Last week, guest contributor Megan Ondr-Cooper kicked off this four-part series on performance management by defining what it means to her organization: “the use of data about program operations and participant outcomes to learn, make decisions, and improve.” I (Sarah) am jumping in this week to share what The IllumiLab sees as the unique value of performance management compared to other types of evaluation and why we’ve devoted so much of our energy to it.
As we described in an earlier post, there are dozens of types of evaluation that emphasize unique purposes and methods, of which performance management is one. Organizations and evaluators ought to carefully consider why they’re evaluating. What do they hope to learn? How do they want to use what they learn? Who do they want to involve? What kind of experience do they want to have in the process? I suspect that the reason evaluation has such a bad rap among social service providers is that organizations experience a chronic mismatch between the answers to those questions and the approaches they’ve used.
The IllumiLab’s passion is building organizations’ capacity to define success in meaningful and measurable terms and to measure their success using manageable tools and processes. We are committed to working in ways that are accessible, relevant, engaging, and empowering in order to create solutions that organizations can sustain without us. Performance management embodies these values and this approach!
Comparison of Approaches
Adapted from David Hunter’s 2009 comparison in “Yes We Can! Performance Management in Nonprofit Human Services” and reflecting our experience at The IllumiLab, the table below contrasts performance management with traditional evaluation approaches.
| Performance Management | Evaluation | |
| System and mindset | Form | Project |
| Ongoing | Frequency | At large intervals or one-time |
| Cyclical | Duration | Discrete beginning and end |
| Broad, all aspects of operations | Focus | Specific and focused |
| Internal staff | Conducted by | Internal or external evaluators |
| Ever-evolving | Evaluation questions | Pre-determined |
| Managing toward goals | Objectives | Answering particular questions |
| Many and diverse (staff at all levels, participants, etc.) | Consumers | Few (mostly leaders or funders) |
The Bottom Line
Performance management is flexible, responsive, right-sized, dynamic, and sustainable. When these tools and processes are paired with an evaluative mindset characterized by natural curiosity, an appetite for data, and a drive to improve, organizations can graduate from simply gathering and reporting data to leveraging data, from describing to enhancing impact, from complying to thriving.
The comparison is helpful! I like to talk about performance management as a framework that includes both content AND process, which I think you get across in the ongoing and cyclical nature. Evaluation hasn’t always inherently included a clear process– though it should! I also think it is important to note that performance management tends to be more quantitative in focus, as you reference operational data, whereas evaluation can include both quantitative and qualitative data. Thanks for sharing!