As in sports, keeping score insures we are making progress and helps us see where we need to modify or re-double our efforts.  In order to insure that the team is focused on and supportive of the key strategies, there must be a system or process by which goals are documented and measured – this is called performance management or organizational scorecarding.

It’s the glue that connects goals to achieve the goals.

InnerComm equips local government teams in a variety of performance methods including the Google-inspired OKR – Objectives and Key Results process.

There are many forms and types of scorecards that can help the organization gauge its success or failure in reaching it’s key goals.  Management by Objectives (MBOs) have proven valuable since the 1970s and more recently Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Balanced Scorecards and SMART Goals have risen as good approaches.

Scorecards bring about transparency and openness to an organization as they are public and are discussed at regular intervals.  Scorecards help us see how our goals align to the organization’s larger initiatives, thus helping employees feel as though their work is “connected” and matters. They also help us see and know if we are moving toward our end goals.

Unlike MBOs and KPIs, OKRs are meant to ideally be aspirational and hard, if not impossible, to attain.  They foster more innovation and risk-taking than old systems.   For example, a 60% or 70% achievement of a game-changing, innovative OKR is far better than a 97% achievement of an everyday ‘safe’ goal.

InnerComm helps organizations adopt scorecarding systems and processes.  To learn more about Google’s OKR method of business execution visit this YouTube video.

For an introductory overview of the OKR system, its roots and its implementation, we recommend this OKR White Paper published by BetterWorks, an online scorcarding platform that utilizes the Google-inspired system.