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May 14, 2005

Performance Management - The Return of Engineering

Engineering -
The application of scientific and mathematical principles to practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems. - American Heritage Dictionary

This definition is a good reason to ask what is intended by the use of the phrase "performance management". Isn't "operation" already responsible for performance? What is separate about performance that needs to be managed?

In the generic cycle of responsibilities that make up management, engineering clearly refers to the conception, development and implementation of whatever instrument is being utilized.

But we're asked by "performance" management to consider how and why the effectiveness of the instrument is faring.

What's interesting is the step from engineering's economy and efficiency on further to effectiveness.

In the management cycle, the "support" phase follows the implementation phase; so, is support where effectiveness starts?

Normally, performance management places top priority on the cause-and-effect relationships -- namely, the operational designs -- that drive and account for achievement of intended results. The approach, however, assumes that information about the causes, effects and results will be available for analysis in order to deduce or (more often) infer what part of the operations should be accountable for results -- and accordingly what part if any should be reinforced or changed.

This makes it obvious that feedback is the primary active ingredient in the support phase. By comparing feedback to the intended effects of the operations, we get indications of whether or not the operations are appropriate to the intentions.

Informing the decisions about reinforcing operations certainly qualifies as "support"... But where changing operations is concerned, it's appropriate to investigate whether the change should be made to the intentions that are labelled results, or instead to the result-oriented activities that have so far been developed and employed.

How does this relate to effectiveness? A simple working definition of "effectiveness" distinguishes it as being the quality of the given means's ability to achieve necessary levels of impact. In performance management, as in engineering, effectiveness is an aspect that is tested under the stress of action.

Based on the feedback, it might be decided that engineering adjustments of those activities will be made, or that the intentions themselves might be adjusted as acknowledgement of what the engineering is really capable of offering.

A key here is to have both a broad field of view regarding what the engineering should be capable of, and a narrow field of view examining the situation-specific results. Variations in both the means and the circumstances will be discovered to be the rule rather than the exception, and tolerances will have to be established for all the combinations that allow a desired outcome. The ability to dynamically adjust within tolerances must be built in.

In the end, "acceptable performance" is not merely constructed or induced -- it is engineered.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at May 14, 2005 8:22 PM

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