September 2008
Results-Based Metrics Do
Matter
I have the good fortune to be the chairman of, not only an excellent Policy Governance® board but, an organization with superb (I believe) senior management. Camelot perhaps. What does that have to do with outcomes-based measures? As most of my readers know, a Policy Governance board insists, if it's doing its job, on quality monitoring reports demonstrating compliance (or not) with the board policies. But what is of particular ultimate interest to boards, (once the board's protective constraints are in compliance), is the evidence that the organization is accomplishing its ends, or the intended results or outcomes in the intended beneficiary population.
This Ends information is all about finding (or inventing) indicators of results or outcomes accomplishment. In the ministry world that, generally, is not an easy task. There is not a lot of plowed ground. Certainly, in the educational world academic measurement is well developed but how about a young person's life skills or spiritual maturity? The desired results in most NPOs and ministries are frequently, if not usually, subjective and have to do with lives changed for the better. Unfortunately, we use subjectivity to excuse shying away from results measurements. But after all, customer satisfaction is subjective, yet absolutely a critical measure for market driven firms! They don't demur simply because of subjectivity. They continuously refine the measures.
The ministry I am part of is a Protestant overseas church planting ministry. The board expressed its ends, not only in terms of numbers of churches, but more dauntingly in terms of the health or maturity of a local church anywhere overseas, with which it was working. Our management scratched its collective head, didn't whine (which some do), and over the course of a year, collaboratively invented a replicable method, albeit subjective, of measuring church maturity in line with board expectations, then rolled it out the next year world-wide and standardized it, cross culturally, as best as possible. Wow! What happened? What were the consequences for all that work in developing outcome or results metrics (besides the attention it got)?
We tell our clients that Ends are focusing and strategic, but that is not quite accurate. The Ends could go on a shelf (like many vision statements), and instead, we talk about how busy we have been supposedly creating the ends. It is the measuring of the intended ends or results that gives traction to the policies or to the vision.
Suddenly the organization can see the effects of its efforts once results metrics are in place! From top to bottom. If you want to experience alignment, work in an organization that can see transparently how it's doing in terms of results. I've seen it happen in an ESOP. Everyone gets behind the results.
That is what happened in our mission. Even the foreign field minutes changed. Field leaders and missionaries focused on churches and how they were doing, asked tough questions of themselves, and questioned process assumptions that had been around for decades. The organization became open to process analysis. Do the products we deliver create the results? Do our processes create the products that we intend should create the results? (Sounds like quality improvement.) Systems and process thinking sneaked into the vocabulary and the culture. The strategic sophistication of both board and management progressively improved and continues to improve because the learning never stops. Now we have results data over time (four years) and can see progress or stagnation, adding the dimension of time to our learning. The questions get savvier, but the willingness to question is now increasingly part of the culture. You can feel the energy.
To quote a VP, "The development of metrics has had a tremendous focusing effect...it drives self examination, both by missionaries and the indigenous church leaders...Leadership, both missionary and indigenous church, is compelled to think strategically"..."We thank the Board for going to Policy Governance and that it compels monitoring. It is transformational."
For you church leaders, would this work in churches? You bet. In fact, I suspect that if a church developed results measures regarding maturity, knowledge, practice, stewardship, outreach, compassion, grace, etc. it would have the same focusing and energizing effect. It would be transformational for that church. I also believe that the church that did that would become fundamentally simpler, less complicated, as Thom Rainer advocates in his book, Simple Church. The church would know exactly what it was about and how it was doing. What powerful knowledge that would be.
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(Policy Governance is the registered service mark of John Carver; the authoritative website for the Policy Governance model can be found at www.carvergovernance.com.)