Holding Employees Accountable for Performance Measures

1. Holding Employees Accountable for Performance Measures Francis Ziegler NDDOT Director

2. Executive Involvement (North Dakota) • Each DOT’s needs to follow the guidance from either the Executive Branch or Commission, depending on who the CEO reports too. • Performance measures represent what each state wants • In North Dakota executive strategic planning sessions identify the vision, mission, goals, objectives, and measures "Each organization must create and communicate performance measures that reflect its unique strategy." -- Dr. Robert S. Kaplan, Harvard Business School

3. Executive Involvement (Cont.)(North Dakota) • Performance measures should be linked to the strategic plan to make sure objectives are met • Leadership owns the goals and the objective chairperson reports to the goal owners

4. What is Done With The Measures is as Important as What They Are • In ND we report to the Governor, Legislative body, and public by the use of a report card with overarching measures

5. Everyone’s Responsibility is No One’s Responsibility • IN ND the Division Directors (DD) develop measures to track their programs • DD’s are held accountable for program successes and failures, not individual measures • Meet biweekly for a Project Delivery Status (PDS) to review milestone dates • Chief Engineer receives a weekly email on any milestone dates that have lapsed Without a yardstick, there is no measurement; without measurement, there is no control. --Anonymous

6. Everyone’s Responsibility is No One’s Responsibility (con’t) • The Department’s Strategic Planning office tracks the goals objective status and reports to Executive Management

7. Everyone’s Responsibility is No One’s Responsibility (con’t) • Monthly Managers Meetings include all Division Directors and District Engineers meeting via video conferencing • Objective owners give a status of their strategic plan objective and any performance measures associated with it • Districts report on any project concerns, delays, and missed targets . . . chart a course for every endeavor that we take the people's money for, see how well we are progressing, tell the public how we are doing, stop the things that don't work, and never stop improving the things that we think are worth investing in. -- President William J. Clinton, on signing the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993

8. Holding People Accountable • What must happen • Buy in – Employees will fight the process until they understand and buy into it • Empower – “You can only hold employees accountable if they have control” • Own it – The one that controls the program should be the owner of the measure • Rewards & Recognition Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. -- Stephen Covey, the 8th habit

9. Performance Measures Should Cascade Through Your Organization • After DD’s buy in to the process they start to measure their own programs • Divisions have developed their own mission statements linked to the Departments • Employees are empowered by giving them ownership of programs • Lack of appropriate resources/manpower issues need to be addressed prior to holding people accountable “It is much more difficult to measure non performance than performance.”  -- Harold S. Geneen

10. Employees Will Carry Through With The Items That You Deem Important • Customer Satisfaction Survey (NDDOT) • Five areas with an overall satisfaction greater than 90% • Low areas indicate a need to refocus priorities • Major increases in the past four years, but still need improvements • Overall customer satisfaction is 84%

11. 2008 Customer Satisfaction Survey

12. Summary • What we’re doing is working • Steady increases in customer satisfaction levels • Legislative positive about NDDOT processes • Received additional budget • Employees are happy – For two years running NDDOT was voted as one of the top ten employers in the state by the Young Professionals Association (the only government agency) • Reason Foundation 2008 report – “Annual Study Ranks States on Highway Performance, Overall Cost-Effectiveness,” stated the following: “North Dakota's state-owned highway system is the nation's most cost-effective, an honor the state has held since 2001. North Dakota finished first, or tied for first, in five of the report's 12 categories, including rural interstate condition.”

13. Questions • "an effective performance measurement system is a servant of the business, not its master." The primary purpose of measuring performance is to develop, deliver, and improve on world-class products and services not to audit or find fault. For government offices and business units, the essential responsibility is to provide services to citizens, not monitor the behavior of employees. • -- SERVING THE AMERICAN PUBLIC: BEST PRACTICES IN Performance Measurement (June 1997)