Performance Measurement Ghosting...
- Brook Rolter
- Aug 5
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 29
If teams keep dodging performance reporting, maybe it's not about the data
“Can you provide some best practices for generating enthusiasm for reporting progress against strategic objectives?”
That question came up during a recent webcast Stacey Barr and I conducted on Paradigm Shifts of PuMP¹ for a results-oriented and measurable strategy.
Often rooted in frustration, the question comes up a lot in one-on-one conversations, strategy sessions, and executive meetings.
“We invest significant effort crafting strategy, aligning teams, and making plans. Yet, when it’s time to assess progress, data is missing, updates are late, metrics are meaningless, and getting performance information can feel like pulling teeth.”
Not receiving performance information is not just an administrative nuisance. It’s a red flag. Without valid performance information leaders can't make informed decisions, teams can't course-correct, and organizations can't learn what works and what doesn’t.
Four Dynamics That Undermine Performance Measurement
To understand the nature of the issue, it helps to step back and take a broader look.
Working with management teams on strategy and performance, I've observed four organizational dynamics that show up over and over again, especially in large enterprises, mission-focused organizations (especially public sector), and those with strong hierarchical cultures:
Requests for performance information are seen as a tax. They are frequently viewed as a bureaucratic burden that pulls resources away from doing the “real work”. The information is seen as disconnected from how the work is performed and irrelevant to how it is really managed.
Performance measurement is treated as a reporting function rather than an integral part of managing. When not a normal part of management and leadership practices, the value of performance measurement is not visible, it’s not seen as important, and the capability is not developed. As a result, providing meaningful performance measures for leadership is difficult, and delivering useful insights becomes nearly impossible.
Leadership shapes how performance measurement is perceived. What leaders request and how they respond, signals whether performance measurement is valued intelligence or not.
Many commonly used measurement techniques are ineffective. Common techniques like brainstorming measures, using activity measures for strategy, measuring poorly defined or vague goals, and relying on ready-made KPIs all lead to flawed and meaningless performance indicators. They’re simply bad habits developed from not having a proper methodology.
And then, when people are held accountable to achieve targets for things they don’t control based on meaningless measures, a destructive cycle is created. People become afraid to share unfavorable results, performance measures become gamed, targets are sandbagged, unfavorable results are spun, and measurement is avoided altogether.
These organizational dynamics undermine meaningful performance measurement. They create an environment where performance measurement feels irrelevant, unsafe, and even threatening.
Given all that, it’s easy to see why people might not be enthusiastic about providing performance data and information.
Defaulting to Short-Game Tactics
Unfortunately, these organizational dynamics go unnoticed or unaddressed. The common, reactive response is to play a short-game: focus efforts on getting data and making the meetings “efficient” to avoid wasting leadership’s time.
In practice, the short-game promotes three tactics:
Exclude those measures and goals without data from the review.
Defer discussing those measures and goals until the data is available and direct staff to follow up offline.
Cancel the review until the next month or quarter.
The rationale usually sounds like this:
“… The purpose of the meeting is to review performance, assess progress, and make decisions. If the data doesn't exist or wasn’t provided, there is nothing to review, and we shouldn’t waste leadership’s time. We’ll make sure it’s ready for next time.”
Logical? Reasonable? Sure, but unproductive.
They reinforce that performance measurement is optional. That it doesn’t matter. That strategic management can wait.
More Constructive Short-Game Tactics
Other short-term tactics focus on providing data while more constructively reinforcing performance measurement:
Gently Nudging with culturally acceptable reminders like informal conversations and comments during casual interactions with leadership.
Transparently Reviewing the complete set of goals and measures, including those missing data, and discussing the barriers, assistance needed, and next steps.
These tactics work but need to be repeated every review cycle. In some organizations, hierarchy, power structures, personalities, and political sensitivities make them too uncomfortable or risky to use.
