- 02
- AUG
- 2011
Procurement performance measurement: describing your core competencies
Author: Ian George - Categories: Procurement Strategy, Talent
Eli Goldratt once said "If you measure someone in an illogical way, don't be surprised at their behaviour". Recently, bankers have been exposed for their indulgence in short-term and reckless behaviour to secure bonuses. A few years ago some doctors were found to have been treating only minor cases, neglecting the difficult or terminal ones because of the potential impact on their performance scores. History is littered with cases of senior managers believing that they can change performance levels by changing the measurement regime.
The underlying assumptions behind this practice are two-fold. First, the belief persists that people are inherently lazy and need to be monitored at every step. Actually, this has more to do with a poor environment and culture that has been created by the senior management team. People actually want to do a good job; they spend one-third of their waking time at work and enjoy feeling fulfiled. Second, there is a fundamental lack of understanding of how organisations – any organisations – work. To change performance levels sustainably you either have to change the inputs that feed the activities or you have to change the activities themselves. A colleague of mine often said "insanity is keeping doing the same things and expecting a different result".
Your staff have some great solutions to the problems that you face. Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons why they don't or can't do anything with those solutions. Ask yourself these questions:
- Do you go and sit with your staff at work and really, really listen to them on a daily basis?
- Does your organisation have an improvement culture and processes that are widely practiced by all staff levels (not just kamikaze black belts)?
- Do your staff gain recognition for the work that they do and improvements to how they do it?
If your staff don't feel like they are being heard, they will become disheartened. If they don't feel like there is a route out of their problems, they will become frustrated. If they don't feel like they are being recognised for their contributions, they will get itchy feet.
The simple advice is to start by measuring what affects your customers (internal and external), set targets that are achievable and make sure that targets have some science behind their definition ("because I want it" isn't good enough). If you really want differential performance then build an infrastructure that allows the room to make changes.
