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LaDonna R. asks: “How do you keep the KPI knowledge and skill of all participants current when new managers join the team all the time?”

There’s probably no magic bullet for ensuring that, as your managers come and go, you can easily retain a critical minimum level of performance measurement know-how in the team.

But there are a few methods that you can draw together, which will help performance measurement become one of the essential skills expected of all managers (and shouldn’t it be, after all?).

Method 1: Document your measurement framework so it’s easy to talk about and easy to understand

Draw a diagram of the alignment of measures to your goals and to the corporate direction. Flowchart your performance measurement design and reporting process. Keep your performance measure design, definition and report templates in a how-to manual. Manage your performance measure definitions in a single corporate performance measure dictionary.

Essentially, when you are organised in how you manage your performance measurement methodology, it becomes much easier and faster to explain it to new managers and team members.

Method 2: Include your measurement framework in your induction for new team members

As new managers and staff join the team, they’ll no doubt receive some kind of induction training to help them understand office policies, work procedures, safety awareness, and the like. They also need to know what the goals and priorities are for the team they’re joining, and how they will contribute to those.

Performance measurement is one of the highest leverage components of inducting new managers so they understand what truly matters most, and appreciate that evidence-based management is the norm they must adopt also.

Method 3: Start requiring good performance measurement skills as one of the Key Selection Criteria

When you hire new managers, or even certain types of staff positions, performance measurement should probably be one of the essential skills they need. In a time when we all have almost impossible expectations and unreasonable constraints on our budgets, performance measurement is the most powerful way to focus on what matters most, and squeeze the very best out of what we already have.

Are you looking for proven performance improvement capability in your new hires now? Are performance measurement skills listed as one of the key selection criteria and responsibilities for management positions?

Method 4: Create a quick and focused training session to introduce them to your performance measurement approach.

Rather than immersing new team members into a full exposure to your performance measurement methodology, create a short-and-sweet introductory self-paced lesson to get them started.

For PuMP users, this might be the Getting Started With Performance Measures How-to Kit. In three practical self-paced 75-minute audio lessons, your new team members will get a very hands-on introduction to the fundamental principles of performance measurement, the PuMP way.

Later on, and ideally just before your next planning process begins, they can deepen their knowledge with a fuller training course that gives them the full know-how at the time they need it most.

Method 5: Do a quarterly or annual review of your performance measurement methodology

New managers and staff will bring with them their own experiences and knowledge in performance measurement, which you don’t want to ignore.

Having a team-based and regular review of your approach to performance measurement means you not only give new managers the opportunity to see how your current approach works. It also means they get to contribute their knowledge to make it even better.

TAKE ACTION:

Simply try any or all of the methods above to improve the baseline performance measurement capability of your team, over time.