How Do You Know If Your Local Government Is Successful?
How do you define success? Is it getting that promotion you were going for? Cutting down the number of times you drink pumpkin spice lattes a day? Not eating all 64 slices of American cheese? Or, actually eating all 64 slices of American cheese? (There’s no judgment in the Tree of Trust.)
I could go on, but the key element here is that you can only have success when it’s defined. According to the folks at Merriam Webster, it’s all about the “degree or measure of succeeding, or favorable or desired outcome.” Sounds about right to me.
But, when it comes to providing services to residents of your community, infrastructure asset management being one of my favorites, the task of defining successes can be more challenging. Some metrics may seem straight forward: “We need to fill 10,000 potholes this year.” Others, especially those involved around the whys, require some discovery: “Why do we need to fill 10,000 potholes?”
Wouldn’t it be great to have a partner helping you refine existing benchmarks you use to define success and discover new outcomes you may have previously overlooked? Enter the Cartegraph Customer Success Management (CSM) team. A group of highly-skilled individuals whose goal is to ensure you, as Cartegraph users, maximize your investment with us and continue to see success.
Defining success can be simple and straight forward. Society has done some of the hard work for us by establishing scales and criteria to measure whether we succeed or not. Did you pass the Early English Lit class? C's get degrees. Will you be the next member of SEAL Team Six? Your fear of water should have been your first clue.
TIP: THE KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR ADVANTAGE
Take advantage of dashboards to track your KPIs in real time. That way, you can keep a finger on the pulse of operations and make data-driven decisions to increase performance with the most accurate information available.
An established set of goals and outcomes for your organization are a mandatory part of ongoing successes. Looking at the pothole example again, and changing our definition from, “Fill 10,000 potholes,” to, “Provide the residents and visitors to our community a safe, damage-free driving experience by ensuring potholes are filled within 2 days of being reported or identified, and limiting damage claims against the city to $20,000 for the year,” really dials it in.
As you continue planning for the year ahead, remember the CSM team is here to help you define goals and outcomes, measure successes, and help you improve the quality of life of your citizens. Whether you're looking to kick off your high-performance journey and become a Cartegraph work and asset management software user, or looking to refine the path of success you're already headed down, our team is here to be your sounding board.