Citywide Comprehensive Performance Report
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PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES & PRACTICES
Principles of Performance Management
THEME 2:
Responsible Interpretation & Use
This theme creates guardrails against misuse. It recognizes that data should support learning and accountability, but only when interpreted with context, honesty, and appropriate caution.
Core Value
Performance information should be used to support learning, accountability, and judgment — not to oversimplify complex work.
QUESTION THIS THEME ANSWERS:
How should performance information be interpreted and used?
PRINCIPLE 4:
Accountability through Action
Performance data should first trigger inquiry, learning, and action, rather than blame. Underperformance should prompt the organization to understand causes, constraints, choices, and possible responses.
Accountability always matters, but it should focus on whether the organization is paying attention, learning from results, taking reasonable action, and following through.
PERFORMANCE QUESTION THIS PRINCIPLE ANSWERS:
What can we learn from this result, and what action should follow?
PRINCIPLE 5:
Context Matters
Performance should be interpreted in light of operating conditions, service demand, resource levels, staffing capacity, policy constraints, community needs, and historical inequities.
Where they exist, historical underservice, disinvestment, deficiencies, disparities, and structural gaps are considered a critical part of this performance context. This principle affirms that equity serves as a core lens in managing performance, and is not a separate add-on or activity.
Context should not be used to excuse inaction and, at the same time, is necessary to understand what results mean and what kind of response is appropriate.
PERFORMANCE QUESTION THIS PRINCIPLE ANSWERS:
What conditions help explain this result, and how should they affect interpretation?
PRINCIPLE 6:
Integrity & Humility About Measurement
Performance information should be accurate enough to be useful, honest about its limitations, and clear about what it can and cannot tell us. Staff should avoid false precision, document assumptions, acknowledge uncertainty, and recognize that qualitative insight, professional judgment, and lived experience may be needed to fully understand performance.
PERFORMANCE QUESTION THIS PRINCIPLE ANSWERS:
What would someone need to know to avoid misinterpreting this measure?
THEME 1:
Purpose, Outcomes, & Goals THEME 3:
Transparency, Trust & Shared Meaning