Made2Measure

The word “toward” is, of course, the rub. We have today no such list of top court performers that represent the “best in class” for each of the levels of courts: supreme courts, intermediate appellate courts, general jurisdiction courts, limited jurisdiction courts, and specialized courts. Justice Served, the alliance of court management and justice experts headed by my friend Chris Crawford, is in its eighth year of reviewing thousands of court online offerings around the world for the now-famous Top-10 Court Websites awards. Why can’t we do this for court organizations as a whole? Would it attract interest (or objections)? I have a long-standing interest in comparative performance measurement and benchmarking (see “How Do we Stack Up Against Other Courts? The Challenges of Comparative Performance Measurement,” The Court Manager , Vol. 19, No.4, Winter 2004-2005.) It was rekindled last week when I read the cover story in the March 26 Business Week , “The Best Performers: The Busi...

A strategic plan is useless if it does not lead to strategic thinking and strategic acting. Developing a strategic plan under such circumstances is wasted effort. The process and steps of identifying desired performance measures serve as a simplified and, in many ways, a superior approach to strategic planning. Because they are unambiguous and actionable, effective performance measures provide a more direct path to strategic thinking and acting than formal strategic planning. A focus on finding the right performance measures also side-steps many of the processes and exercises that engage busy managers (often for lengthy periods of time) – visioning, SWOT analysis, and identifying cognitive styles – but have questionable practical value for making better current decisions. Plumb the Meaning of Life or Watch Your Cholesterol Suppose you’re a 50 year old who is taking stock of your life. You’re ready to tackle important issues like personal health, family, and work. Because you’re a ...

Infinitely more important than answers are the questions, the choice of them, the inner form of them. Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) The historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler was talking about larger societal issues, but his observation rings true for court performance measurement. It is not the measure itself that is important but rather the questions it compels us to confront. How are we doing? Where are we now (performance level, baseline)? What is the current performance level compared to established upper and lower “controls” (e.g., performance targets, objectives, benchmarks and tolerance levels)? How are we doing over time (trends)? Is our performance better, worse or flat? How much variability is there? Why is this happening (analysis and problem diagnosis)? What happened to make performance decline, improve or stay the same. What are some credible explanations? What are we doing...

Q: Beyond building performance dashboards, assigning “owners” to particular measures, and so forth, how do you hard-wire performance measurement into key management processes? A: I asked this question today in the Webinar, “Beyond the Balanced Scorecard, Improving Business Intelligence with Better Metrics,” presented by Mark Graham Brown , a consultant with 25 + years experience and author of three books on performance measurement. Here’s what he said. Do away with the traditional form of annual employee performance appraisal and replace it with a review of the organization’s performance dashboard. Make sure that performance has consequences for the employee, said Brown. A measure in the “red” should lead to negative consequences like salary decreases, and a measure in the “green,” i.e., a measure trending toward performance targets or goals, should lead to salary increases and promotions. To make this work, ideally, an organization would need to have a sophisticated performance ...

Some performance measures are better than others. They bring people together for joint performance across institutional boundaries – the courts, law enforcement, jails, prosecution and defense services. They can be used at the highest policy levels to measure progress toward an overarching purpose and shared strategic goal that the separate institutions are expected to achieve. Duration of Pretrial Custody Duration of pretrial custody -- expressed in terms of central tendencies (mean and median days) and ranges of length of pretrial detention -- is one such measure. Because it is clear, focused and actionable across all justice system partners, duration of pretrial custody can be the rallying point of reform and improvement efforts that depend on justice system partners working together. Use of this measure requires, first, an operational definition -- i.e., getting agreement about precisely what a pre-trial detention day is and is not (see Sub-Steps 2.3 and 2.4 – Identifying Desire...

On Thursday this week, the Superior Court in Yuma County, Arizona, launched the first version of its performance dashboard. In an email introducing it to all court and county employees, Court Administrator Margaret Guidero, who leads the CourTools Design Team developing the court’s performance measurement system, wrote that “together, the six measures of performance will help us to address the question ‘How are we doing?’ and improve accordingly.” Guidero explained that the current performance dashboard is a static version that soon will be Web-based and dynamic. “In the future, you will be able to view the Court’s core performance measures at a glance and then move swiftly through successive layers of more detailed information,” she wrote. Currently, users have to open six PDF files attached to the static version of the dashboard for more detailed information about the corresponding performance measures. For general definitions of the six measures, as well as four other measures yet-t...

