How to embed performance analytics in our
daily routines to maximize personal productivity
Every morning, I start my day
with a glass of grapefruit juice followed by my first cup of coffee, as my wife
and I make breakfast for our 12-year old son and spend some time with him
before he gets on the bus for school. I
then enjoy a little quiet time – I have a lot of blessings.
After a good right brain start
to the day, I start revving up my left brain with weather.com and Google News
to see what’s happening. As my coffee
starts to kick in, I check e-mail to see if any clients have any needs and/or
concerns that require immediate attention.
I then go to Google Analytics to see how web site traffic is
trending. I next take a quick look at my
performance dashboard, which presents current activity and outcome trends, and
then I dive into my prioritized Task List activities that I defined at the end
of the previous day. I do this every
day.
Over time, I’ve found this
routine to be productive for me because I start with quality family time and
then transition into satisfying personal information needs before analyzing
business process and outcome trends, which give me the good foundation and
business understanding I need to prioritize and productively address my work
objectives for the day. In a short
period of time, I hit the ground running.
Many client executives have
similar routines. In contrast, I’ve
found that few managers, team leaders or team members have the ability to access
and analyze their individual or team activity or outcome trends. As a result, they often lack the focus and
ownership required to maximize productivity over time. How can every employee be empowered to maximize
their productivity? Here are some ideas.
Objectives
+ Measurement + Competence + Motivation = Sustained High Performance
- Define measurable business process objectives for each employee and team/department
- Ensure all employees and managers are fully trained – knowledge and skills – to do their jobs
- Measure individual and team/department activities and outcomes
- Ensure managers/team leaders function as encouraging coaches and mentors
- Provide daily or weekly performance feedback with employee and team scorecards
- Celebrate/recognize employees and teams who excel at achievement
- Provide modest rewards, e.g., dining gift certificates, sports tickets, etc. for achievement
- Identify low performing employees and teams as needing training and development
- Develop routines for continuous improvement
- Be thankful and appreciate everything you have
If we think of every employee as being in business for
themselves, then they need business objectives and the ability to measure what
they do to achieve those objectives. Daily feedback may be a challenge, but
technology has certainly advanced to provide this capability. Weekly feedback may be more appropriate in
some cases. Monthly feedback is the
executive financial cycle, however, it doesn’t enable employees and teams to
make necessary and timely adjustments. Help
employees make a difference every day.
Research and experience has
revealed that simply providing performance feedback to employees generates a
significant productivity increase. Executive leadership is beginning to recognize
the value of providing timely enterprise performance feedback. With a management culture of positive coaching
and mentoring, rather than criticism and subordination, along with rewards and recognition
for achievement, you’ll be surprised at how quality, productivity and expense
metrics will grow stronger.
