Develop your management team

Professional performance measurement

Development of a management team is an ongoing process. Performance feedback should identify skill gaps, leading to training and future improvement.

As you delegate management responsibility and become more removed from the day-to-day feel of the organisation, you will need to have in place good systems to be able to monitor performance. A suitable balance has to be achieved. You need sufficient feedback from managers to appreciate the overall position of the business, but you also have to allow them the freedom to be able to manage their designated areas.

Performance assessment can usually be divided into two parts - measurement and evaluation.

Performance measurement concentrates on key performance indicators (KPIs), objective factors that can be clearly identified and measured, such as:

• sales figures
• production output
• financial performance
• machine downtime

Targets (what you are aiming for) and budgets (resources available to deliver your targets) are the cornerstones of KPIs. Monitoring them should form part of a regular reporting system, perhaps in written monthly reports. For more information on key performance indicators see our guide on setting business targets.

This should not replace more informal and subjective feedback - for example, at weekly progress meetings - to help keep you in touch. Take care to ensure that, during this process, the team is not over-managed.

Management experts are always considering ways of being able to quantify the less tangible factors of management performance. An example of such a tool is the balanced scorecard method. Read about the basic concept of the balanced scorecard method at the Balanced Scorecard Institute website.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• The role of the management team
• Management team skill sets
• Building the team
• Training and development of managers
• Professional performance measurement
• Personal performance evaluation and rewards

 

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