Managing is about practical ways of improving how you do things in your organisation and its only purpose is to deliver better quality services to local people. It is about supporting your staff to make the difference that originally attracted them into the public sector. Managing performance involves much more than setting up a system. The mechanics - targets, indicators, and plans - are only a small part of the whole process, and they are easy to deal with in comparison with getting the right focus, leadership and culture in place.
The benefits remain strong: organisations that work at managing performance know what they need to do and how to do it. Therefore, they are much more likely to provide good services to local people. They concentrate on the services that matter most, and are quick to identify problems, find solutions and take action to improve performance. They look for effective solutions 'in the round' to big problems rather than focusing on technical systems. Their staff understand what matters most and how they have to change what they do so that services get better.
There is no shortage of writing and training on performance management - whether it be on business planning, strategic management, appraisal, project management, communication, the 'Balanced Scorecard' or the 'Business Excellence Model' - why add another report?
While the mechanics of managing performance are straightforward and logical in principle, many organisations find them difficult in practice. As one delegate at a recent Audit Commission workshop told us: It can feel as if it doesn't matter which way you are running, so long as it's fast. People told us that they wanted something that shed more light on why managing performance can be so difficult and why some of the best attempts at improvement can fail. They wanted insights into how other people have begun to tackle these difficulties.
T0 answer these questions we worked with 12 organisations drawn from local government, the health service and the emergency services over a period of four months. All of the organisations have been working hard to manage their performance. They are each at a different stage, and some have made more progress than others. However, they have all worked at their approach, identified areas where they can move forward, and refused to let all the competing demands overwhelm them. By concentrating on one element of managing performance, they have found that others have become easier.