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August 5, 2005

Communications in Performance Management

The number one problem in managing performance is not a matter of correct processes but rather a matter of knowing what is currently really going on. Therefore, a proper solution offers an integrated management communications platform that allows all members of the organization to:

- continuously observe and immediately understand the context and implications of operational events;

- communicate the issues pertinent to the observations and understanding, and appropriately collaborate on timely follow-up decisions and actions that create or restore critical alignment of activities to the directions of strategic and tactical goals.

Observation becomes meaningful when the items within view have definition. In performance management, the importance of communications is to indicate the impact of events, but this cannot be done unless both events and impacts are specifically and suitably defined. Events are defined within the mode of monitoring, and impacts are defined within the mode of interpretation.

Understanding is accomplished when the definitions allow relationships of events and impacts to be determined and classified, and when those relationships can be used to account for the status and dynamics of circumstances both present and future. Typically, this understanding is represented in a degree of compliance to rules and plans that are intended to control the status and dynamics by force of design.

As imagined in the diagram above, the performance management solution must bring practical visibility to the fact that any of the terms of the operations environment, and any of the values in the management context, may change at any time.

Changes will affect the events and impacts observed, thus their relationship can change and take on a different meaning. Ultimately, what the "manager" must attend to is the need for orchestrating the changes in order to direct affairs in a logically calculated way towards the desired meaning. Given the number of variables involved, the role of "manager" may be executed collaboratively; therefore, a major purpose of the communication is to assure that the currently desired meaning is known to all parties in the management collaboration.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at August 5, 2005 7:20 PM

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