Page 1 of 4
www.AssignmentPoint.com
Performance Improvement
www.AssignmentPoint.com
Performance improvement is measuring the output of a particular
business process or procedure, then modifying the process or
Page 2 of 4
www.AssignmentPoint.com
procedure to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the
effectiveness of the process or procedure. Performance improvement
can be applied to either individual performance such as an athlete or
organizational performance such as a racing team or a commercial
business.
In Organizational development, performance improvement is
organizational change in which the managers and governing body of
an organization put into place and manage a program which measures
the current level of performance of the organization and then
generates ideas for modifying organizational behavior and
infrastructure which are put into place to achieve higher output. The
primary goals of organizational improvement are to increase
organizational effectiveness and efficiency to improve the ability of
the organization to deliver goods and or services. A third area
sometimes targeted for improvement is organizational efficacy, which
involves the process of setting organizational goals and objectives.
Performance improvement at the operational or individual employee
level usually involves processes such as statistical quality control. At
the organizational level, performance improvement usually involves
softer forms of measurement such as customer satisfaction surveys
which are used to obtain qualitative information about performance
from the viewpoint of customers.
Page 3 of 4
www.AssignmentPoint.com
The United States Coast Guard has published the Performance
Improvement Guide (PIG), which describes various processes and
tools for performance management at the individual and
organizational levels.
Performance is a measure of the results achieved. Performance
efficiency is the ratio between effort expended and results achieved.
The difference between current performance and the theoretical
performance limit is the performance improvement zone.
Another way to think of performance improvement is to see it as
improvement in four potential areas. First, is the resource INPUT
requirements. Second, is the THROUGHPUT requirements, often
viewed as process efficiency; this is measured in terms of time, waste,
and resource utilization. Third, OUTPUT requirements, often viewed
from a cost/price, quality, functionality perspective. Fourth,
OUTCOME requirements, did it end up making a difference.
Performance is an abstract concept and must be represented by
concrete, measurable phenomena or events to be measured. Baseball
Page 4 of 4
www.AssignmentPoint.com
athlete performance is abstract covering many different types of
activities. Batting average is a concrete measure of a particular
performance attribute for a particular game role, batting, for the game
of baseball.
Performance assumes an actor of some kind but the actor could be an
individual person or a group of people acting in concert. The
performance platform is the infrastructure or devices used in the
performance act.
There are two main ways to improve performance: improving the
measured attribute by using the performance platform more
effectively, or by improving the measured attribute by modifying the
performance platform, which in turn allows a given level of use to be
more effective in producing the desired output.
For instance, in several sports such as tennis and golf, there have been
technological improvements in the apparatuses used in these sports.
The improved apparatus in turn allows players to achieve better
performance with no improvement in skill by purchasing new
equipment. The apparatus, the golf club and golf ball or the tennis
racket, provide the player with a higher theoretical performance limit.