment, thus being better at being busy means improved productivity. It could, but often it is just busier.

Do you really want to measure productivity? You can start by measuring the value of the outputs from all of the work that you do.

Keep in mind that metric improvement may be a fact, but did you create any real value?

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.


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Take responsibility

Leadership Habit 49: Give or Take Responsibility

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A common leadership and supervisory practice is to assign responsibility. One of the problem areas for many people in a supervisory or management role is holding others accountable. In your role, whether supervisory or not, do you give, or take responsibility?

In the earliest years of my career, I can remember telling my boss at the time that I craved responsibility. Looking back, what I probably really meant is that I wanted to be in control. It is funny how we mature and grow. I smile thinking about that time in my life.

Oversight and Metrics

Assigning responsibility and holding yourself and team members accountable are an important part of leadership. Some organizations and cultural philosophies are loose and don’t have many metrics or measurements. Others live, breathe, or die, by extensive oversight through measurements.

Metrics and measurements are important, but we may pause and ask, “For whom?” The best answer may be, “For everyone.” The reality of how this shakes out in organizational psychology may position things a little differently.

You can certainly give or assign responsibility. Many in the workforce wait patiently to be provided with the next task. When they aren’t provided, they aren’t productive. Often they will just wait.

These people only follow. This isn’t necessarily bad, it may be about style, respect, or in some cases a lack of motivation.

Successful organizations today probably need more leaders. That isn’t the same as more chiefs, but more people with high initiative and who jump in and get things started and finished.

Take Responsibility

There is a different story about responsibility though. Responsibility often isn’t about giving. Responsibility may be more about taking.

When someone is nervous or afraid of the big task in front of them, we may say, “You’ve got this!” Of course, the desirable affect is to inspire confidence and commitment to the task in front of them. This often works, but it is much different from them saying, “I’ve got this!”

In the workplace, or in life, people can give responsibility. However, success is much more likely when people take it.

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a five-time author and some of his work includes, #CustServ The Customer Service Culture, and Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+


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Leadership Development: How Do You Know If It Worked?

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People always have questions, but they often aren’t asked. When it comes to leadership development, how do we know if it worked?

Leadership development appreciative strategies

Leadership Development

Leadership development might be a catch all phrase for supervisory, managerial, or leadership training. There are many competences that may be involved in leadership development and it always depends on the target audience or participants.

Some slight variances might exist from industry to industry, and variances definitely exist with level of responsibility or organization size. While the basic leadership skills for front line supervisors might have similarities to the concepts of leadership in the C-Suite the total package of competencies likely has at least a few differences.

Organizations often invest in leadership development training. Many believe it is a very wise investment, but how do we measure the success? What is the ROI (return on investment)?

Metrics and Measurements

Here are seven possible metrics or measurement criteria:

  1. Employee Turnover. Turnover ratio for any business or organization might change for many reasons. Leadership has a direct impact on the culture of the organization and turnover could be a valuable metric.
  2. Satisfaction Survey. Satisfaction surveys can help point to the success of leadership. This can be an employee satisfaction survey or it could even be a customer satisfaction survey.
  3. 360 Assessments. The 360 assessment is a valuable tool for understanding leadership competencies from the perspective of others within (or sometimes outside) of an organization. It can also be administered to entire teams for group results.
  4. Sales Revenue or Profit. Depending on the areas of focus for the leader an increase in sales revenue or gross profit might provide evidence of success in training. It also can be an easy number to measure ROI.
  5. Relationship Portfolio. How big or what is the depth of relationships? How many contracts, entities, or service agreements are active under management?
  6. Business Growth. Is the business or organization growing or if it was in decline has it stabilized, right-sized, or otherwise improved? This might be measured in numerous ways.
  7. Unique Metrics. Last on this list but certainly not the least there are many other ways to determine ROI. You might consider something as simple as a pre-test followed by a post-test. You might have metrics for quality, productivity, waste, and many others.

Knowing It Worked

Perhaps one of the most important things to consider is that you should always determine the method of evaluation in advance and understand your baseline or starting point. Evaluation can, and likely should be, measured through both metrics connected to monetary values and those that are intangible.

Also important but sometimes forgotten is that training success is contingent upon changed habits or behaviors across time. It is easy for any individual or team to show short time signs of improvement only to default back to old ways when under duress or as measured across longer periods of time.

Can the success of leadership development programs be measured and improvements maintained?

I say yes, what are your thoughts?

– DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSPTM), and corporate trainer that specializes in helping businesses and individuals accelerate their leadership, their team, and their success. He is a four-time author and some of his work includes, Forgotten Respect, Navigating A Multigenerational Workforce and Pivot and Accelerate, The Next Move Is Yours! Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Dennis Gilbert on Google+


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