Chief Performance Officer (CPO)

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS news feed. Thanks for visiting!

Athletes think of performance all the time.  They are constantly working on how to do their very best.  It is a concept that many of us could think about more frequently.  Most of us need something like a major recession and belt tightening to bring it on the radar screen.

Today’s headlines therefore are hardly a surprise.  Congress Urges Spending Restraint.  Facing Largest Deficit Since 1945, Obama Names Official to Help Retool Budget

He announced the appointment of Nancy Killefer, an assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, to serve as “chief performance officer” (CPO) in the White House budget office. In the newly created post, Killefer will be tasked with retooling budget practices and slashing unnecessary programs.

“In order to make these investments that we need, we’ll have to cut the spending that we don’t, and I’ll be relying on Nancy to help guide that process,” Obama said. He said Killefer, a senior director in the Washington office of McKinsey & Co., “is an expert in streamlining processes and wringing out inefficiencies so that taxpayers and consumers get more for their money.”

This is one area where management consultants can perform a most useful function.  From their knowledge of what typically happens, they can suggest what is doable and what is not.  That is why Accenture’s tagline High Performance Delivered makes so much sense.

That brings to mind the old joke about the Broadway banner sign, Performance Pronounced Success.  Performance is indeed the only way to get success.  Behind that is that other important notion,  You can only manage what you can measure.  Let us hope the new US Chief Performance Officer will help to bring success to the US economy.

There is a message for all of us in this announcement.  We too should adopt the chief performance officer role for ourselves.  Make a detailed budget.  Look at every line and see whether you can get higher performance.  The three R’s of recycling give a good start here. Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle.  Even small performance improvements can make a serious impact on your personal bottom line.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Good News & A First – Chief Performance Officer Nancy Killefer