What governance do you need?

Without looking to impose too much governance on an operational business it is important to make sure that where you have KPIs and operational scorecards you also have the right governance models in place to review and take action on performance.

We feel that good practice is maintaining a governance or performance measures review meeting at each level of your operational balanced scorecard. This should include:

• Executive - Where your executive teams review performance across the whole operational area, particularly focusing on prioritisation of resources, capital investment and the forward delivery of work.
• Operational Business - Reviewing operational performance at a more 'tactical' level but ensuring consistency, commonality and cross-operations good practice.
• Business Unit Management - Review across business unit operational KPIs (for example different work areas, different teams, direct and indirect labour) to ensure common performance
• Area - Teams focused on managing a particular geographical area or structure review their performance and operational outturn
• Crew - Review of operational performance during weekly stand up meetings
• Individual - Based on individual performance review and during individual appraisal mechanisms

Holding KPI review meetings

KPI review meetings should focus on the actions needed to improve the numbers, rather than a forensic review of the measures themselves (aside from highlighting by exception where there is substantial deviation from targets).

The ’key’ indicators should be used to inform trends and be visualised during a review meeting with the desired filtering parameters and time horizon to provide good insight for the review. The desired KPIs and their presentation during performance reviews may vary depending on the needs of the team and the type of governance meeting (as above).

The roles you need

Typical roles in running scorecard review meetings and ensuring ongoing development and measure governance should include:

Executive Manager

• Approves the strategy
• Issues the agenda of the Scorecard Review Meetings
• Chairs the Scorecard Review Meetings
• Approves corrective actions as required or any change in focus

Performance Owner

• Reports on performance of his / her measures during the Scorecard Review Meetings
• Advocates changes in strategy, initiatives and targets
• Identifies Measure Owners
• Reviews any update or output prepared

Measure Owner

• Finalises measure details (e.g. formulae, data, frequency of update, method)
• Prepares and assures the output for measures assigned
• Briefs the Performance Owner(s) prior to Review
• Suggests revised targets and initiatives when necessary

Scorecard Coordinator

• Keeps the process of implementing and updating the scorecard moving
• Coordinates all activities related to the scorecard review meetings
• Drafts the agenda of the review meetings and captures any minutes and actions arising

What to do next?

To start with you can read some of the other great blog content we have written about KPIs, balanced scorecards, operational performance improvement and how to transform your field operation. After that why not get in touch with us and find out how we can help.