Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

What is Continuous Improvement Performance Management?

Continuous improvement performance management is a way to effectively and efficiently manage organizational performance so that we can:

• achieve specific results
• measure the outcomes or results that are achieved
• continuously strive towards improving management and measurement processes to better meet the needs of the people we work with.

In a Continuous Improvement Performance Management System (CIPMS), core measures and performance indicators are used to provide an overall picture of what a program aims to achieve, what it actually achieves and how well it meets its goals.

Performance management and measurement is not an annual event or an occasional check-in. It is an active process that becomes part of the overall organizational culture and informs all management and measurement activities and decisions. It is an ongoing cycle of implementing, monitoring, reacting and measuring. As you achieve success in one area, you will begin to strive for additional success elsewhere. What constitutes success will also change and evolve. The process is continuous.

CIPMS should be a day-to-day operational approach that results in the achievement of stated outcomes, with the focus being on the results, not on how you achieved them. This is a significant shift from current practice where the focus has been on the internal processes, also known as organizational capacity. For the past few years, literacy programs have been developing and fine tuning their organizational capacity and reporting on their efforts through the Program Monitoring Report. However, now that effective processes are in place, agencies need to take the next steps:  demonstrate results and work towards continuous improvement.

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