Well attempt #2 is complete or as complete as it will get. I had a few glitches in my carefully laid out 8 week plan which required me to adjust my game plan. One of the events was our yearly fire alarm drill, which required the evacuation of the building. As a result we did not complete Step 4 – Building Buy-In and Step 8: Reaching Performance Targets. To be honest with Step 4 we really struggled with how to do a virtual measures gallery. Most of the people we would want to gather feedback from are spread across the province, including our leadership team. Therefore the decision was made to share our findings using a traditional approach. After reviewing the concepts of Step 8 there was consensus that continuous improvement is an accepted practice within our branch. It is the lack of meaningful measures and available data that limits our effectiveness at both defining and reaching our targets. Therefore we felt it was best to get a better handle on our measures and data for the Land and Wildlife Surveillance Program before completing Step 8.
At the conclusion of the pilot we had developed two products that the measures team found of value, a results map and a draft performance report.
The results map helped the measures team see how their work contributed to the larger goals of the organization. I feel this is important as historically the day to day work of our branch has not been reflected within the organization’s strategic plans. The inspectors know their work has a direct impact on our broader mandate and the results map validated this intuitive understanding. The results map also illustrated the inter-relationship between our business functions of Education and Inspections to ensure regulated parties are complying with our Land and Wildlife regulations.
The draft performance report was a concept the measures team developed to demonstrate how our branch could share performance results for each of our surveillance programs. The surveillance programs are complex and it has been a challenge for our branch to provide clear and concise reporting. The idea that the measures team developed while completed Step 7 of PuMP is an approach that may help to resolve our reporting challenges.
Overall I feel it was a successful pilot. It allowed us to test the PuMP methodology to determine what worked for us. It certainly highlighted that the areas to focus on are Step 3: Designing Meaningful Measures, Step 5: Implementing Measures and Step 7: Reporting Performance Measures.
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