Coming soon · Book Profile
Strategic Performance Management Leveraging and Measuring Your Intangible Value Drivers
A practical guide to designing and running Strategic Performance Management by mapping tangible and intangible value drivers, building meaningful indicators, and using them in an enabled learning environment rather than a command-and-control regime.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Bernard Marr argues that most organizations fail at performance management because they fall into three traps: an incomplete, one-sided view of strategy; measuring what is easy rather than what matters; and using measures to control people like machines. Strategic Performance Management offers an integrated alternative that unites market-based and resource-based strategic analysis into a 'value creation map' and 'value narrative,' then guides readers to design relevant performance indicators (not just measures), and to embed them in an 'enabled learning environment' where indicators inform learning, dialogue, and better strategic decisions. Rich with real-world case studies (DHL, Novo Nordisk, Fujitsu, Shell, TT Club, the UK Home Office) and templates for identifying value drivers, designing indicators, assessing risk, and evaluating mergers, the book shows how to move from management-by-numbers to management-by-insights and make strategy everyone's everyday job.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A senior executive or manager who wants to genuinely improve organizational performance by understanding and leveraging what really drives value.
- The problem
- The organization measures too many irrelevant things, has a one-sided or unclear strategy, and cannot see how its tangible and intangible value drivers create value. Managers feel frustrated that record numbers of measures yield few useful insights, and that performance management is an administrative burden causing gaming rather than progress.
- The plan
- Clarify the strategic boundary conditions (purpose, values, visionary goals).
- Analyse the external environment to define the stakeholder value proposition.
- Analyse internal resources and competencies to understand what you can deliver.
- Bring both together in a value creation map and value narrative.
- Design meaningful, relevant performance indicators for each strategic element.
- The payoff
- A clear, shared understanding of strategy where performance becomes everyone's everyday job. · Relevant indicators that produce real management insights and better decisions. · A performance-driven culture with trust, dialogue, learning, and continuous improvement.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Assessment and Development Centres; Best practice guidelines · British Psychological Society (BPS)
Cited by the author as an authoritative source for best practice, covering key issues like fairness, design, and evaluation that are central to the book's guidance.
- Assessment Centres (3rd edn) · C Woodruffe
Recommended for readers seeking a broader overview and history of the assessment centre method.
- The big five personality dimensions and job-performance; a meta-analysis · Barrick, M R and Mount, K M
Provides the empirical support for the book's caution against over-relying on personality tests in selection, a key topic in Chapter 5.
- A theory of the validity of predictors in selection · M Smith
Offers a theoretical framework for understanding why different selection tools have varying levels of effectiveness, underpinning the book's core argument.
- Competence at Work · Spencer, L M and Spencer, S M
A foundational text on the concept of competence, relevant to Chapter 2 on developing a competence framework.
- Development and Assessment Centres · Charles Woodruffe
Cited as a key text for readers wanting a more recent and in-depth exposition of assessment centre work, a core topic of the book.
- Performance Management: The new realities · Michael Armstrong and Angela Baron
The book uses Armstrong and Baron's definition of performance management as its foundation, making their work a primary source for understanding this core concept.
- The Competent Manager: A model for effective performance · R. F. Boyatzis
The author attributes the current usage and definition of 'competency' to Boyatzis, making this a foundational text for a central theme of the book.
- Appraisal and Feedback: Making performance review work · Clive Fletcher
Fletcher is cited as an authority on appraisals, a key one-to-one interaction within performance management, providing deeper insight into this specific practice.
- The Easy Guide to Repertory Grids · D. Jankowicz
The book presents the repertory grid as a powerful technique for developing interview models; this book is recommended as a highly accessible introduction to the method.