Performance Analysis

Definition of Performance Analysis

Performance Analysis, according to Allison Rossett, is:

• partnering with clients and customers to help them define and achieve their goals
• involves reaching out for several perspectives on a problem or opportunity
• determining any and all drivers toward or barriers to successful performance
• and proposing a solution system based on what is learned, not on what is typically done.

Process of Performance Analysis involves:

• figuring out what needs to be done to serve the client and the organization
• establish relationships to serve the client and the organization for subsequent interventions
• describe and sketch, provide fresh views, ask questions that push the project in practical and systemic, not habitual directions
• seeks to understand what is really going on in order to add value to the effort
• getting out of your shoes and into the theirs
• providing a more vivid view of the situation to the client
• considering a solution system, rather than just one intervention
• considers what is and isn't working within current system and what needs to be included in the future
• provides documentation to sell and justify the time and expense of meetings with the SMEs and lengthier examination of the literature and work products (needs assessment)

Information Sources :

Trick seems to be picking well and recovering from poor selections rapidly. Incorporation of several sources yields a better program than reliance on one source. Data, broadly defined, (formal or informal) is critical to figuring out what to do. Using a systematic approach and attempting to provide a systemic solution is good for the organization.

Human Sources
Experts, colleagues, students, managers, customers, supervisors, attitudes, complaints, opinions, focus groups

Inanimate Sources
Policies, records, interviews, reports, grants, course materials, performance appraisals, facts, letters, surveys

• Systematic or planned approach
  Define purpose, components, where look for data, communication and expected output
• Systemic
  Consider the organization or system that performance occurs in, standards, feedback, knowledge, incentives, recognition, information, technology, tools, processes, etc.

What information sources are available for this project? What do we have now? Where may we look for or identify additional human or inanimate sources that will help us gather the most relevant information quickly?

Drivers and Barriers

Drivers and barriers encourage, maintain or impede performance. Targeting causes of what improves, maintains or deteriorates performance define the services that we will provide to the client. This is more responsive then doing something because we were asked to or because it has always been done this way.

• Drivers
  Skills, access to information, knowledge organizational culture, motivation, capacity to do the job, individual can describe reasons for doing something, buy in or commitment, etc.

• Barriers
  Incentives, tools, work processes, organizational or cultural issues that inhibit, etc.

Solution must match the drivers....What drivers and barriers do we see at this point in the project? What questions can we ask to identify others?

Solution Systems

Solution systems are integrated, cross-functional approaches to solving problems and realizing opportunities. Driven by drivers and barriers, interventions are tailored to the situation and coordinated across the organization. The goal is to keep focused on the customers and their purpose and to find the "right" bundle of interventions.

Directions:

Directions set the course for the effort. From the perspective of selected sources, what people ought to be doing and considering. Look for information about which efforts the sponsor seeks to maintain or increase and where the problems are (the opposite of problems gives insight into where efforts ought to be focused).

• Optimals
  What we want people to know and do, look sources such as the initiator, modeled and flawed work products, favored expert, complaints and praise, etc.

• Actuals
  Detail the current situation, review complaints, current policies, standards, etc.

What are the optimals and actuals in this situation?

Questions:

What might get in the way of the desired performance?

Why aren't they doing it?

What is it going to take?