Workplace Goals and Measures:
Balanced Scorecard Approach
Designing meaningful metrics for forward progress.
The Big Picture
Setting workplace goals is a matter of art and science. The art speaks to balancing the needs and desires of the organization, people in the workplace, and customers. The science speaks to wise reliance on data and selecting solid methods that produce results as a function of their design.
Effective goals balance the needs of stakeholders (which may be in conflict with each other). Effective measures reflect the true value of work to stakeholders, not just tasks commonly performed. For example, measuring the time it takes to answer a customer call is tasked based, measuring the number of calls resolved on first contact is value based.
Above all, the moment a metric becomes a goal it ceases to be a useful measure of value.
Workplace Goals and Measures: Balanced Scorecard Approach
Workplace Goals and Measures are drawn from Step 5, Declaring Future Possibilities in the Business Review. Future possibilities speak to improvements in the value streams that the workplace contributes to realizing strategic intent. Goals and measures bring the future into the present.
The Balanced Scorecard approach ansures that goals and measures address the full range of needs and desires: those of the organization, those of the customer, and those of people in the workplace. Typically the Balanced Scorecard considers four quadrants. (If your organization has a Balanced Scorecard in use,Workplace Goals and Measures are designed around your BSC.)
The Customer Perspective
The Customer Perspective considers value streams that accrue directly to the benefit of the customer. Typically these are product and service outputs consumed by customers. They speak to attracting and keeping customers over the long term. These are goals and measure as your customers would describe them, directly from their personal experience of being your customer.
The Financial Perspective
The Financial Perspective considers value streams that a) allocate resources in the present and b) leave resources to the future. These goals are influenced by overarching strategy such as quality leader, price leader, innovation leader, and the like. They may focus on current operations or investment in the future (capital budgeting).
The Internal Business Perspective
The Internal Business Perspective considers the value streams that impact the infrastructure of the organization. Examples includes hiring, developing, and retaining good people, revising policies to promote engagement, improving internal communication, work design, performance gains, and service response quality and timeliness.
The Innovation and Learning Perspective
The Innovation and Learning Perspective considers value streams that a) encourage creativity as a staple of the workplace, and b) increase people's ability and desire to contribute to strategic intent.