Performance Measures for State Aviation Agencies (2020)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

76 Conclusions The preceding chapters have laid the foundation for state aviation agencies to consider how establishing PMs may support their mission, vision, and goals and have provided examples of PMs that can be adapted to an agency’s specific needs. Chapters 1 and 2 defined performance management and the general process to consider when establishing a performance management system. Chapter 3 guided the reader through how to choose the characteristics that will shape and define the specific PMs to address an agency’s individual needs and situation. Chapter 4 summarized nearly 100 PMs that may serve as examples of specific measurement options for an agency to consider. While these example PMs are certainly not the only ones that could be used, they serve as a starting point for agencies to consider, and tailoring these measures to meet the individual needs of each agency is suggested. Note that when establishing a method to evaluate specific PMs that can contribute to an agency demonstrating value, the PMs must be carefully selected, measured, and analyzed, and then acted on based on the results of the analysis. If results of the PMs are not used to inform changes or contribute to the overall management of the system, then they become ineffective and have limited value to the agency. It must also be acknowledged that an agency cannot become so focused on the PMs that it loses sight of knowing how the agency operates and what is most important to its success. Many agencies have limited resources to implement extensive performance management systems but may benefit from strategically selected PMs that can inform the decision-making process. Additionally, agencies must acknowledge that they may have some PMs requested of them by legislative bodies or upper management, and they must respond accordingly with appropriate data. If these mandated PMs reflect measures that the agency has little or no influence over, it may be advantageous for the agency to be clear in defining that when it provides the infor- mation in order to educate those reviewing the data. Following are important takeaways for agencies to consider: • Align the PMs with the mission, vision, and goals of the agency to provide a strong link to its strategic foundation. This will provide structure to the development of PMs and provide information that can be used to gauge an agency’s success in meeting its goals. • Start small; assessing too much, too fast can lead to information overload. If an agency is getting started in developing PMs, it is important that it not take on too much too soon. It is important for the initial use of PMs to be productive. This can be jeopardized if an agency struggles due to having too many PMs to collect data for, measure, evaluate, and monitor. Staying focused on a few key PMs can lead to a successful entry into performance management. C H A P T E R 5 The sample PMs in Chapter 4 serve as a starting point for agencies to consider, but tailoring these measures to meet the individual needs of each agency is suggested.

Conclusions 77 • Determine the resources available to support the data collection and analysis. Prior to selecting PMs, it is important for an agency to understand what sort of data resources it has available. If the data are not readily available, then an agency should assess if it can obtain the information from other sources or if it needs to begin collection of the data so they are available for use. This process can be critical to the success of a performance management system since trying to evaluate data points that do not match the PMs can lead to frustra- tion and inaccurate reporting. • Remember, there are no right or wrong measures—each agency must assess what is right for their situation. The aviation industry has a saying that, “If you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one air- port.” The same can be said for state aviation agencies. No two are the same. They all have unique and dynamic systems, so there is no absolute right or wrong way to select PMs for an individual state. Each agency must determine what is right to support its mission, vision, and goals, while acknowledging its capabilities to support the use of PMs. Agencies must ask themselves what the value of using the PMs is and how they can collect and evaluate the data to support the PMs. • Develop a cycle to not only collect the data and assess the results, but then do something with the results—don’t measure just to measure. Careful consideration should be given to why a PM is selected and how it ties to the mission of the agency. Once that is determined, then the agency should determine how the information obtained from the PM evaluation will be used to inform future actions. For example, if an agency picks a PM, evaluates it for a year, and determines that the PM is underperforming, then the agency should assess why. If a change needs to be made or corrective action is needed, this should be considered based on the PM performance. If a change is made, then the agency should evaluate the PM again, based on the new data, at the end of the relevant assessment period (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.), to determine how the change has affected the performance of the PM. This should be an iterative process that leads to continual improvement of the agency. In the end, there is no silver bullet, no substitute for actually knowing one’s subject and one’s organization, which is partly a matter of experience and partly a matter of unquantifiable skill. Many matters of importance are too subject to judgement and interpretation to be solved by standardized metrics. Ultimately, the issue is not one of metrics, versus judgement, but metrics as informing judgement, which includes knowing how much weight to give to metrics, recognizing their characteristic distortions, and appreciating what can’t be measured. In recent decades, too many politicians, business leaders, policymakers, and academic officials have lost sight of that. —Tyranny of Metrics (Muller, 2018)