Stepping back from time to time and asking explicitly whether your organisation is actually changing its way of doing business, in the ways that it has formally committed to doing, is an influential element of change management.

An organisation's commitments are documented in its management system, and specifically in its formal plans - its Management Plan (or similar), its business plans, its departmental and section plans, and so on. Key aspects of organisational change can be measured in formal evaluations of organisational performance, using these plans as benchmarks.

There are diverse kinds of formal evaluation, including:

• self-assessments of various kinds (e.g. staff reporting on progress with projects),
• internal and external audits (of management systems, of operational oucomes, of implementation of action plans, ...),
• quarterly reviews of performance against Management Plan targets, and
• broad-scale strategic reviews.

For the most part management systems specify when formal reviews occur. For example, in local government in New South Wales (Australia) it is common for performance to be evaluated against Management Plan objectives quarterly, and annual reviews are required.

In NSW, State of the Environment Reporting provides an opportunity to evaluate water cycle management performance. The NSW Local Government Act and accompanying regulations require Councils to make explicit links from State of the Environment Reports to Council Management Plans, and to use the State of the Environment Reports as reviews of environmental performance.

High level, holistic reviews can be initiated for other reasons. If you are trying to catalyse change, the opportunities to consider include:

• using scheduled formal review processes as they arise;
• initiating additional formal reviews when you recognise that major reconsideration of strategic direction is appropriate (if you are in a position to do this, structurally), and
• initiating informal reviews when you feel the need to reorient yourself or test your current orientation (again if you are in a position to do so; though a low level review - stepping back and considering your organistion's performance holistically - is possible under most circumstances).

Organisational performance needs to be tested in the first instance against the commitments that the organisation made in its management systems: its Management Plan (or similar), its business plans, its departmental and section plans, and so on. It also needs to be tested in the context of whether socio-economic and ecological goals are being achieved (see Evaluating outcomes for that).

For NSW Councils, various benchmarks for formal evaluation are available online. Consider evaluting performance against any of:

• current legislation and regulations
• Council Management Plans
• Catchment Management Blueprints (which include specific actions for Councils)
• Estuary Management Plans (which include specific actions for Councils)
• Stormwater Management Plans (which include specific actions for Councils).

See also: Existing Plans

If you are working on bringing in a new approach (e.g. water sensitive urban design) or a new technology (e.g. rainwater tanks for stormwater management), then clearly you need to keep track of what your organisation is doing. Much of this needs to be done on the fly - as part of everyday professional life (see Change Management for more on this). Some of it can usually be done through formal organisational reviews - as new approaches are becoming embedded in an organisation's formal management documents.

Reviewing organisational performance makes sense for two reasons:

1. reviews - particularly holistic assessments of performance - provide an opportunity to check assumptions of 'business as usual', and an opportunity to consider quite different approaches, and
2. formal organisational review processes have standing, so their conclusions are often influential.

Designing organisational management systems

Centre for State and Local Government Performance
A source of presentations and articles on diverse aspects of performance management.
"The Performance Institute is a private, non-partisan think tank seeking to improve government performance through the principles of performance, competition, accountability, and transparency. Based in Washington, D.C. and San Diego, the Institute serves as the nation's leading authority and repository on performance-based management practices for government."

The Model Stormwater Management System includes a checklist for evaluating stormwater management by comparing current organisational practice with the requirements of an ISO 14001 style environmental management system.

A checklist for evaluating team performance from a New Zealand Landcare research group.

Audits of Statements of Intent from ther NSW Healthy Rivers Commission
The scope of the Statements of Intent is ecosystem wide. The focus is on whether organisations have followed through on their commitments. (Select 'Audit' from the menu bar.)

Hunter Central Coast Regional Environmental Management Strategy State of the Environment Reporting project
This project developed recommendations for how SoE reporting could be used as an effective management review by local Councils (in NSW).

Waverley Council 2002 - 2005 Management Plan: environmental management performance measures

Evaluating Capacity Development (World Bank)
Includes an interesting comparison of two approaches to evaluation tried by the Commonwealth Government - a centralised and a decentralised one. It concludes that the more formalised, centralised model provided better information to support good governance.