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,