Daily Lessons from life 17 January 2012 - Not possible to have pre-set formula or KPIs: PM

"January 17, 2012 The Business Times - PARLIAMENT: Not possible to have pre-set formula or KPIs: PM

It is not possible to have a pre-set formula or KPIs to determine the performance bonus of ministers, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told parliament on Tuesday.

Mr Lee explained that ministers have responsibilities in many dimensions, many intangible. Thus, it is 'not always a simplistic formula or set of KPIs'.

'Hence, it's not possible to have a pre-set formula to determine performance bonus,' Mr Lee said, adding that he has to make an overall subjective judgment of the performance of each minister after consulting his senior colleagues.

'As PM, ultimately my responsibility is to ensure that individually each minister is performing up to expectation and collectively the Cabinet delivers the best government for Singapore,' Mr Lee said."

This statement is going to generate a lot of controversy, I think, right after the hotly debated ministerial pay review.

While it is a very complex job that the minister has, it is still an admission of defeat that he or she cannot have a set of SMART KPIs to gauge his or her own performance so as to determine if he or she is deserving of an Individual Performance Bonus!!

Lessons for me are:

1. Singapore has achieved MANY impossible dreams in the past. To acknowledge something as fundamental as criteria for performance management is simply betraying the 'nothing is impossible' mentality of Singapore!;

2. even if it is VERY COMPLEX and DIFFICULT, a set of SMART goals MUST be determined for the Individual Minister and his or he ministry so that assessment and appraisal CAN be determined based on evidence. Also, if the person being assessed has NO IDEA what he or she is supposed to be measured on, where does he or she starts?;

3. the more accurate statement and one that will perhaps solicit less controversies may be: it is very COMPLEX and DIFFICULT as it involves the tangible and the intangible. Hence we will determine as many tangible SMART goals as possible and assigned a certain weightage to the intangible ones when we finalize the overall assessment of if the Minister and his or her ministry deserves an Individual Performance Bonus or not!!

I hope the short report by the Business Times DID NOT covered ALL that the PM said in the parliamentary debate this afternoon. And the the PM actually said something in line with item 3 above!

Impossible will push us to be innovative and creating to come up with a set of SMART goals. Impossible is NOT acceptable in Singapore. Just like overly high salary for political office bearers are NOT acceptable by a significant number of voters.
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