A clear goal consists of 5 distinct parts:

1. Objective:  Describe, in words, what the goal of the initiative is.
2. Measure:  Identify what you will track to assess progress.
3. Target:  Determine what measure value you are aiming for.
4. Due date:  Select the date by when you want to reach the target.
5. Responsibility:  Assign whose job it is to accomplish the goal.

The Balanced Scorecard methodology offers a good framework for goal-setting.  It offers four categories of objectives that you might consider for your project.  Financial objectives measure the dollars, of course.  Customer objectives determine success from the customer point of view (including internal customers).  Internal Process goals show the mechanics of how you will achieve the initiative.  In the last group are Learning and Growth objectives, which answer how the organization will support the initiative.  Making sure you have goals in each of these areas gives you a complete look at what you are trying to accomplish.

What goals might you set?

Read more of the 99 Ways to Influence Change.

As a project manager, measure progress so you can see if what you are doing is working.  That way, you can make adjustments as you go to help keep your initiative on track.

As a change agent, measure progress so you can help people see that their efforts are paying off.  In the middle of a long change initiative, it might feel like nothing is happening despite a lot of work.  It will help to have a way to say, “Look how far we’ve come!”

How often should you measure progress?  Every year, quarter, month, week, day…?  The answer depends on what you are measuring.  You don’t want the time between measurements to be so short that you won’t see progress in-between because nothing moved.  But, you also don’t want to wait so long that you’ll find out too late that you should have made an adjustment sooner.  Find a frequency that will show concrete progress and also provide timely information for making decisions.

How might you measure progress?

Read more of the 99 Ways to Influence Change.

As an evaluator for nonprofits, Maria is an expert at determining whether an initiative is having its intended effect.  On the show, she shared how evaluation works and when you would want to evaluate your change initiative.  She also shares the tools she uses in the evaluation process.

Maria has provided a summary of today’s discussion for Enclaria listeners.  Download the PDF here.

Listen here (30 minutes):

Be sure to visit the radio show page to listen to past episodes and subscribe to the show.

Align measures and objectives

Most measures by themselves are meaningless.  A measure is only a proxy for what you actually want to happen – the objective.  For example, when you measure employee turnover, your end goal is not to know how many people are leaving the company.  You want to know how effective the company is at retaining talent.  Turnover is just one way to estimate employee satisfaction.

The alignment between objective and measure is a critical factor in the effectiveness of the measure.  Good alignment means that when the measure moves in the direction you want, you are making progress toward your objective.  Just because employee turnover goes down doesn’t explicitly mean that satisfaction has gone up; it just means employees aren’t leaving at the same rate as they were before.  It is important to know the relationship between your measure and your objective.

When an objective and its measure are misaligned, one of two things happens.  Either people will ignore it altogether because they see that there is no real connection, or you will end up with unintended consequences because people go after a measure that is unrelated to the objective.  It is better to have a subjective measure that is aligned with its objective than to have a concrete measure that doesn’t really tell you what you want to know.

Make reports meaningful

A giant spreadsheet with rows of measures, although concise, does not impart as much information as detailed, visual measure reports.  At the risk of using more paper, ink and time, provide people with an interesting graphic that tells a story and helps them make decisions.  Best practice measure reports include the following information on one page per measure:

• Objective
• Chart of the measure’s progress over time
• Arrow on the chart indicating which way is good
• Target line on the chart
• Status indicator (Color coding in red/yellow/green, smiley faces, etc.)
• Measure owner
• Data source
• Frequency of measurement
• A brief explanation of what is being measured and its link to the objective
• An interpretation of what the current status indicates is happening
• The current status of initiatives underway or planned to make progress

Great measure reports make it easy for people to quickly understand what is going on.  Instead of having meetings that spend time explaining the measure and its status, focus meetings on making decisions about what should be done to achieve the objective.

