Book review: Drive Business Performance
I am finishing a book that I would recommend to anyone that wants to know the WHY and HOW for performance management. Drive Business Performance; Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution, written by Bruno Aziza and Joey Fitts, provides reason for and a series of practical phases for incorporating performance management. The book more than satisfies my interest in business. It discusses the necessary execution-driven culture that helps companies transform to great companies.
Aside from the outstanding justification for performance management the book provides, I found a small section about building quality business models which "...will impact the effectiveness of downstream management activities such as monthly management reporting...". There is also some good instruction on how to create good key performance indicators (KPIs) with structured and unstructured data.
Also, the book explains the reason why many companies are beginning to put analytical tools in the hands employees that can do something about the insights gained. The book says that empowering a few analysts is good but a company cannot be agile (act on insight to compete better in the market place) if the analysts lack the ability to act upon gained insights. "Conversely, while decision makers have the ability to take action, they often lack the ability to derive insights by themselves. The result is that business analysts' request queues are overloaded on a daily basis, and decision makers end up making decisions which lack insight, timeliness, or both."
The amazon.com editorial review says the following.
"Starting with a Foreword by Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton, creators of the revolutionary Balanced Scorecard approach, management gurus and business executives alike laud Drive Business Performance: "a pragmatic guide for world-class decision making," "a ground-breaking book that executives and managers alike should read," "provides specific and easy-to-follow guidance to deliver results. A must read for any organization seeking to win."
Adrian Downes, Director and co-founder of B(iQ), provides an excellent review of the book here.
