Review
"""I am impressed by Dean Spitzer's approach to unlocking the hidden mysteries in business that keep people and organizations from succeeding. This book teaches how to accept reality and the importance of dialogue. It also reaffirms my belief that successful organizations develop a special language, a language of numbers, and once you develop it, you build on it, and the outcome is pride, self-esteem, teamwork, and trust."" –Jack Stack, Chairman, SRC Holdings; father of ""Open Book Management""; and author of The Great Game of Business
""This is one of the best books on performance measurement that I have ever read! Dean Spitzer has done a great job of illustrating the transformational potential of performance measurement. His arguments are spot-on, his examples persuasive, and his writing inspirational."" --Andy Neely, Professor and Chair, Centre for Business Performance, Cranfield University School of Management; and author of The Performance Prism
""Dean Spitzer takes the mystery out of performance measurement with this practical guide to how doing measurement right can transform any organization.""--Dean Williams, Chief Learning Officer, Wachovia Corporation
""Dean Spitzer’s approach to measurement as a social process is a breakthrough that will drive out fear, align measures with strategy, and create a context for the successful use of performance measurement. This book will help you get beyond ‘gaming the system’ to personal and organizational integrity.""--Lou Agosta, author of The Essential Guide to Data Warehousing
""Dean Spitzer shifts the performance measurement dialogue from having metrics to selecting the right ones and using them effectively. Leaders who are serious about improving the understanding, transparency, and effectiveness of organizational performance measures must read this book."" --Jim Hill, CEO, Proofpoint Systems; and Past President, International Society for Performance Improvement"
Book Description
"It’s no secret that you can’t improve your organization’s performance without measuring it. In fact, every function, unit, process, and the organization as a whole, is built and run according to the parameters and expectations of its measurement system.
So you’d better make sure you’re doing it right. All too often, performance measurement creates dysfunction, whether among individuals, teams, or across entire divisions and companies. Most traditional measurement systems actually encourage unhealthy competition for personal gain, creating internal conflict and breeding distrust of performance measurement.
Transforming Performance Measurement presents a breakthrough approach that will not only significantly reduce those dysfunctions, but also promote alignment with business strategy, maximize cross-enterprise integration, and help everyone to work collaboratively to drive value throughout your organization.
Performance improvement thought leader Dean Spitzer explains why performance measurement should be less about calculations and analysis and more about the crucial social factors that determine how well the measurements get used. His ""socialization of measurement"" process focuses on learning and improvement from measurement, and on the importance of asking such questions as: How well do our measures reflect our business model? How successfully are they driving our strategy? What should we be measuring and not measuring? Are the right people having the right measurement discussions?
Performance measurement is a dynamic process that calls for an awareness of the balance necessary between seemingly disparate ideas: the technical and the social aspects of performance measurement. For example, you need technology to manage the flood of data, but you must make sure that it supports the people who will be making decisions and taking action crucial to your organization’s success. This book shows you how to design that technical-social balance into your measurement system.
While it is urgent to start taking action now, transforming your organization’s performance measurement system will take time. Transforming Performance Measurement gives you assessment tools to gauge where you are now and a roadmap for moving, with little or no disruption, to a more ""transformational"" and mature measurement system.
The book also provides 34 TMAPs, Transformational Measurement Action Plans, which suggest both well-accepted and ""emergent"" measures (in areas such as marketing, human resources, customer service, knowledge management, productivity, information technology, research and development, costing, and more) that you can use right away.
In the end, you get what you measure. If you measure the wrong things, you will take your company farther and farther away from its mission and strategic goals. Transforming Performance Measurement tells you not only what to measure, but how to do it -- and in what context -- to make a truly transformational difference in your enterprise."