Focus on action

A measure tells you whether an objective needs attention and what its priority is.  It will rarely tell you what action to take; it will only tell you that action should be taken.  Still, many teams get bogged down in the accuracy and derivation of the measure itself instead of taking action with the information that they do have.

Focus on the initiatives that will move the dial even if you don’t yet know exactly where the dial is located.  As better information becomes available, you can adjust your report to show what is truly happening.  If better information is too difficult to collect, decide what is good enough or get a new measure.  A team that only talks about measures without taking action toward objectives is a team that will quickly lose interest in measurement.

It may be true that “What gets measured gets done.”  But only if you help it along will what gets done match your objective.

1. Strategic. Does the measure track progress toward achieving the objective?
2. Actionable. Will you be able to do anything about it?  Will it help you make decisions?
3. Operational. Is it something you are able to collect?  Can people understand it and do they believe it?
4. Economical. Is the cost of collecting the information feasible?

After measures made it through the evaluation funnel, they would be further whittled down until there were 1 or 2 measures for each strategic objective.

Would the measures for your change initiative make it through the funnel?

The example he used during the presentation was a program to reduce lead poisoning in children.  In his core diagram were the activities done by the CDC and others in the community, such as Conducting Screenings, Identifying Children with Elevated Lead Levels, and Training Parents.  These were all the things under the control of the CDC and its partners.

On the right side of the diagram were all the intended outcomes the activities were expected to influence, such as Changes to Cleaning Habits, and Reduced Lead Levels.  One of the shorter-term results was a change in at-home behaviors of parents, and the longer-term effects were the health benefits.  Each of the activities and outcomes were connected by arrows in cause-and-effect linkages.  He called the diagram a logic model, since it showed the assumptions, or logic, behind how the program was expected to work.

The generic logic model looks like this:

The same type of diagram can be used to model the expected outcomes of organizational change activities (in fact the speaker mentioned that the CDC has done logic models for internal initiatives like diversity and leadership development).  The Control side would contain all the activities you are implementing, such as various communication vehicles, incentives, and training programs.  On the Influence side would be all the behaviors, attitudes and culture changes your activities are expected to elicit.

Once you create the logic model, you can test your assumptions.  Will Activity A really cause Behavior B?  What reinforcements might be required?  What other factors might stand in the way? In his presentation, Mr. Chapel said to look for where the miracles are supposed to happen and unravel them.

The purpose of the logic model is to gain clarity about the relationship between activities and their intended effects.  Over time, by measuring the activities and outcomes, you can test the logic model to see if it’s true.

What are your assumptions about how your change initiative will create its intended outcomes?

In 2003, I was finishing up the MBA program at DePaul University with the Change Management course, and met with the CEO of Jel Sert (where I was an employee) to see if he had any topics I could study for the class group project. He asked me to look into the reason the company struggled to collect ideas from the workforce. The employee survey conducted showed that one of the culprits was that employees had no sense of direction for ideas; they did not know the most important areas where they should focus their creativity.

The solution was to develop and communicate the strategy to the organization. In the first attempt at strategy development, we made up our own methodology. Although it generated a lot of great discussion, the result was a list of goals that promptly ended up on the proverbial shelf. The following year, a brochure for training by Balanced Scorecard Collaborative crossed my desk. After going to the training, I convinced the CEO that Balanced Scorecard was the solution for developing and sharing the strategy with the rest of the organization.

The Balanced Scorecard is a strategy management methodology that defines organizational success from four perspectives: financial, customer, process and learning & growth. It consists of two key tools: the strategy map, which is a one-page visual representation of the strategy, and the scorecard itself, which includes the measures and targets that form the heart of the methodology. For more information, see any of the books or articles written by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the originators of the Balanced Scorecard concept.

By the end of 2004, the executive team had developed the strategy map and the scorecard. Had we finished there, it would have ended up on the shelf like the previous plan. However, as a communications and progress-tracking tool, the Balanced Scorecard methodology provides the means to execute the strategy instead of just documenting it.

