In order to achieve "No Excuses" Strategy Execution associates must be held individually accountable for the effective and efficient completion of their assigned goals and milestones. The old saying "What gets measured, gets done" is not enough to drive "No Excuses". The new saying is "What gets managed, gets done!"

Business Performance Management (BPM) is all about measurement. Most BPM initiatives fail because they focus on measuring results rather than driving associate level accountability to improve the under performing metrics selected for measurement. BPM is not a bad initiative as long as a minimal number of strategically selected metrics are targeted for improvement. Then V2R should be used to assign responsibility for the strategically selected goals that will improve the metric performance. These strategic goals must also be assigned in V2R to associates that are held individually accountable for successfully achieving them. Remember, BPM only pays off when strategic goals that improve the metric performance have been successfully implemented by responsible associates.

Ironically, Performance Assessment has been given a bad rap. Many organizations wrongly believe that if you define strategy, hire the right people and give them the proper resources they somehow will succeed. This hope based process is always lousy, but in some cases gets lucky.

A good performance assessment process drives like a new tire on a dry paved road. Even with the best-laid plans, there are many curves in the execution highway. A good performance assessment process provides the organization's strategic drivers timely feedback so they can keep the execution bus on the road to success.

V2R has several standard processes in place that make ongoing performance assessments easy to conduct, but most importantly, assures that the feedback obtained is timely and accurate. These performance assessment processes are described as follows:

Documenting Actions
Accountability in V2R is achieved by the assignment of associate level goals. Each assigned goal can have an unlimited number of milestones that describe the detail steps that must be completed for the goal to be achieved. Each milestone can have an unlimited number of Actions that are documented by the associate assigned to the goal.

Actions should be documented in V2R on a contemporaneous basis. Memories fade with time, so documenting the associate's actions sooner improves their accuracy. When Actions are entered under a milestone by the responsible associate, V2R assigns a system generated date stamp. The system generated date stamp makes it obvious when associates fail to document their actions in a timely fashion and then backdate them for reporting purposes.

The Manage-By-Milestone links mentioned earlier allows a contemporaneous dialog based on documented Actions between a Manager's milestone and an Owner's goal or milestone.

Actions provide the documented support that is critical in assessing the degree of success for all assigned goals and milestones. During the following assessment process, all documented Actions are easily reviewed by the stakeholders.

Goal Assessments
A major problem with many performance management systems is that they don't reflect reality. Management By Objectives (MBO) is a good example of a performance management system that does not work.

MBOs were typically defined as part of an organization's annual strategic planning process. These objectives were poorly defined and assigned to associates throughout an organization. When the MBO assignment process was completed, the documented objectives were placed on a shelf where they collected dust until the end of the year. When associates blew the dust off their objectives at year end in anticipation of their annual performance reviews, they discovered that most of the goals they worked on during the year had little or nothing to do with their predefined objectives.

A real advantage of the V2R "No Excuses" Strategy Execution process is that goal assignment, definition, prioritization, planning, execution, assessment and completion are intended to be as dynamic and real time as the organization they represent. There is nothing wrong with an annual planning process that sets the preliminary strategic direction for an organization. The key however, is accepting the fact that an annual plan starts to become obsolete the day after it is completed.

"No Excuses" Strategy Execution can only be achieved when the goals assigned in V2R reflect what all associates are really working on throughout the year. Contemporaneous Actions should be documented throughout the life of every goal. Goals should also be assessed throughout the year when they are completed to prevent memory loss that distorts rating accuracy.

The V2R goal assessment engine allows a great deal of flexibility to automatically set up the date and/or frequency that each goal will be assessed at in the future. It's quite common to assess Behavioral goals every month and to average the ratings on an annual basis. Project or Assignment based goals should be assessed when completed. Job Description goals are assessed at least annually, but can be reviewed at any interval to provide associates ongoing feedback.

Stakeholders of goals are automatically prompted to assess the performance of goals assigned to associates. All details that support the fair assessment of every goal are easily reviewed through the goal details, milestones, MBM links and actions. The custom tailored rating scale defined for each goal enables the stakeholders to objectively rate the associate's performance.

The fact that multiple stakeholders rate the same goal using the same documented support and rating criteria improves the credibility of the rating by comparison. The consensus rating is validated and outliers being the boss, associate or other individual stakeholders are easily identified.

Performance Reviews
To achieve "No Excuses" Strategy Execution every associate in an organization must be held accountable for the effective and efficient completion of their assigned goals and milestones. Performance Reviews are used to achieve associate level accountability. Performance Reviews consist of assessing all goals currently assigned to each associate.

V2R's assessment engine automatically fires off assessment transactions to all stakeholders of associate goals that are due for assessment. Ratings from recently assessed goals are used rather than sending out redundant assessments that create unnecessary work.

All information about each goal including Manager Actions and Owner Actions is easily reviewed by the stakeholders enabling them to better quantify their goal ratings.

Associate Performance Reviews should be conducted at least annually, but semi-annual or quarterly assessments are well worth the added effort. Formal Performance Reviews during the year forces the boss and associate to review all assigned goals, milestones, weights, rating tables, stakeholders and actions documented for each goal. Making sure there is a meeting of the minds between the boss and their staff associate's perception of their past performance is important to achieve during all Performance Review. Fine-tuning existing goals and assigning new ones during an interim Performance Review assures that associates continue to work on the highest priority goals that continue to support the organizations strategy.

When "No Excuses" Strategy Execution is in place, there are no surprises or arguments during an associate's Performance Review. Goals are well defined as is the documentation of the associate's actual performance. Stakeholders have enough objective information along with a concisely defined rating table to make their subjective assessments more objective.

Handshake Management
Handshake Management is a term we use to describe the desired outcome of the Performance Review process. Handshake Management requires a meeting of the minds between the Boss and the Associate being rated on all goals they are assigned. Failure to achieve Handshake Management can result in poor morale, high turnover, wrongful discharge and a host of other undesirable outcomes.

Assigning the proper Stakeholders to all subjectively rated goals allow the Boss and the rated Associate to compare their ratings to the other stakeholders. Each assessment report shows these ratings graphically to easily identify outlier Boss and/or Associate ratings. Peer ratings by stakeholders provides more credibility for the Boss and Associate to support their ratings. This group rating consensus is effective in achieving Handshake Management.