It’s Not the Staff’s Lack of Performance.

Changing group behavior through strategic advice by setting and reporting on performance indicators. That’s pretty much what a business controller does.

I’ve been doing this for 5 years now and have seen two things:

1. People change their behavior. But they do so in unwanted ways. Especially when bonuses are involved, they’re inclined to “meet the numbers”. They’ll do anything to make sure that targets are met. Plan less so it’s easier to hit 100% completion for example. Write hours on different codes so that productivity seems higher. That kind of stuff.
2. We work by perception. We think that a group of people is consistently under performing thus set targets to increase their performance. But in reality it’s only a couple of people that truly underperform. Most people want to do their job and do it well.

So we’re focused on changing group behavior and we do. It’s our fault that people change it the wrong way. We – Management and Control – are the ones setting targets and bonuses for meeting those targets, in effect fueling the behavior we don’t want.