Recruiting and developing your performance management team.

• Author: Mucha, Michael J.
• Position: [PM.sup.2] Connections: PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT & MANAGEMENT

Getting started with performance management in an organization is not an easy task. The GFOA's research and experience has found, rather disappointingly, that many organizations have attempted to implement performance management, only to struggle, cut back, and ultimately abandon efforts--or settle for much less than they'd planned to achieve. Most often these organizations cite a failure to see real benefits that are worth the additional effort. No one should expect their efforts to take hold right away; many organizations need years to make performance management their standard way of doing business. When done correctly, however, key elements of performance management--performance-driven planning, changing the budgeting process, and training managers and employees to use data in ways that improve programs and services--can be implemented to provide value relatively quickly. Nothing is more important to this effort than recruiting staff to participate, communicating expectations, and developing the skills employees need to meet the needs of a performance-based system. The following information, taken from the GFOA's performance management research, provides tips on these three critical steps in implementing performance management.

RECRUITING STAKEHOLDERS

Before doing anything else, an organization needs to enlist staff to participate in performance management. For many applications of performance management, such as budgeting, day-to-day management, strategic planning, or personnel evaluations, using performance data to answer key questions requires broad participation. Having "champions," or, at a minimum, "committed participants" who understand the purpose and value of performance management is critical. These individuals also need to see the benefit of performance management to them individually, as well as to the entire organization, collectively.

Top-down orders will not work. For example, department managers need to feel that participating in performance management will help them manage more effectively, better connect budget requests with organizational priorities, and ultimately provide better or more efficient service. Without this personal level of buy in, many managers will simply go through the motions of collecting information for "someone else," which leads to inconsistent or suspect data, and useless information. The same is true for elected officials. Those who believe that the performance data provide value will use...