#51 How To Find Time To Measure Performance

"We're just so busy and have too much on our plates, but we know we have to find time to measure performance - it's too important not to."

Sound familiar? I've been hearing complaints like this more and more frequently over the last year or two. And you don't have to look too far to see the nasty consequences of trying to do too many things: half-baked strategic direction, most projects under-resourced, staff accumulating too much annual leave, flurries of activities and no-one knows which are working and which are a waste.

Performance measures are even more important when things are busy and chaotic. Well designed measures make priorities clear, give specific and definite direction to activity, and provide feedback so you can avoid wasting time.

The first tip for finding time to measure performance is about reducing the rest of your workload

What is one thing you are doing now, that is less important than getting more control over your workload and your performance?

* Is it a project that you've lost passion for, that just isn't getting the results you need or that you feel compelled to finish just because you started it?

* Are you still doing administrative work that you can easily delegate to an assistant, like typing and formatting documents, basic internet research, sorting and sending emails, organising meetings and workshops, conducting simple surveys or consultations?

* How many hours a day do you give to distractions like chatting over the photocopier, answering the phone any time it rings, checking your email every 15 minutes, starting new tasks that you didn't even plan to do?

* Are you driven by your priorities, or the priorities of other people? Which tasks are you doing that really are not your responsibility, that are dragging you off the path to your most important goals?

Once you identify just one thing less important than having meaningful performance measures, stop doing it (yes, that can be hard and will take a real serve of discipline).

Then, allocate the freed up time to designing and bringing to life performance measures for the results that really do matter most. It will help if you treat this as a project of its own, and plan it properly and resource it sensibly and schedule it in your diary with at least as much importance as anything other appointment you have made.

The second strategy for finding time to measure performance is about reducing the measurement workload itself

How can you save time in designing and bringing to life your measures right now, so you get some runs on the board, so you can start making it a natural part of your work?

* Of all the results you want to measure, which are the 3 most important results to measure now? Just measure these. Leave the rest on the back-burner until you have the first 3 up and running smoothly.

* Can you use a smaller team to draft the measures, and then consult more widely afterwards? Who are the 2 or 3 other people that can help you most in measuring the 3 most important results to you? How can you make it easy for them to help you now?

* Does the data need to be 100% accurate, or is a reliable indication of trends really all you need? What data can you already access or very easily collect to provide your most important measures?

* Where are you collecting data from entire populations when random samples could work well enough?

* Do you really need to put all that effort into an electronic reporting dashboard when some Excel charts in a Word document report will do the job for now?

Focus more on building your momentum for measuring performance, and worry about perfection on your second or third iteration through the performance measurement process. Starting small and deliberately will lay a solid foundation to build more and better measures upon, as you get faster and more skilful at doing performance measurement.