Oracle Enterprise Performance Management - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 93

nonfinancial incentives directly to performance. Such a linkage
sends a clear and unambiguous message to the organization as to
what's important.
6. Performance measurement systems should be positive, not punitive .
The most successful performance measurement systems are not
gotcha systems, but learning systems that help the organization iden-
tify what works—and what does not—so as to continue with and
improve on what is working and repair or replace what is not working.
Performance measurement systems run in tandem with modern work-
force management systems. Many of these systems were indeed quite
punitive, leading companies to understaff offices and stores, result-
ing in unhappy employees and customers. More modern workforce
management software utilizes the theories set forth by MIT's Zeynep
Ton (http://sloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=51388), who
champions the complete opposite—that increasing the workforce, and
paying and treating them better, will often yield happier customers,
more engaged workers, and larger corporate profits.
7. Results and progress toward program commitments should be openly
shared with employees, customers, and stakeholders . Performance
measurement system information should be openly and widely
shared with an organization's employees, customers, stakeholders,
vendors, and suppliers.
Mention FedEx to anybody, and the first image conjured up is overnight
delivery. Most laypersons are quite astounded by FedEx's ability to pick up
a package today and deliver it by 10:30 a.m. tomorrow—even if the package
needs to travel thousands of miles. They are even more impressed when
they find that all FedEx planes converge on a single airport in Tennessee
in the middle of the night to redistribute their loads and fly to all points
north, south, east, and west. Few realize how large a role technology plays
in this somewhat superlogistical feat.
It all started when Fred Smith, founder and still head of the multibillion
dollar company, conceived the idea for express delivery as a project in busi-
ness school. No matter how or why he came up with the idea, Smith was
certainly a visionary by understanding, as far back as the '70s, the impor-
tance of technology and quality measurements to the success of his scheme.
Smith's reliance on technology to build the foundation of his business
is more uncommon than first meets the eye. Smith was not, and is not,
a technologist. However, he does understand the relationship between