The Real Opportunity is in Shifting to the Long-Game
Regardless of how well-intentioned, all the tactics above are short-game moves. They react to what’s missing in the moment without addressing the underlying organizational dynamics.
Playing the long-game starts with recognizing the leverage that lies in how we design and run strategy review meetings. These review meetings are a unique and powerful combination of senior leadership, strategic content, and organizational visibility.
Strategy review meetings are powerful cultural and developmental moments where leadership makes the disciplines of accountability, strategic thinking, and evidence-based leadership tangible in front of the organization.
The long-game approach is about changing the underlying organizational dynamics.
Instead of asking -- “How do we get people to be enthusiastic about providing data or measuring performance?”
Ask -- "How can we make performance measurement and evidence-based leadership integral to managing and leading?”
That reframing changes the game.
It shifts performance measurement from a reporting and compliance task to a foundational discipline for how the organization manages, learns, and improves to achieve results.
🎯 Kicking Off the Long-Game
Each organization should tailor an approach to its own context and culture. As a starting point, here are five long-game practices that when combined start to address the organizational dynamics and build lasting performance measurement capabilities.
Shift away from asking for data.
Ask for valid performance charts and interpretation narratives that explain performance and describe what actions are needed.
Place responsibility for data collection, visualization, and interpretation with line management and initiative champions. Strategy and performance offices should coordinate reviews but not gather, compile, or visualize the data themselves.
Reinforce performance measurement as fundamental to managing, not a separate reporting activity.
Make it easy to use meaningful performance measures.
Adopt a sound performance measurement methodology ² and common language throughout the organization, with clear techniques, tools, templates, and practical examples.
Provide training, coaching, and facilitation, and real-time support to help practitioners and leaders build practical skills to develop and apply meaningful measures.
Remove the organizational friction that makes performance measurement harder than it needs to be, and reinforce what good looks like.
Shift the Definition of Accountability.
Redefine accountability ³ from hitting performance targets to a constructive focus on improving performance to achieve results
Hold people accountable for a) monitoring results, b) interpreting performance, and c) initiating action when required
Start small, gain success, and learn what works in your organization.
Start with one or two strategic initiative champions or line organization management teams with the greatest willingness to improve.
Apply Everett Rogers’ work on Diffusion of Innovation: ⁴ Only 2-3% of people are innovators who actively seek out better ways. Others follow when they see success.
Shift Strategy and Performance offices to higher-value activities.
Integrate performance results from across the organization into a unified view linking operational results to strategic objectives.
Provide leadership with insights that enable sharper choices and focusing resources for the greatest impact.
Build a durable organization-wide capability to meaningfully measure and manage organizational performance
The Question of Best Practice
There’s no quick fix for building enthusiasm around performance measurement.
Short-term tactics like nudging and being transparent about missing data help reinforce the importance of performance information in the moment. But they’re not enough to change the underlying organizational dynamics.
The best practice is to pair the more productive short-term tactics with the long-game practices to build the capability and disciplines that make performance measurement part of how the organization manages and leads.
When performance measurement becomes a management discipline integral to how work gets done, how management manages, and how leadership leads, the enthusiasm issue solves itself. People use it because it delivers better results.
That’s what creates real enthusiasm.
If your next strategy review meeting actually started to model accountability, strategic thinking, and evidence-based leadership, what would it look like?
What’s one change you could make to start moving it in that direction?
Resources:
¹ Webcast recording: Paradigm Shifts of PuMP
³ Stacey Barr Measure-Up Blog: What is a KPI Owner Accountable For?
⁴ Everett M Rogers: Diffusion Of Innovations Theory
Brook Rolter is the Managing Director and Founder of Rolter Associates, a consulting firm which provides management, strategy, organization development consulting, and facilitation services to help organizations and management teams integrate strategy, performance, and management practices for improved organizational performance.
He is the Licensed U.S Partner for Stacey Barr, Pty. Ltd PuMP® Performance Measurement Blueprint programs and workshops.
Contact Brook by phone or text at 703-628-0340 or by email.
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