Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (to Close the Intelligence Gap) (Wiley and SAS Business Series) [Hardcover]

Gary Cokins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471576905 | ISBN-13: 978-0471576907 | Publication Date: March 29, 2004 | Edition: 1

Praise for Performance Management

"We are witnessing a convergence among advanced management concepts and practices. Performance management is a means to pull it all together, to understand the strengths and limitations of each management practice and leverage it for competitive advantage. Cokins' book walks us through all this in a manner that makes something confusing much less so.
There is no one right answer for any situation. The answer lies in a balance of concepts and the integration of them. Performance Management is the glue that holds them all together.
This book helps the reader understand the breadth of PM. It's not just about measuring!"
—John F. Morrow, CPA, AICPA Vice President, The New Finance

"Gary Cokins has articulated the '411' of performance management. His combination of personal anecdotes with fundamental cost and performance management theories provides business leaders at all levels, in any industry or profession, a solid resource for practicing their work.
This book is not only an invaluable resource for those new to performance management but provides guidance, wisdom, support, and insight to all industry leaders and managers. Cokins has organized and simplified the many complex performance management theories, associated tools, and infrastructure for the reader.
Buy it, read it, and give it to your colleagues—then celebrate your successes!"
—Sue Swertfeger, Senior Manager, Owens & Minor

Editorial Reviews

Review

"…a discipline intended to maintain a larger picture and to show how an organisation works as a whole." (Long Range Planning, 2005)

From the Inside Flap

Performance Management (PM) is the process of managing an organization’s strategy through a fully integrated system of business improvement methodologies supported by technology. PM encompasses the methodologies, metrics, processes, software tools, and systems that manage the performance of an organization. Written by a leading thinker and pioneer in cost and performance management, Performance Management shows corporations how to implement PM tools–or refine the ones they already have–to make better executive and operational decisions that will achieve greater results.

Describing the full vision of PM and how to reap the most benefits from it, Performance Management shows organizations how to use PM tools that have existed for decades or have become recently popular–such as balanced scorecards, Six Sigma, and activity-based management–to collect data, transform and model the data into information, and Web-report it to users. Author Gary Cokins exposes PM as not just an integrated set of improvement methodologies but also as a discipline intended to maintain a view of the larger picture and to understand how an organization works as a whole. PM can be successfully applied to managing any organization, including businesses, hospitals, universities, government agencies, military bodies, and every other entity that has employees and partners with a purpose.

In Performance Management, CEOs, CFOs, vice presidents, and managers discover:

• How to refine aspects of existing PM systems to work in harmony with newer components and apply "what-if" scenario modeling to them
• The explicit linkage between strategic, operational, and financial objectives, and how to communicate these linkages to managers and employee teams
• How to measure the profitability of customers and apply this knowledge to marketing strategies and campaigns
• How time, service level, cost, quality, and flexibility all interrelate with trade-offs
• How to align employee behavior to strategic objectives and motivate employees to accept strategy as everyone’s job
• How to test and validate the goals set by senior management

Performance Management shows senior managers how to use tools already in their grasp to navigate their organizations to the top of their game through better guidance, feedback, and decision-making.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471576905
• ISBN-13: 978-0471576907
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,616,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gary Cokins is a strategist involved with performance management solutions with SAS, a leading provider of performance management and business analytics software headquartered in Cary, North Carolina. Gary is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in advanced cost management and performance improvement systems. Gary received a BS degree with honors in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Cornell University in 1971. He received his MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in 1974.

Gary began his career as a strategic planner FMC's Link-Belt Division and then served as Financial Controller and Operations Manager. In 1981 Gary began his management consulting career first with Deloitte Consulting. Next with KPMG Peat Marwick, Gary was trained on ABC by Harvard Business School Professors Robert S. Kaplan and Robin Cooper. More recently, Gary headed the National Cost Management Consulting Services for Electronic Data Systems (EDS)/ A.T. Kearney.

Gary was the lead author of the acclaimed An ABC Manager's Primer (ISBN 0-86641-220-4) sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA). Gary's second book, Activity Based Cost Management: Making it Work (ISBN 0-7863-0740-4), was judged by the Harvard Business School Press as "read this book first." A reviewer for Gary's third book, Activity Based Cost Management: An Executive's Guide (ISBN 0-471-44328-X) said, Gary has the gift to take the concept that many view as complex and reduce it to its simplest terms." This book was ranked number one in sales volume of 151 similar books on BarnesandNoble.com. Gary has also written Activity Based Cost Management in Government (ISBN 1-056726-110-8). His latest books are Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces to Close the Intelligence Gap (ISBN 0-471-57690-5) and Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics (ISBN 978-0-470-44998-1).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for senior managers and executives, April 15, 2007

By 

Stacey Barr "the Performance Measure Specialist" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (to Close the Intelligence Gap) (Wiley and SAS Business Series) (Hardcover)

There aren't a lot of really good books about performance management, and performance measurement specifically, available yet. Too many of them are overly prescriptive in what to measure and very light on the details of how to measure (properly).

Because I specialise in performance measurement (and have done for over 14 years now), I've read quite a bit in this field and expected that Gary's book was going to be another one I'd refuse to recommend to my clients and subscribers.

But that's not what happened. I actually really enjoyed Gary's book, and support a lot of his philosophy about performance management. It's got to have strong alignment to strategy, it's got to be well thought through, it's not really about scorecards and technology, it's about making it easier to execute strategy, and it's about reliable and objective data.

It's a great book to give people that really need to take performance management more seriously, particularly senior managers and executives. It's not a book for the operational manager that is new to performance measurement (in this case try "Performance Scorecards" by Chang and Morgan).

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Business performance in context of today's environment, May 17, 2004

By 

"ideafarm" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (to Close the Intelligence Gap) (Wiley and SAS Business Series) (Hardcover)

If execution is the goal these days, then this book brings an interesting perspective -- it's both big picture AND 'how to do it' at the same time. Cokins does a great job of putting the execution imperative into the larger context of "why." A good read for a reminder of basic performance management tools and for exploring how they work best in the context of today's tough business environment.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Graphics in Performance Management, May 15, 2004

By 

Wiliam J. Hass (Northbrook, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Performance Management: Finding the Missing Pieces (to Close the Intelligence Gap) (Wiley and SAS Business Series) (Hardcover)

Gary's book, on Performance Management published by Wiley, does an excellent job of pointing out there are no "Silver Bullets" or management tools that solve all problems. Combinations of the right techniques is an art. Bold graphics and flow charts in the book do much to stimulate the thought process. Business failure is often a result of inadequate performance management systems. Survival in today's global economy requires many of the better performance management techniques described in Gary's new book. A great addition to any business library. Bill Hass, Certified Turnaround Professional, [e-mail]