Leaders of the Utah state courts are practicing what they preach. Utah’s Administrative Office of the Courts decided to go entirely transparent last month posting all of the courts’ performance measures on its Utah CourTools Measures website. Most courts mention openness, transparency and accountability in pronouncements of missions or strategic goals. Few put these concepts into practice as have the Utah courts. In Full View Consistent with the mission of the Utah courts “to provide the people an open, fair, efficient, and independent system for the advancement of justice under the law,” the Utah Judicial Council in 2003 began developing a court performance measurement system modeled on the National Center for State Courts’ CourTools . That in itself is not noteworthy. A dozen states and many more courts are developing and implementing court performance measurement systems. What is remarkable about Utah’s effort is that its performance measurement system is in full view of everyone w...

An occasional diversion …… Some of us who actually believe in the adages “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” and “What gets measured, gets done” sometimes don’t get folks who are not all excited about the power of performance measurement. So I read with great interest a review of Sara E. Igo’s book The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Harvard University Press). The mostly positive review, which appeared in the January 21, 2007 New York Times Book Review , was written by Scott Stossel, the managing editor of Atlantic Monthly . In appreciation of diversity of thought, I quote Stossel’s last paragraph about how we understand ourselves and our work in its entirety – Even as we have moved toward ever-finer calibrations of statistical measurement, the knowledge that social science can produce is, in the end, limited. Is the statistical average rendered by pollsters the distillation of America? Or is it grinding down porridge? For all the hunger ...

“Profit-sharing and other incentive plans are hardly novel in the corporate world,” write David C. Ammons and William C. Rivenbark in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of Popular Government . “They are regarded simply as good business – good for employees and good for the company and its shareholders,” they say. Ammons and Rivenbark, who are on the faculty of the School of Government at the University of North Carolina, are studying a type of profit-sharing system called “gainsharing” used by local governments in North Carolina and across the nation. I had a chance to discuss gainsharing in state and local courts with Professor Ammons last week. Defining Gainsharing In response to lessons learned in the private sector, judges and court administrators are quick to remind us that courts are not driven by profits and, therefore, profit-sharing and similar incentive plans simply are not possible for them. That’s true, but courts do have budgets and balance sheets, and actions that trim costs...

We can easily imagine how we might use a hammer or some other practical tool. Not so for conceptually complex management tools like performance measurement. And therein lies a problem. Promises Sure, we’re quick to claim that performance measurement improves performance and accountability, that it can change the way courts do business. We point out that performance measures are unambiguous and actionable, that they serve as incentives for change. We can even pony up of a nifty list of uses for performance measures: translate vision, mission and broad goals into clear performance targets; communicate progress and success succinctly in the language of performance measures and indicators; respond to legislative and executive branch representatives’ and the public’s demand for accountability; formulate and justify budget requests; respond quickly to performance downturns (corrections) and upturns (celebrations) in performance; provide incentives and motivate court staff to make improvement...

Over the last several years, my colleagues and I at the National Center for State Courts have recommended that courts design, develop and implement automated performance measurement systems . Such a system is supported by multiple interlocking layers of technology and business architecture that translates a court’s mission and strategies into clear performance metrics. We agree with Wayne W. Eckerson, the director of research and services for the Data Warehousing Institute and the author of the 2006 book, Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) that the system should be built on a multilayered business intelligence and data integration architecture including the processes, tools, and technologies required to turn data into information and knowledge. Further, we’ve recommended that the performance information needs to be communicated quickly and concisely in the form of performance dashboards, scorecards or other computer...

Just when you thought you had the bean counters, spreadsheet guys, and stat boys on the run comes Wired Magazine to remind us that measurement is downright cool. “Human beings measure things,” writes Lucas Graves (“Disparate Measures,” December 2006). “It makes us feel smart and helps us to understand our surroundings.” Graves’ evidence is some of the scales we use to parse, codify, and compartmentalize the world. The most familiar among the “six of the coolest scales” cited by Graves is the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale . The five categories meteorologists talk about represent the probable damage to man-made structures caused by a hurricane based on wind speed and storm surge. There’s the Mohs Hardness Scale developed in 1812 by Friedrich Moh to gauge the strength of a mineral. His method rates hardness by staging a catfight between minerals. A rock that can scratch another rock ranks higher than the one it scratched. My favorite is the Glasgow Coma Score to measure level of co...

Automated case management systems -- as well as other automated systems for finance, jury utilization and management, fine and fee collection, and other court functions -- typically have a “reporting” functionality. Users are able to view various standardized reports generated by the automated systems. An Example For example, using the Odyssey case management system, developed by Tyler Technologies Inc. of Plano, Texas, the Clerk of the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in Ft. Myers, Florida (and, at least theoretically, any individual or agency with inquiry access to the system), can access over 60 standardized reports under the following headings: (1) case analysis (e.g., cases without activity , listing cases without base events that have been filed for a specified period of time); (2) case administration (e.g., case load activity report , a summary report of court activity indicating changes in counts and percentages of cases filed and disposed from the start to end dates for any date ran...

