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What we came upon is the concept of a Report Card. This metric would be like a college report card, where the student receives feedback throughout the year on how well his education is progressing. There are quizzes, tests, and papers to be graded. At periodic intervals (mid-semester and at the end of the semester) grades are levied. Based on the feedback the student knows if he is doing well, if he needs to improve, or if he is exceeding expectations.

In each case, the organization, like the student, has decisions to make, based on the entire report card. It's not enough to celebrate the exceptional grades (A+) and denigrate any poor grades. It requires more information before a decision can be made. Was the A+ obtained at the expense of a different subject? What is the benefit for the A+ over an A or even a B? Is the poor grade in a subject that the student needs/actually wants? Can the class be dropped? Is it required for the major?

For our purposes, we treated the metric we developed in the same way as a report card. While we may be happy to get higher-than-expected grades, we only want the following results:

Those that don't require more than an acceptable effort (for example, if the student is neglecting other subjects or the student is burning the midnight oil to the point that his health is suffering).

The student obtained the grades without “cheating.” In the organizational context, cheating equates to doing things outside the acceptable standards, policies, or processes.

The student earned the grades. We don't want grades that were not earned—positive or negative. The metric should reflect the performance of the service from the customers' viewpoints.

When we look at grades that fall below expectations (the failure of a quiz or test, for example), we also have to ask the following:

Was the failure due to an avoidable circumstance? This might include poor study habits, not doing the required work, or a lack of prerequisite coursework?

Was it due to a lack of effort or focus?

Is the subject actually required for the major? If not, is it a course that can be dropped? If the service is not part of the organization's core services, can it be dropped? Are results “below expectations” acceptable?

Let's look at how the Report Card is built, from an individual service to the overall organization's health.

Ground Work

All organizations have customers. In our case, to answer the questions posed by our executive leadership, we chose to answer it in the context of how well we delivered our services to our customers. We could have taken the question to mean how efficiently we were producing our products and delivering our services…but using the Answer Key we chose to start at the more critical focal point of how well we were satisfying our customers (Service/Product Health). This focus allowed us to design a program from the bottom up.

By focusing on the customer's viewpoint (effectiveness), we found it possible to introduce the metrics at the staff level, mitigating the fear, uncertainty, and doubt normally encountered with metrics. We were able to assure the workforce, including supervisors, middle-managers, and directors, that the information we were gathering, analyzing, and eventually reporting would not reflect how well any one person in the organization was performing, nor any unit. It would instead communicate how the customer saw our services and products.

The Information would be valuable to everyone at every level. Without “blame” being involved, we could address the customers' concerns without distraction. Not only wasn't blame (“who” wasn't important, only the “why”), but the information we had wasn't considered fact—it was the customers' perception that mattered more than any argument about fact.

This helped address the normal arguments against collecting certain data: “But we have no control over that,” and “It's not our fault.”

We agreed to use the following major categories of information suggested by