The Performance Paradox: Understanding the Real Drivers That Critically Affect Outcomes

ISBN-13: 9781563273902 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 192 str.

Jerry Harbour

Opis

How does performance improve? A simple yet often unexplored question. To quantify it, it must be measured. To measure it, it must be understood. The good news is that once we actually examine how to test performance, a number of basic principles and natural laws emerge. Principles and laws with universal applications across diverse subjects, and when correctly applied, not only unravel the mystery of how performance improves, but how you can improve performance in your organization. The Performance Paradox explores the misunderstood subject of performance. While examining the varying measures of performance, the author discusses how to find what is true that is, what is known and what is not known about performance, what needs to be known, what is useful, and what is not. The book exposes hype and fad and helps you embrace fact and reality. Sprinkled throughout you will find sage and practical advice which can be translated into concrete action irrespective of your intended area of application. Based on extensive research by the author, this book provides a deeper understanding what measures of performance can actually tell us about performance or, more specifically what they can tell us about how performance does and does not improve and the practical implications of such derived insights. By examining real-world examples of how abstract ideas can be concretely applied, Jerry Harbour can help transform any business or organization into a high-performance one where results are obtained, rather than imagined."

Spis treści

Seeking What Is True Checking Our Assumptions R&D Spending Healthcare and Life Expectancy Bombing Precision e-Learning Dollars Spent Equals Games Won Performance Paradoxes Summary Performance as Subject and Why x Matters Defining Performance Developing a Performance Equation Taking the Equation One Step Further Understanding the Three Types of x Variables Adding Oomph to Your Performance Equation From Sea to Land Small Round Balls That Fly Things That Go Boom The Power of Good Logic Creating Task Models Summary S-Curves and Performance Limits Performance Improves Exponentionally Normal Curves S-Shaped Curves and Logistic Functions The Limits of Performance Projecting Unrealized Performance Capacity Summary How Innovation (Sometimes) Begets Improvement Overlapping S-Curves and What They Mean About Innovation Innovation Types Type I Innovations Type II Innovations Type III Innovations Type IV Innovations Innovation and Performance Gains Biological and Technological Evolution The Role of Innovation Shifts Summary Modeling Performance The Dilemma of Safety versus Productivity Models: Definitions and Characteristics Performance Models Modeling Case Study Outlining the Case Study Steps The Value of Performance Modeling Value to the Oakland A’s Value to the U.S. Military Some Limitations of Performance Modeling Summary Measuring Performance Some Definitions and General Observations about Performance Measures Descriptive Measures Predictive Measures Prescriptive Measures Models of Performance Should Drive Measures of Performance Units of Measurement Interpreting Measures of Performance SPOTC Measures of Performance Summary Improving Performance Capacity Matters Realizing Unrealized Performance Capacity Model- and Measurement-Based Performance Improvement Improving SPOTC Performance Summary Performance: A Summary Glossary Bibliography Index

O autorze

Jerry L. Harbour