Here’s an exercise which allows people to experience the whole performance accountability thinking process in just 20 minutes.

1. Hand out the 7 Questions or the following instructions page. Point people to the chart  which shows the different types of performance measures in each quadrant.

2. Ask people to work in pairs, choose a program to work on, and answer the 7 Questions as described below. Point out that this allows for about 3 minutes per questions.

 

1. Who are our customers?
Identify 2 customer groups.

2. How could we measure if our customers are better off?
Identify 1 measure in the lower right quadrant.

3. How could we measure if we’re delivering service well?
Identify 1 measure in the upper right quadrant.

4. How are we doing on the most important of these measures?
Discuss whether things are getting better or worse and why on
the two measures identified in 2. and 3.

5. Who are the partners who have a role to play in doing better?
Identify 2 partners.

6. What works to do better?
Come up with 2 ideas, one of which is a no-cost or low-cost idea.

7. What do we propose to do?
Discuss what it would take to implement these 2 ideas.

 

3. During the exercise, walk around to answer questions and check to see that people are making progress.

4. Debrief the exercise by asking

– How many people got to questions 6 or 7?

 – How many people here have ever said “This is a good idea, but I don’t have time for it.” Point out that they just did it in 20 minutes.

– What did you learn from this?