Made2Measure

Along with a number of client-partners, I’ve been rethinking the way courts gauge the satisfaction of court users and the strength and engagement of their work force And, yes, how we can improve the court user – court employee encounter. Quite a few court leaders and managers still regard these lines of performance measurement and management as “touchy feely,” “soft” or “subjective,” despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary from some hard-nosed researchers and practitioners. But that’s a subject for another time. Human Sigma In their book, Human Sigma: Managing the Employee – Customer Encounter (Gallup Press, 2007) – a much expanded version of their groundbreaking article “Manage Your Human Sigma” that appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review – Gallup researchers John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund rewrite the rules for how we should measure and improve employee - customer encounters. Though based on extensive research of employees and customers of privat...

Performance measures are often proxy variables. That is, they are not necessarily themselves of any great interest but they can tell us a lot about a particular thing or outcome. To varying degrees, performance measures are such proxies -- removed and highly simplified version of the outcome of interest. We use proxy measures in order to make it possible to measure things easily, routinely and at a reasonable cost. The value of a proxy measure is that it is expected to correlate with the desired outcome. Not perfectly, but good enough. In other words, while some performance indicators may or may not jibe with our common understanding or mental images of the concept or construct under consideration, they indicate its meaning. Cholesterol level is not health. Tree ring widths and ice core layering are not temperature records. Case clearance is not exactly court productivity or efficiency. Recidivism is not community well being. And – here it goes -- a win by the Patriots over the Giants ...