Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [109]
The bonus to developing your organizational health view lies in the same reasoning as to why effectiveness was the safest place to start. There is much less risk that the staff will misunderstand your intentions. Product/ Service Health measures were from the customer's viewpoint. It is easier to convince the workforce that the effectiveness measures won't be used against them since they reflect the customers' view. The biggest benefit, which accompanies the lower risk factor, is that by measuring Product/ Service Health, you can improve your customers' view of your organization and thereby improve your bottom line (even if that bottom line is not financially driven).
By focusing next on Organization Health (Figure 11-2), you still avoid the risks involved, even more easily than effectiveness measures since the metrics are for the employees instead of about them. It can also help improve your workforce's view of your organization. This should improve morale, loyalty, and dedication. It should also improve productivity—not by measuring, controlling, and manipulating behavior—but by proving to your workforce that when you say they are your greatest asset, you actually mean it.
Organization Health
Figure 11-2. Quadrant 3 of the Answer Key
You don't have to take my word for it. Fortune magazine, which produces the “top 500” list of companies, partners with the Great Place to Work Institute to determine the 100 best places to work. Employee satisfaction is a critical factor to a company's success.
In the short term, a company can be highly successful with unhappy and disgruntled employees. A tyrannical approach can work for a leader, in the short term. If you want your company to have longevity in success, the employee view is critical.
The Fortune 500 is a good measure of the company's current success. Being one of the 100 best companies to work for may help you determine if a company will succeed in the future. A third available measure is the 100 “most innovative companies” according to Bloomberg Businessweek. (Table 11-1 lists the companies that appear on all three rankings, while Table 11-2 lists those that appear on both Fortune 500 and Best.)
Sometimes less information is better. Looking at a little less information provides us a different, and perhaps clearer, picture. Picking which data to use is an important part of designing the metric—and a much easier step if you have a clear understanding of the root question you're trying to answer.
Concepts
In doing research for this book, I realized that if I were looking for a job, I'd care more about finding a “best company to work for” than a Fortune500. But you probably aren't looking for metrics for picking your next employer. You are most likely trying to figure out what metrics you need to improve your organization and how to measure progress.
As with getting on many ranked lists, you have to submit information and complete a survey to be evaluated by these companies. To become one of the top 100 companies to work for, you have to take the time and effort to complete the paperwork. And it's not only you or your leadership. Your employees will have to complete an assessment tool.
This is a useful tool—especially from a reward-and-recognition standpoint. But, it's not necessary. What is necessary is for you to obtain your employee's viewpoint and work to develop a solid and healthy organization. This is an example of how an organization (or leader) can get caught up in “chasing data” rather than trying to achieve a goal.
The goal has to be independent of the metrics used to measure attainment of it.
The goal should not be to be in a “top 100 list,” but the goal can be to become a top 100 company. It doesn't matter if you are recognized as a top 100 company. What matters is that you have a healthy organization that would qualify. Your goal shouldn't be to obtain a certain internal satisfaction rating on your employee