Can you imagine the Superbowl if they didn’t keep score? What if the refs said, “Sorry, we’re too busy, we don’t have time to track the score”? Would anyone find this acceptable? How would we know who won the game? How could you measure your success if the score wasn’t counted? Let me ask you an important question about your jurisdiction—can you tell if you are delivering services well and making good decisions if you aren’t measuring the important activities and outcomes? How often do you hear the same excuse, “Sorry, we don’t have time” from your workers when asked to measure or count performance?
Someone famously said, “Football is a game of inches.” Everything in football is measured and counted and we sports junkies track each and every stat. The newspapers are filled with wonderful statistical analysis to slice and dice the entire game from quarterback passing yards, number of first downs, totally yards rushed, etc. For fun, let’s imagine the Superbowl were managed the way most local government services operate, without measuring performance.
You’re the coach, its 4th down and you need to make a decision—should you punt the ball or kick a field goal? You turn to the offensive coordinator and ask what yard line the ball is on. You also ask him the longest field goal our kicker has made this season. The offensive coordinator says, “Sorry, we don’t have time to track that information.” How are you supposed to make a good decision without the necessary information?
It’s obviously pretty hard to make the right decision if you are blind to the surrounding facts. If the ball is on the 50 yard line, kicking a field goal would be a very bad decision. How often are you making decisions without the necessary information?
If you want to change your game plan, and start making data driven decisions, learn about Revelstone’s Lean Performance Management approach. Revelstone helps you start measuring performance immediately with a library of over 500 metrics to choose from. The easy web-based software is specifically designed for municipal workers and easily solves their challenge of not having time. Start measuring today and make good data-driven decisions.