The first act of communicating the strategy to the organization was an all-corporate meeting in which the executive team presented the strategy map. Shortly thereafter, each department head conducted meetings with their employees to help link their jobs to the strategy map. On a monthly basis, we published a Strategy Update newsletter and the CEO shared progress at a luncheon.

The executive team met monthly to review the scorecard. The scorecard itself was kept in Microsoft Excel on a shared server. Each metric owner was responsible for updating his piece of the scorecard.

Progress was made on the strategic plan through initiatives – projects that focus on closing the gaps between current measure values and the defined targets. Most initiatives at Jel Sert took the form of process improvement teams, which focused on objectives such as improving operational flexibility, improving order fulfillment, and increasing quality levels.

The Balanced Scorecard effort lasted for about a year from the time the strategy map was completed to the date of the final scorecard in December 2005. In retrospect, I attribute the failure to gain traction on the following issues:

Not setting expectations for leadership commitment
The family that owned Jel Sert had run the company based on gut instinct and industry knowledge – successfully, for the most part – for the previous 80 years. I suspect that writing down the strategy and measuring against it were confining for the owners. In general, it is important to understand the implications of the change for the executive team and make sure they are committed to changing the way they do business. In this case, the executive team had to increase their level of accountability through agreement to a plan, measuring progress, and by communicating their intentions to the rest of the organization.

Not communicating enough
As a privately held company, the owners had to communicate more than they previously felt comfortable. Although employees appreciated and utilized the additional information, there was a limit to the amount of information the owners were willing to share. While everyone received the strategy map, only management had access to the scorecard. Communicating more specific information may have helped focus the organization on achieving key objectives.

Confusion about nomenclature
When using a specific methodology like Balanced Scorecard, it is important to agree on naming conventions, as the language can otherwise be confusing. Having consistent definitions at the executive level will make it easier for employees to have a clear understanding of how to interpret the information they are given.

Getting hung up on perfect measures
Focus strategy meetings on issues, not on measures or targets. It is easy to get hung up on the numbers themselves and not on finding solutions. The measures are sometimes not perfect. It is more important to know if you are moving in the right direction.

Initiative scope creep
Until the methodology has been proven, focus the efforts on gaining small strategic wins. At Jel Sert, once the process improvement program had been set up to improve strategic processes several non-strategic processes were included as well. When the non-strategic project successes were celebrated before any material strategic improvements, the program lost its perceived importance.

Although the formal Balanced Scorecard process is no longer used at Jel Sert, positive remnants remain. Managers talk about strategy, and process improvement teams continue to form around key objectives. Some of the fundamental measures that were created for the scorecard are still used to track performance. The company has thrived in the last couple of years, based on acquisitions and strategic decisions that did not fit into the original strategy map.

Despite this fizzled implementation, the Balanced Scorecard is a great methodology for strategy execution. Like any change initiative, the leaders have to be fully committed to the process – at the beginning and throughout – and change agents need to be vigilant in reducing factors that make the organization lose focus.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like:

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Evidently, we need some kind of proof that the shampoo is working.  We need reassurance that a product is doing its job when outcome indicators are not immediately available – in other words, we need leading indicators to tell us that we are on track to attain the outcome we expect.  The more lather, the cleaner the hair, right?

I’ve always had trouble with the concept of leading indicators, because the logical, literal side of my brain tells me that all measures are lagging because some event has to occur before something can be measured.  However, the leading or lagging description does not tell us the timing of the measure to the event; it tells us the timing relative to each other.  Leading indicators are predictions of future lagging measures.  If something is a leading indicator, it shows whether you are progressing toward the end result – the lagging measure.  So, for example, if the lagging (outcome) measure is the amount of weight you’ve lost, then the leading (process) indicator may be the number of times you go to the gym, or how many calories you consume per day.

When implementing organizational change, it is important to have and communicate short term wins.  One way to do this is with leading indicators.  By making the shampoo lather, you can see it is working without having to wait for the final evidence.

Inquiry:  What is your shampoo lather?