Which performance measures should you use? The obvious answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve, which someone else should never define for you. After all, it is your organization, your department, or your process. But once you are clear about what you want to accomplish, how do you sort through a variety of possible metrics and decide which are best? Then, given the list of metrics you believe are useful or necessary, how do you define them in more detail to ensure that the right data are gathered at the appropriate frequency and that the resulting information gets to the right people so that they can make proper decisions? This book provides a clarifying perspective for those who know that metrics need to be developed but are unsure as to the steps to follow in developing and deploying them. It focuses on making sure that the metrics selected will guide people and processes in the direction the organization wants to go, and allow continual evaluation of success. Every highly effective organization is unique in some strategic way, and the metrics used should reflect these differences. Studying high performers can be useful from a learning standpoint, but simply adopting what someone else is doing is likely to take you off your track and put you on theirs. The concepts in this book will put you on the correct track and give you the tools to stay on it.

Performance improvement thought leader Dean Spitzer explains why performance measurement should be less about calculations and analysis and more about the crucial social factors that determine how well the measurements get used. Transforming Performance Measurement presents a breakthrough approach that will not only significantly reduce those dysfunctions, but also promote alignment with business strategy, maximize cross-enterprise integration, and help everyone to work collaboratively to drive value throughout your organization. Spitzer’s "socialization of measurement" process focuses on learning and improvement from measurement, and on the importance of asking such questions as: How well do our measures reflect our business model? How successfully are they driving our strategy? What should we be measuring and not measuring? Are the right people having the right measurement discussions? Performance measurement is a dynamic process that calls for an awareness of the balance necessary between seemingly disparate ideas: the technical and the social aspects of performance measurement. This book gives you assessment tools to gauge where you are now and a roadmap for moving, with little or no disruption, to a more "transformational" and mature measurement system. The book also provides 34 TMAPs, Transformational Measurement Action Plans, which suggest both well-accepted and "emergent" measures (in areas such as marketing, human resources, customer service, knowledge management, productivity, information technology, research and development, costing, and more) that you can use right away. Transforming Performance Measurement tells you not only what to measure, but how to do it -- and in what context -- to make a truly transformational difference in your enterprise.

Questioning Performance Measurement: Metrics, Organizations and Power is the first book to interrogate the organizational turn towards performance metrics critically. Performance measurement is used to evaluate a diverse range of activities throughout the private, public and non-governmental sectors. But in an increasingly data driven world, what does it really mean to measure ‘performance’? Taking a sociology of quantification perspective, this book traces the rise of performance measurement, questions its methods and objectivity, and examines the social significance of the flood of numbers through which value is represented and actors are held accountable. An illuminating read for students, scholars and practitioners across Organization Studies, Sociology, Business and Management, Public Policy and Administration.

Long before reinventing government came into vogue, the Urban Institute pioneered methods for government and human services agencies to measure the performance of their programs. This comprehensive guidebook synthesizes more than two decades of Harry Hatry's groundbreaking work. It covers every component of the performance measurement process, from identifying the program’s mission, objectives, customers, and trackable outcomes to finding the best indicators for each outcome, the sources of data, and how to collect them. Hatry explains how to select indicator breakouts and benchmarks for comparison to actual values, and describes numerous uses for performance information. Since the publication of the first edition in 1999, the use of performance measurement has exploded at all levels of U.S. government, in nonprofit agencies, and around the world. The new edition has been revised and expanded to address recent developments in the field, including the increased availability of computer technology in collecting and presenting information, the movement to use outcome data to improve services, and the quality control issues that have emerged as data collection has increased. It is an indispensable handbook for newcomers and an important resource for experienced managers looking to improve their use of outcome data.

