Managing Performance: Setting KPIs, Tracking Progress and Providing Feedback Course

This course addresses the three cornerstones of excellent performance namely, the right set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the proper means of tracking progress and the most effective methodologies for intervention and feedback. By learning how to skillfully handle each of these tasks, team leaders, supervisors or managers will be able to directly and positively influence performance in their units, sections, or departments.

In this course, participants will learn how to set the right KPIs and align them to the organizational strategy. They will also learn how, and how often, these KPIs should be reported. In this regard, participants will be exposed to a variety of dashboards and scorecards which are considered best practices. The course will then explain to participants how performance feedback should be provided so that recipients are motivated to bridge the performance gaps they have.

Course Methodology

The course uses a number of workshops to demonstrate how effective KPIs are formulated. The workshops are team based and use a customized approach that provokes the thought process for KPI development and monitoring. In addition, the course relies on the use of behavior modeling and role plays to demonstrate how and when effective feedback should be provided.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the components of a comprehensive strategy and the role of each
• List the main criteria for measuring performance and use them to plan and manage the performance of others
• Design reporting mechanisms which are critical for measuring progress and use them to track performance and determine critical deviations
• Provide effective feedback as a means of dealing with individual performance gaps and as a tool for effectively addressing all unfavorable changes in performance
• Determine when to coach and when to counsel and then do so based on a thorough understanding of performance gaps and their root causes

Target Audience

All managers and senior professionals who are involved in influencing, formulating or supporting the performance of others, as well as those who are responsible for linking, measuring and improving the performance of the organization, including strategy or performance management professionals, balanced scorecard course managers, business unit and department managers and business analysts.

Target Competencies

• Formulating KPIs
• Performance monitoring and reporting
• Critical questioning
• Active listening
• Providing constructive feedback
• Coaching and counseling

Course Outline

• The annual strategy cycle and its major phases and components
• Various types of analyses
• Vision and mission
• Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
• Using CSFs to translate strategy to operations
• Performance criteria
• Analyzing Critical Success Factors (CSFs) to extract the three main performance criteria
• Key Results Areas (KRAs)
• Core competencies
• Core values
• How KRAs are cascaded to the business level
• Using KRAs to extract KPIs
• Types of KPIs
• Behavioral indicators and their link to core competencies
• Goals, Objectives, and Targets (GOTs): the main differences
• Using GOTs to develop measures and KPIs
• Why SMART objectives are not SMART!
• Performance tracking and reporting
• The use of balanced and unbalanced scorecards
• The use of dashboards and snapshot reporting
• Compound versus concrete KPIs: The use of indexes to summarize KPI reporting
• Performance gaps: the difference between a gap and a drop in performance
• Performance gaps: determining the need for coaching
• Providing feedback for improved performance
• Feedback: how different is it from opinions, evaluations, and appraisals
• Feedback versus appraisals, assessments, and evaluations
• The cornerstones of effective feedback
• Types of feedback
• Motivational feedback and its benefits
• Formative feedback and how it should be delivered
• Transforming negative feedback into positive feedforward
• The skills for effectively providing feedback
• Active listening, questioning, and feedforward
• Coaching and counseling
• How counseling can act as a double-edged sword