The CPM Officer Is Key

For the book "Five Key Principles of CPM" (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Bob researched what award-winning commercial, public, and nonprofit enterprises might know that eludes most executives who are stuck operating in zones three and four. Based on reviews and discussions with more than 40 organizations that have won multiple awards for their performance management practices and results, I developed a framework consisting of five key principles that distinguish today's successful CPM initiatives from improvement programs of the past. Exhibit 2, illustrates them. The companies with the best performance management practices establish and deploy a CPM office and officer. Thereafter, they refresh strategy regularly and communicate well about it. They cascade and manage strategy throughout the company. As a result, they are able to improve performance. Then, they manage and leverage what they learn in the process.

Principles two through five can be accomplished through some of the performance management methodologies that are most popular today. For example, strategy maps help management teams communicate about their strategy, while the Balanced Scorecard helps them cascade goals to employees companywide. My research indicates, though, that the much less widespread practice of establishing a corporate office of CPM -- the formalized commitment to a disciplined approach to achieving zone-one results -- is central to achievement of the other principles. I also discovered that eight best practices enable companies to successfully establish the position of CPM officer as a driver of organizational change:

Executive sponsorship. Successful offices of performance management and CPM executives are sponsored at the highest levels of the organization. By providing this support, senior executives signal the priority and importance they place on performance management improvement initiatives. In doing so, they remove many obstacles from the path of those initiatives. This point is so critical that the rest of the best practices follow from it.

Insistent sponsorship from the CEO, or the CEO equivalent in public or nonprofit sectors (e.g., commissioner, governor, general), is enormously beneficial. Sponsorship from one of the CEO's direct reports -- the CFO, COO, or an influential business unit or department leader (e.g., human resources, quality assurance) -- is a good alternative. Whatever his title, the sponsor must support the CPM office and the CPM executive and put himself out in front prior to launch to provide appropriate "air cover" and alert the organization of the office's importance. Post-launch, the sponsor needs to stay dynamically involved in telling the CPM story as events and projects unfurl and wins are cataloged. It's important that this support remain strong through any CPM missteps and as the organization goes through stages of the grief cycle (i.e., anger, denial, and acceptance) in fits and starts, as it does during every significant transformational project.

At communications systems provider Crown Castle International, where Bob headed up the office of global performance, founding CEO Ted Miller Jr. supported the establish­ment of strategy-focused organization principles and the Balanced Scorecard at multiple levels of the organization. Later, CEO John Kelly established the office of global performance. This sponsorship was critical.

At times, some operating-unit leaders indicated they were uncomfortable with the CPM office -- for instance, when we required them to administer surveys to their external customers. Because we had the backing of the CEO, however, they accommodated our requests. Over time, these same leaders came to recognize the importance of our efforts and made their own significant contributions to improving the content and quality of our customer survey content and tools. Similarly, there was initially some employee resistance to our requirement that they document core and support processes; it was hard work. Eventually, however, the organization's leadership teams answered the challenge and found significant benefits from having their process documentation online. In fact, they initiated numerous process improvements as a result of the effort.