Measurement is absolutely essential for any organization or company, functional area, department, business unit, project, or individual. Companies must know how their processes are performing, how well they are meeting customers’ needs, how targeted improvements are being achieved, and how management is doing. Accurate performance measures tell companies where they are, and to take action if they are not on track or if performance does not meet expectations.Actionable Performance Measurement presents many different methods to help readers develop metrics and performance measures. To aid in corporate measures development and strategic, tactical and/or business planning, a quick and effective method of identifying specific key results areas is outlined and explained. Both customer and employee focuses are presented: how to measure each, and how to develop good surveys. In addition, Howell explains several methods for setting realistic-but-stretch targets, as well as a technique for measuring “apples and oranges.”Readers will be able to measure employee and customer satisfaction, and be prepared to capably lead or be a member of a corporate or business unit measurement team to assess existing performance indicators effectiveness.Included is a student workbook to be used as a teaching tool in conjunction with the books.

Performance Measurement and Management for Engineers introduces key concepts in finance, accounting, and management to project managers who have engineering backgrounds. It focuses these basic concepts on issues of measuring and managing enterprise value. Thus, after defining enterprise value, the book begins by explaining the ways and means of measurement. It then takes up financial measurement, describing and analyzing the typologies of financial indicators while illustrating their advantages and disadvantages. After focusing on measuring enterprise value, the second section takes up managing that value. Like the first, it pursues a double view: using indicators for internal control while employing them to analyze other companies. If engineering project managers possess a source of quantitative and qualitative information about business management, Performance Measurement and Management for Engineers will help them increase their contributions to the business. - Explains how main performance indicators are related to the value of the company - Reveals how to assess the financial needs of companies in relation to their financial goals and mechanisms (e.g., equity, debt, and hybrid) - Describes key information and indicators for assessing the ability of enterprises to create value across time - Indicates the profitability sources of different business units

You can‘t understand, manage, or improve what you don‘t measureWhile every smart executive now knows the truth of those words, perhaps more so than anyone, it was Jerry Harbour who turned that adage into a science. Originally published in 1997, The Basics of Performance Measurement helped pioneer the science of performance measurement and continues

Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics is a corporate-focused analysis that brings clarity and practicality to the complex issues of environmental metrics in industry. The book examines the metrics implications to businesses as their responsibilities expand beyond the factory gateâ€"upstream to suppliers and downstream to products and services. It examines implications that arise from greater demand for comparability of metrics among businesses by the investment community and environmental interest groups. The controversy over what sustainable development means for businesses is also addressed. Industrial Environmental Performance Metrics identifies the most useful metrics based on case studies from four industriesâ€"automotive, chemical, electronics, and pulp and paperâ€"and includes specific corporate examples. It contains goals and recommendations for public and private sector players interested in encouraging the broader use of metrics to improve industrial environmental performance and those interested in addressing the tough issues of prioritization, weighting of metrics for meaningful comparability, and the longer term metrics needs presented by sustainable development.

This practical guide—and popular reference—helps you evaluate the efficiency of your company's current safety and health processes and make fact-based decisions that continually improve overall performance. Newly updated, this edition now also shows you how to incorporate safety management system components into your safety performance program and provides you with additional techniques for analyzing safety performance data. Written for safety professionals with limited exposure to statistics and safety-performance-measurement strategies, this comprehensive book shows you how to assess trends, inconsistencies, data, safety climates, and training in your workplace so you can identify areas that need corrective actions before an accident or injury occurs. To help you develop an effective safety metrics program, the author includes both an overview of safety metrics, data collection, and analysis and a set of detailed procedures for collecting data, analyzing it, and presenting it. You'll examine a comprehensive collection of tools and techniques that includes run charts and control charts, trending and forecasting, benchmarking, insurance rating systems, performance indices, the Baldrige Model, and six sigma. In addition, you'll find exercises and questions in each chapter that allow you to practice and review what you've learned. All answers are provided in an appendix. Techniques and tools discussed in this book include descriptive and inferential statistics, cause and effect analyses, measures of variability, and probability. Safety metric program development, implementation, and evaluation techniques are presented as well.