After participating in two judicial conferences recently, in which the idea of surveying court employee opinions ( see Measure 9 of the CourTools ) was met with considerable skepticism, especially by judges, I was particularly struck by a Toyota magazine ad that pictured a group of smiling and seemingly satisfied Toyota plant workers. The ad read in part: Being a good corporate citizen starts with hiring lots of good citizens. What’s a good corporate citizen? It’s about people. People who care about what they do and how they do it. And at Toyota, we know these people pretty well. Because we hire them every chance we get. … [They] take pride in everything they do. Quality, teamwork and dependability, that’s what they are all about. [They] care about doing what’s right; at work as well as in their communities. They really are good citizens. Which in turn makes Toyota a better corporate citizen. Isn’t nice when things work out? In an article titled “No Satisfaction,” Charles Fishman ( Fas...

On a recent flight, I sat next to Robert Hone, creative director of Red Hill Studios in Larkspur, California. He was on his way to the Serious Games Summit held October 30 and 31 in Washington, D.C. The summit, Hone explained, brings together game developers, buyers, and industry professionals to exchange ideas and advance the state of the art of serious games for government, professional training, education, healthcare, military, science, and social change. Hone, it turns out, designs serious games for a living. We talked about serious games for court managers. Serious games (SGs) , according to Wikipedia, are “computer and video games that are intended to not only entertain users, but have additional purposes such as education and training.” The term serious games came into wide use in 2002 when the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. launched the Serious Games Initiative to encourage the development of games that address policy and manage...

Regina Berman cares about performance. It’s in her job title -- she’s the administrative director of performance improvement at the Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey. Her experiences at Hackensack and those of other hospitals who are doing the same things have something to teach courts. Improving Quality Hackensack and Berman worked for seven years to improve quality and are at the leading edge of a nation-wide movement to reform health care that relies on performance measures. The hospital’s heart attack mortality rate is consistently about 2% lower than the national average, which ranges from 6% to 10%. Other hospitals want to know Hackensack’s secret, but Berman says it doesn’t have one. Hackensack has developed policies and procedures to ensure patients get the care that prevents harm and save lives as evidenced by performance data. Throughout the 781-bed hospital, staff monitor and analyze every process, looking for ways to save time and avoid ...

Top performers engage in what K. Anders Ericsson calls “deliberate practice” – an effortful activity designed to improve individual target performance. Ericsson, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, has spent 25 years interviewing and analyzing high-performing professionals and is the co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge University Press, 2006). He claims that, except maybe in some sports, elite performers aren’t genetically superior. They just do some things differently – like monitoring and managing their performance using established benchmarks. “Successful people spontaneously do things differently from those individuals who stagnate,” Ericsson said in a recent interview in Fast Company (November 2006). “They have different histories.” He explained how deliberate practice with an example of a medical technician who may see a patient once or twice, make a diagnosis, and then move on, and never see the patient again...

Oregon state government spends over 43 billion dollars biennially. What are Oregonians getting for their money? Are they getting the right results? Assuming they are, are they being produced in the most efficient manner possible? In a recent brief , Rita Conrad, Executive Director of the Oregon Progress Board, and Dawn Farr of Oregon’s Legislative Fiscal Office say that Oregon’s performance measure system is getting better at answering these questions. And I think they’re right. Does your state have a “progress board” or similar state agency pushing performance measurement and results-based management? Whether the judicial branch leaders and managers regard actions by state progress boards as a threat to independence or, alternatively, as a welcome challenge, state progress boards are a source of valuable information. The take-way message of this post is that court executive and managers should take a serious look at what progress boards and similar agencies have to offer in the way ...

The road to success is always under construction. LilyTomlin, American Actor and Comedian Earlier this year, Made2Measure posted 10 tips for designing performance measures . Once you’ve designed the measures, here a eight more to ensure that the measures get used. Tip #1. Build a performance dashboard, scorecard or other effective display of your performance measures. It makes no sense to take the steps of designing the right performance measures and assembling critical performance information if the data are not delivered to the right people, at the right time, and in the right way. That’s where performance dashboards, scorecards or display systems come in. The goal of creating a performance measurement display system is to provide intended users with meaningful information that they can quickly and easily access, assimilate and understand. An effective display enables court leaders, managers and other users to monitor, analyze, and manage the critical processes and activities nee...