Make Measurement Fun: The sporty way to keep score
One of my clients is the owner of a boutique health club. And to engage his staff in measuring performance—things like number of active clients, percentage of clients showing up for all their personal training sessions, and the like—he borrows from the wide world of sports.
Here’s what he does (plus some extra ideas I’ve thrown in for good measure).
Big, poster sized graphs
For just one, two or maybe three of your most important team performance measures, put them onto poster-sized paper in your team office space or meeting room. Then use big coloured pens to update the data each week (or however frequently you track your measures).
You can even go so far as to create little cut-outs of basketballs to be the data points, and you can stick them up there when new data is available. It’s okay to be a bit creative, when it helps to engage people to measure.
Aim for smaller victories than just winning the overall competition.
Don’t let success only be defined by hitting the long range targets. Make sure there are interim targets to build momentum and confidence along the way.
Focus on the team, not the individuals
It’s so much safer for people to aspire, to strive, to try when they aren’t doing it alone and won’t be singled out if they fail. So make hitting your performance goals all about the team effort. Never point the figure at people as the reason why targets are missed. Only ever point at the process, the game strategy, the playbook.
Celebrate hitting targets & shooting goals
Certainly celebrate when targets are hit. But don’t just celebrate that. When the team discovers a new root cause for performance results, or learns that a particular idea has worked well to improve results, or has learned that a particular idea hasn’t worked well, celebrate. Celebrate learning and building knowledge and filling the playbook with moves that will win the game.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stacey Barr is the Performance Measure Specialist, helping strategic planners, business analysts and performance measurement officers confidently facilitate their organisation to create and use meaningful performance measures with lots of buy-in. Sign up for Stacey’s free email tips at www.staceybarr.com/202tipsKPI.html and receive a complimentary copy of her renowned e-book “202 Tips for Performance Measurement”.
Problem Manager at Lockheed Martin Australia
Performance Measure Specialist
In reply to vanessa K.:
Thanks Vanessa – I didn’t know about the LEAN tool so I appreciate your sharing this. Definitely a great way to keep focused on what matters – to have it in your peripheral or direct vision as much of the time as possible!
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Big poster sized graphs is reminiscent of a LEAN tool called Visual Management. It is encouraged in the LEAN methodology to keep sight of the measures that you want to focus on visually (like a heads up display). Having fun with them assists the process.