LO's and Performance Measurement LO10709

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Sat, 26 Oct 1996 11:13:36 -0400

Replying to LO10658 --

John Constantine commented on Sue Inches' posting:

>Sue Inches mentions that she was involved in a retail operation which
>implemented incentive programs based upon numbers of favorable comments by
>customers. Unfortunately, that system has many holes.

John then went on to point out the many issues surrounding use of such a
method for performance measurement/reward, and contributed to our
understanding of the possible pitfalls.

I did not read Sue's posting as a message about performance measurement,
nor did I perceive that she was touting that approach to employee reward.
Rather, she gave an example to illustrate her idea that training is not
always the only solution - or even the best solution - for performance
issues in the workplace. John is right to point out that the selected
metric might not be giving management the best information as to whether
customer satisfaction is improving. But, since management's usual
"reason" for improving customer satisfaction is to increase both new and
repeat business, there may have been other metrics in place.

I am concerned lest Sue's main point (augmented by my own bias) be lost:
Learning may have intrinsic value not associated with the traditional
"bottom line", but if it's only performance improvement you're interested
in, other simpler and cheaper methods might suffice.

--

Jack Hirschfeld All the lonely people, where do they come from? jack@his.com All the lonely people, where do they belong?

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>