How do you measure success?
Having been a manager, supervisor, and project leader for many years I've had to evaluate team member success in many different ways. We usually focus on performance that is connected some how to customer happiness. Sometimes, that's not as important in our metrics as profitability. It's easy to lost track of why we're doing what we're doing if we don't measure the right things.
I learned as a supervisor that if you're not careful about what you measure and how you reward performance that people will achieve the metrics you want even if they have to game the system to do it. They can miss the whole point of the exercise and instead worry about getting the reward.
We shouldn't do that to people and we shouldn't let them do that to us. We should use measures that tell us how we are doing about our financial performance, yes of course, AND also how we're doing at meeting our mission. Are we serving our purpose? Are the actions we are doing leading us to excellence in our field? Are we taking care of all of the constituents associated with our enterprise (customers, team members, suppliers, vendors, stock holders, regulatory agencies...)?
It's best to assess our scoring in the context of our values and mission.
If we get that right, everything will fall correctly into place. If we get that wrong, no amount of success will produce the value that we deserve.
-- Doug Smith
Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success
doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals
Having been a manager, supervisor, and project leader for many years I've had to evaluate team member success in many different ways. We usually focus on performance that is connected some how to customer happiness. Sometimes, that's not as important in our metrics as profitability. It's easy to lost track of why we're doing what we're doing if we don't measure the right things.
I learned as a supervisor that if you're not careful about what you measure and how you reward performance that people will achieve the metrics you want even if they have to game the system to do it. They can miss the whole point of the exercise and instead worry about getting the reward.
We shouldn't do that to people and we shouldn't let them do that to us. We should use measures that tell us how we are doing about our financial performance, yes of course, AND also how we're doing at meeting our mission. Are we serving our purpose? Are the actions we are doing leading us to excellence in our field? Are we taking care of all of the constituents associated with our enterprise (customers, team members, suppliers, vendors, stock holders, regulatory agencies...)?
It's best to assess our scoring in the context of our values and mission.
If we get that right, everything will fall correctly into place. If we get that wrong, no amount of success will produce the value that we deserve.
-- Doug Smith
Front Range Leadership: Training Supervisors for Success
doug smith training: how to achieve your project goals
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