Ernest Hemingway said "Never confuse movement with action!" In our organisations we are often surrounded by seemingly very busy people, but are they actually being effective?
How do we measure effectiveness and performance of organisations, departments, teams or individuals? Maybe by the length of their working day, or the volume of emails, reports they produce, but are these good measures of effectiveness?
Every individual, team or organisation should develop business performance indicators that are appropriate to respective roles and responsibilities, but what should we measure? Here are some ideas:
- Develop financial measures include return on capital, equity, or investment or operating efficiency;
- Reward results not activities;
- Assess behavioural change for positive or negative trends;
- Monitor customer and employee satisfaction with performance;
- Analyse how tasks and activities can be done better and improve outdated practices.
After all being effective is essentially being able to produce the intended result!
First posted in June 2007
Comments