doug smith training

  How do you feel about keeping score? In nearly every job (could it even be in every job?) we are forced to keep score. One metric after another lets us know whether or not we "measure up" to the company standards. Oh, sure they change, which makes it necessary to react and shift our efforts, but inevitably there are measurements to meet. People are going to keep score anyway no matter what we do so why not help them to count what matters most.  Measuring what does not matter is a waste of time and  profound aggravation. Negotiate what to measure before you get measured and see if it makes a difference. And if you don't have the freedom or influence to negotiate those measures, master them until you do.  -- doug smith

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