Establishing new performance management structures

Creating clarity of strategic objectives and ‘leaning into’ the difficult prioritisation decisions. 

Insights that Reson8

  • Organisational Focus – Objectives and KPIs aligned across the organisation to create focus on delivering the business plan
  • Optimum Cadence – Established an organisational cadence that provided leaders with actionable performance data and insights
  • Decision Making – Created the structures for effective performance ‘trade-offs’ between directorates to deliver the best outcomes

Challenge

Our client had some stretching goals to achieve before the end of the AMP which they needed to meet to be in the best position possible for the next regulatory period.

They had identified that in some areas, the goals of directorate, functions and teams were misaligned, resulting in conflict and confused priorities. To address the performance gap, they needed to improve alignment between teams to improve decision-making and better outcomes.

The client also had a major improvement plan to create a ‘step change’ in performance. The plan was a critical enabler to exit the AMP in a strong position. However, leaders were not collectively confident that the plan would deliver the level of improvement needed.

Solution

We used our Strategy Mapping Accelerator™ to define the key operational objectives required to deliver the business strategy.

  • Working with the leadership teams of each directorate to develop a set of strategic objectives aligned with the needs of their competing stakeholders, creating a balanced set of objectives to drive change.
  • Review of the existing KPI reports to assess how well they aligned with strategic objectives. Where there was misalignment, we developed new KPIs.
  • Working with the directors to review their objectives and KPIs and identified areas where KPIs were misaligned and creating ‘tension’ between teams.
  • We re-designed the director performance review meeting calendars to allow ‘tensions’ to be surfaced early. This allowed leaders to discuss the trade-offs between competing objectives, improving decision making and reducing friction.
  • We completed an evaluation of the transformation plan initiatives to assess alignment with strategic objectives. The assessment identified opportunities to rationalise and concentrate their change effort.
  • We redesigned the performance management system to ensure the timely flow of information from the frontline team to senior management.

Results

We established new performance management structures and processes across all operational directorates reducing the volume of KPI reporting suites by c. 15% and saving c. 3 hours each week for each management layer by reducing the reporting and governance overhead.

If you would like to know more about our experiences, please email dean.wheeler@reson8.group.