Performance management in governance

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, during his famous inauguration speech on January 7, 2017, challenged Ghanaians not to be spectators but active citizens during his era of governance. The Minister of Finance has just presented the budget and economic policy of government for 2018 and Ghanaians as active citizens must be able to measure the contribution of each of the 110 ministers and their deputies to the priorities and programmes of the NPP government devoid of propaganda and emotional partisan considerations and rather be driven by data and evidence. It is hoped that the ideas in this paper would be considered by the President as he reviews performance of the ministers in 2017 and clarifies expectations for 2018. It could also inform reflections and decision making on potential reshuffles, separations, promotions and new appointments.

Performance management

The executive wing of government has business goals to achieve and each minister must be able to show with evidence their contribution towards the achievement of the goals. A ministers’ performance is a function of effort, ability, collaboration and technology. Performance management represents one of the key enablers for attaining competitive advantage for every organisation irrespective of the sector whether government or non-government, profit or not for profit. As a concept, performance management helps to define and measure the contribution of an employee to the organisation’s business and provides clarity on the “Line of sight” of every member to the overall goals. As a process, it helps to reconcile personal goals with organisational goals to enable the achievement of strategic intent, purpose and ambition. As a methodology, it provides evidence to measure behaviour (how) and results(what) and its correlation to positive or negative organisational outcomes and performance.

Measurement indicators

The President, as the line manager of his ministers, needs to have criteria to measure and evaluate performance. Process criteria help to measure how well things are done in terms of processes, procedures, protocols, methodologies and they are objectives of a facilitation/collaboration that enables the delivery of an output or outcome objective. Output objectives are objectives that produce a result that empirically demonstrates that change or transformation has taken place. Outcome/impact criteria helps to measure the change that has occurred as a result of the performance of a performance objective.

Money measures help to assess how performance has led to increased productivity, reduced waste and duplication and created more agility and innovation leading to positive results. Time measures can be expressed as planned performance against actual performance using tools such as project management plan, work timetables, amount of backlog and speed/quality of response etc. Measures of effect can also help to evaluate observed changes or transformation in behaviour, technology, products, customer satisfaction as a result of the delivery of the objective. Reaction measures can be assessed from engagement with stakeholders e.g. via customer satisfaction surveys or 360 degree feedback or upward feedback from subordinates etc. These are Human Resource (HR) tools that the President can apply to review the performance of the 110 ministers and their deputies.

Challenges

Cognitive biases that can affect the objectivity of the assessment process and outcome and the President as a human being is not an exception. Horns Effect occurs where the rater is biased because of a negative first impression /incident of performance and this negatively affects judgment of the overall performance. The Halo effect is the opposite where the rater remembers a positive first impression / incident of performance and that informs overall judgment. Recency effect bias occurs where the rater remembers only most recent vivid incident of performance, while overlooking the entire performance during the performance cycle. Personality and values biases occurs where the rater favourably evaluates team members who are like minded in terms of values and personality. Grade inflation and compression occurs where the rater is either too generous or too mean in his rating. The central tendency bias occurs where 2/3 or 66 per cent of the team are average and the 1/3 or 33 per cent are spread between poor or outstanding performers.

Conclusion

A new paradigm shift of engaging the citizenry to contribute towards objectively measuring the performance of ministers and deputy ministers is required to enable Ghanaians as active citizens hold the executive wing of government accountable for their stewardship. Five key enablers will be required. First, data driven application of modern HR tools and methods in the entire process devoid of partisan considerations and propaganda. Second, rigor in ensuring the objectives for the ministers and their deputies have a clear theory of change outcome. Third, boldness of the President to recognise outstanding performance and also address under performance firmly. Fourth, the media and civil society must play a leading role in focusing discussions on the performance of ministers on the substance and not the “sensational politics” of the delivery of performance objectives. Lets help the President to measure what was agreed to be delivered and let’s examine how it was done with evidence not emotions! Mr President, you can start by publishing the 2018 performance agreement of all the 110 ministers and deputies.

The writer is a human resources & organisational development practitioner
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