ABSTRACT
Why measure individual performance? From the company’s point of view, it is the old saw that says “what
gets measured gets managed.” Prior to the knowledge economy, the concrete inputs and outputs of business functioned as a way to measure human performance. Workers used materials to create objects, thus measuring materials used and objects produced gave the business a way to calculate something about worker productivity. But as we move into the realm of the information economy, the productivity equation becomes more complicated. Knowledge workers — and, as noted previously, this label fits nearly everyone in the project management field — use primarily information and processes to add value to work products that are often abstract: an organizational change project, for example, or a new product rollout plan. Yet, more than ever, business needs to know “How are we doing?” — and in a knowledge-based organization, “people performance” is the central metric.
