Make Success Measurable: A Mindbook-Workbook for Setting Goals and Taking Action (Hardcover)

"Performance begins with focusing on outcomes instead of activities. In my experience, most people in most organizations most of the time do the reverse. They concentrate their efforts on the pursuit of activities instead of outcomes. As a result, they rarely set or achieve performance results that matter."

Today′s performance challenges demand outcomes–both financial and nonfinancial–that must simultaneously benefit customers, shareholders, employees, and management. Therein lies a cycle of sustainable performance that functions as a framework to ensure your organization′s goals are set, met, and balanced for today′s business world.

Make Success Measurable! enables you to avoid activity–based goals that can go on indefinitely, and articulate aggressive outcome–based goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time–bound.

This is a how–to book, emphasizing outcomes as opposed to actions in setting goals. You′ll learn how to: Set goals that matter to customers, shareholders, and funders. Set nonfinancial as well as financial goals and link them together. Understand and use outcome–based goals that support success while avoiding activity–based goals that produce failure. Select and use management disciplines needed to achieve your goals. Smith provides the what′s and why′s behind today′s performance challenges and shows how to convert them into measurable concrete achievements.

Using an innovative approach, Smith divides each chapter into an explanatory Mindbook section and a practice Workbook section. The Mindbook sections provide descriptions and explain key concepts, frameworks, tools, and techniques. They seek to build your intellectual understanding of how to set and achieve the performance goals that matter.

The Workbook sections include detailed examples and exercises that you and your colleagues can use to practice the concepts, tools, and techniques put forth in the Mindbook section. Workbook exercises allow you to convert understanding into action–and action into results! "Doug Smith′s work on performance and measurement has been an invaluable management resource for us. We believe that if you can′t measure it, you can′t improve it. Thanks to Doug, we can focus on the right measures to drive performance against today′s many new and different challenges throughout our enterprise."–Leon Gorman, President, L.L. Bean, Inc.

"Make Success Measurable! is a practical and powerful step–by–step guide to setting and achieving the goals we all need to accomplish in a constantly changing and challenging world."–Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems Corporation.

"No one writes as clearly about today′s key management issues as Doug Smith. Whether you′re in a small eCommerce startup or a large, already established organization, the frameworks, tools, techniques, and exercises contained in this book are the only things you′ll need to manage the performance that matters to your customers, your people, and your shareholders."–Steve Goldstein, CEO, eChores and former CEO, American Express Bank.

"Achieving results that matter–to donors and clients–is the true measure of success for any nonprofit organization. This book provides a thoughtful and extremely practical guide for setting goals and effectively meeting them. It is an absolutely indispensable tool for leaders and a model for good management."–Jenna Dorn, President, National Museum of Health.

A "how-to" guide to your top performance challenges
What gets measured, gets done! None of us disagree with this. And, we all know we have a lot to get done including customer service, quality, new strategies, eCommerce, speed, strategic alliances, diversity, globalization, teams, innovation and more. But what, exactly, are the best metrics and goals for these challenges? And how do we manage ourselves and others to use those metrics to set and achieve outcome-based goals instead of the activity-based goals that bedevil most of us in most organizations? I wrote Make Success Measurable! as a comprehensive "how to" guide to today's most critical dilemma: figuring out how to measure success and then achieving it. The book provides you the learning and perspective you need to overcome all the difficulties and obstacles you face in setting and achieving goals. It is filled with specific frameworks, tools and techniques to help you out. You will learn how to pick metrics that are relevant to today's challenges and use them to set "outcome-based goals". You will also learn how to use a concept I call "working arenas" to figure out who you must work with to achieve performance and how to align your goals with the goals of others. Finally, you will learn how to "fix" the balanced scorecard so that you get all of its value with none of its pitfalls. Each chapter includes explanatory Mindbook sections as well as a Workbook section of pragmatic, simple, and straightforward exercises to help you and your colleagues put the tools and techniques to work immediately. Using the book, you will gain confidence and mastery on how to set goals that matter to you, your customers (external and internal), and your shareholders as you set about defining and achieving success at today's most pressing performance and change challenges.