Archive for the ‘partners’ tag
Losing the wood for the trees - Reason #9 for business partnership failures
There is a temptation to over measure and get lost in detailed performance metrics and lose sight of the overall objectives of the partnership. After taking the time to develop detailed processes, understand key quality items, benchmark and then developing a complex algorithm linking pay to performance that a mad scientist would be proud of, performance stubbornly refuses to budge and great expectations are dashed.
This temptation to measure and set targets for everything the greater the possibility that they will influence each other (in possibly not fully understood ways) and prevent major gains in any one area. In statistics, this is known as “regression to the mean,” for the poor individuals managing or performing in this scenario it is a classic no-win situation.
It can also be tempting to set arbitrary standards because they seem to make sense at the time. The percentage is the biggest villain here. 98% performance may sound great or 99.99% may sound like perfection. When that becomes a target for missing mail for an organization delivering 100,000 letters a day to a business, it means that that means 99 can go missing each and every day. Reality checks are critical when setting targets.
Both of these problems can be avoided by taking a step back to clarify objectives and what actually needs to be measured and then give that balanced scorecard a healthy dose of reality.
