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Hi Kirsten,

 

Have you tried the Excel dashboard style of report, from Step 6 in PuMP? It's an update we've added to the workshop, and it will be added to the PuMP Blueprint Online Program soon too.

 

It continues to give each measure its own page (but a worksheet rather than Word page), and then you can summarise each measure onto a single worksheet, dashboard style.

 

You can download the spreadsheet Dashboard Template from the PuMP template pack, here: http://thepumpcommunity.com/resources/tools-templates-collection/

Jenny, who is the audience of this concise message you're crafting? I think that will determine how you frame this.

For now though, here's a brain dump:

 

Performance measurement is the process of designing the best evidence of the degree to which a goal or result is being achieved, as time goes by. It's a powerful way to keep us focused on our goals, and to guide us to make the best improvements to reach those goals, sooner and with the least effort.

 

This could be a good thing for us all to do, as an elevator pitch about what performance measurement is really about.

 

Smiles, Stacey.

Cheryl, I think the issue is with the Measure Design process. I'd like to see the performance results that relate to the 2 examples you gave, and then I can give you a more practical answer.

On the face of it though, neither sound like good measures because they don't meet all the requirements of what a good performance measure is:

• % of annual safety training completed – this is not regular feedback through time, and it's not feedback of a performance result (as you say, it's something good to DO, so it is a strategy for improving a performance result, but not a performance result in itself).
• # of customers contacting us to tell us our service was good – this one lacks objectivity, since it doesn't have the power of consistency for the reasons you mention (sometimes customers are too busy to volunteer feedback). Generally I don't like measures that rely on data that is volunteered.

You are sure going to be kept busy for a while Cheryl, with 20 groups to set up with measures!! But based on your success so far, the impact you'll have it stupendous.

I run into similar situations, where the team loves a particular measure that I think is quite “ho-hum” and not going to be very powerful for them. Here's how I generally handle it:

1) I remind myself that their ownership or buy-in is more important than the sophistication of the measures.

2) I also acknowledge that this is new to them, and there is a learning curve. Much of the learning happens through their implementation, and they need to be allowed to do that at their pace.

3) Rather than disagree with them, I reinforce to them that it's always their decision about what they measure and my role is to expand their possible choices.

4) So then I will simply explain what I see as the limitations of their measures (referring back to the definition of what a performance measure is*, and which parts of that definition their measure doesn't satisfy well).

5) Along with that, I will suggest some alternatives and why I feel they are better (following the Measure Design process, of course).

6) Then I suggest the team decides what to do with my suggestions: discuss them further, act on them now, document them for their next performance measure review cycle, or ignore them completely.

7) If the team has made an informed and conscious decision about their measures, and you have helped them consider a wider set of choices, that's the best you can hope for, ever.

Cheryl, does this give you some ideas?

Smiles, Stacey.

* Definition of a performance measure: An comparison that provides objective evidence of the degree to which a performance result is occuring over time.

Thanks for
sending through your control charts, Bec. I can see straight away what went
wrong…

The charts
you created using the spreadsheet is actually an old spreadsheet which I don’t
use anymore, since I learned about XmR charts (the chart type that the PMBW
workbook calculations are based on). Thanks to Donald Wheeler and his book, Understanding Variation.

With XmR
charts (one reason why they’re more appropriate than the charts using standard
deviation to calculate control limits) you can use as few as 6 or 7
points in your time series and still draw some useful conclusions. And as you noted, the control limits using the previous method are much wider, and that method actually overestimates the variation. The XmR chart is the perfect chart for KPIs of all kinds.

You can download the right XmR Excel template here.