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Information and analysis > commentary
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| "The Information and analysis category examines your organisation's performance measurement system and how your organisation analyzes performance data and information.
1999 Criteria for Performance Excellence
"Balancing change and continuity requires continual … information flow. Nothing disrupts continuity and corrupts relationships more than poor or unreliable information (except, perhaps, deliberate misinformation).
"Information is particularly important when a change is not a mere improvement but is something totally new.
"Any enterprise that wants to be successful as a change leader has to have a firm rule that there are no surprises. Above all, there needs to be consistency in the fundamentals of the enterprise: its mission, its values, its definition of performance and results. Precisely because change is a constant in the change-leader enterprises, their foundations have to be extra strong." | |
Peter Drucker (1999)
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"Measures give life to a vision, its objectives, and its strategies. They provide a focussed objective that lets each of us know how we contribute to the successes of the company. Measuring and tracking key indices is the only way to know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going"
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Raytheon Corporation (1998)
Information and analysis are at the core of a sound management system. In Baldrige-based assessments, this category underpins success or failure in almost all the others. Organisations with poor data-gathering and analysis systems will struggle to present worth-while results. Although only worth 85 points, this category directly impacts on the 450 points available in 7, and it also affects categories 2, 5 and 6. The metrics chosen by an organisation to drive performance management derive from the strategic choices explained in category 2
Management by fact
“Businesses depend upon the measurement and analysis of performance. Such measurements must derive from ... strategy and provide critical data and information about key processes, outputs, and results. Many types of data and information are needed for performance measurement and improvement ... customer, product, and service; operations, market, and competitive comparisons; and supplier, employee, and cost and financial. “Analysis refers to extracting larger meaning from data and information to support evaluation, decision making, and operational improvement within the organisation. Analysis entails using data to determine trends, projections, and cause and effect – that might not be evident without analysis. Data and analysis support a variety of purposes, such as planning, reviewing overall performance, improving operations, and comparing performance with competitors or with best practice benchmarks. “A major consideration in performance improvement involves the selection and use of performance measures or indicators. The measures or indicators selected should best represent the factors that lead to improved customer, operational, and financial performance. A comprehensive set of measures or indicators tied to customer and/or organisational performance requirements represents a clear basis for aligning all activities with the organisation's goals. Through the analysis of data from the tracking processes, the measures or indicators themselves may be evaluated and changed to better support such goals.”
1999 Criteria for Performance Excellence
And just for fun, here's an alternative view …
“Every large company I've worked for … has tended to be run by too many MBAs who believed that the truth could be found in numbers. “One of the functions I hate in automobile companies is called product planning, which is a ton of left-brain guys sifting through reams and reams of market data and then coming up with an elaborate numerical model of the market that to them takes on the semblance of reality.
“The products they come up with are bland, run absolutely counter to common sense, and almost always turn out to be disasters. Numbers are a poor surrogate for imagination, intuition, judgment, critical thinking, creativity, and leaps of faith.”
Former Chrysler vice-chairman and celebrated maverick, Bob Lutz,
quoted in Got Guts? by David H Freeman
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