KPIs and KRAs - 2

It has just been confirmed that one of the KRA's is the reduction of street crime by 20% by 2011.

Let's see how we can define the KRA - "To reduce street crime by 20% by 2011".
(a) 2011 is very clear, it will mean either 1st Jan 2011 or 31st Dec 2011. Either way, it is fine.
(b) To reduce street crime - doesn't sound like it is related to solving cases. So it probably means to prevent cases (which is the right thing to do in the first place). So we'll take it that it means that we intend to "prevent cases of street crime" (in quotes for a good reason that we'll discuss later).
(c) 20% a good number, but what is based on? Current rates for 2008(since 2009 rates are not available yet) or 2009 rates (forecast)? Either way seems ok too. At least it is a quantifiable number.

While (a) and (c) may not be too clear, at least it can be definitely easily. So we need to clarify (b) "reduce street crime". This can be achieve in a few ways:
(i) More passive policing - more patrols and police kiosks (which will be difficult given the limited budget and personnel)
(ii) More aggressive policing - checks on people loitering around with motorcycles (are we punishing the innocent 98% in the effort to find the 2%)?
(iii) Reduce possible victims - discourage people from being possible victims (do not go out at night, stay indoors as much as possible.)
(iv) Reduce reports - discourage reports of crime (tell the victim that it takes 3 days to complete the report, and a series of appearances in the station or courts if a culprit is caught)

My guess is that (iv) is the easiest (and possibly the preferred) manner to meet the "reduction in street crime by 20%" KRA. Isn't is easier to reduce the reports by 20%, rather than to prevent 20% of the crimes? Slowly and surely, we'll have zero street crimes because none of it will be reported. And that is very bad. So how should it be done?

To have this KRA implemented effectively, the police must create a new department that is in charge of taking reports. This new department's KRA are the number of crimes reported and the feedback from the people reporting on their professionalism, knowledge, manners, and helpfulness in handling a report. This new department should report directly to the CEO equivalent of the police and behave like a proper support or customer-care department. Why you may ask?

If you buy something (goods or services) and it didn't work, you would call the support/complaints/customer-care department. Isn't it?

Well, the police is the suppliers we (as tax-payers) pay to provide something called "security". And if this security works well, no one will be robbed/etc.

And if it didn't work well, I'll want to report it so that it can be rectified (crime to be solved). So isn't the department that accepts reports from victims very similar to the support/customer-care department?

Let's call them the custcare team and their KRA is to be helpful and polite, and the more reports they take, the better they look. Cool.

Then there should be a preventive policing department - They are the engineering team in the commercial world. Their objective is to make sure their (security) services are delivered well and no failures(crime) are reported. This team is to try and prevent crime, so the more effective they are, the less custcare will be needed.

And there is already the investigative team (repair and maintenance), that fixes the faulty items (crimes). They are measured on number of cases solved.

And the last team, prosecution. This does not really exists in the commercial sector (unless you count the CFO or COO who is jumping and screaming when there are too many cases of "goods returned" or customer complaints). This again should be a separate department who is measured by number of cases given to them and number of cases successfully prosecuted

hmmm... maybe we can learn something from the appliance makers. They believe that if their design, engineering and manufacturing is done well, there is little need for customer-care and repairs.

If engineering (preventive policing) team works well, then there is less crime reported. So less people needed in both cust-care(reports), repair(investigative) teams and prosecution teams.

People behave according to how they are measured. Be careful what you measure.

KPIs and KRAs

Seems that there is a belief that KPIs (Key Performance Indices) and KRAs (Key Result Areas) are going to improve the government's effectiveness.

Just wanted to state my naive and simplistic views.

Measures are great, as long as we are measuring the right things in a timely manner. And that there are follow-up actions after the measuring.

My (simplistic) view is that there are at least 3 steps needed in order to be effective and (at least) the latter 2 steps will be very challenging for the government.

Step 1 - Measure. People behave according to how they are measured. Organisations cannot "behave". It is the cumulative effect of the individuals' behavior that shapes the organisation. So we measure the KPIs/KRAs. Why are we measuring?What do we do with the measures?

Step 2 - Adjust. The purpose of measures is primarily to provide feedback so that adjustments can be made. And feedback is only useful if received in a timely manner so that adjustments can be made. Imagine a child receiving his Standard One Grades only when he arrives in Form One. Or that your throttle (accelerator) in the car responds 10 seconds after you began stepping on it. (For that matter, annual staff reviews suffer from the same problems.) What then do we do with people who adjust correctly , wrongly, or does not adjust at all.

3. Reward, retrain or replace - If the feedback mechanism is good and timely, then the person can adjust. (An organisation cannot adjust itself. It is the individuals that have to adjust, and the effect of these adjustments is then reflected as the organisation effectiveness). If the person does not adjust (ignorance?), or makes it worse (incompetence?), then action must be taken to retrain, or replace the person responsible. And the higher ranking individual who appointed this incompetent or ignorant person should shoulder part of this responsibility. Again action must be taken to reward, retrain or replace.

Unless the second and third steps are taken, we will merely have a nice feeling that we have measured.

Of course, the effectiveness of these steps are based on the assumption that the measures are proper in the first place. e.g. If a KPI for the police is crimes reported, measuring it may induce policemen to discourage victims from reporting a crime.

[Digress: To make this KPI work, another department under a different boss (not related to investigations and crime solving) should take the report.]

What I would also like to see is how the KPI/KRAs at the Ministers' level translate into the the KPI/KRA at the lowest ranking persons' levels. For often, it is these supposedly "lower ranking" people that make or break the organisation's effectiveness.

If a Fast Food Chain wants to measure (and increase) Revenue, it has to measure sales per store (KPI for store manager?), which has to be translated into a measurement of the number of completed transactions per hour at the counter well as time taken to complete an order for each staff (KPI for counter staff?).

And then, of course, is the challenging whether there is enough political will to change, where necessary, the people involved.

Cheers,