Question

Playgrounds and Performance: Results Management at KaBOOM! (A) We do this work because we want to make a difference in the world; how can we go further faster? - Darell Hammond, CEO and co-founder, KaBOOM! Darell Hammond stepped onto the elementary school playground and took a long, slow look around. It was 8 a.m. on an unusually warm fall day in 2002 and the playground was deserted, but Hammond knew the children would start arriving soon to admire their new playground. Dotted with purple, blue and orange swings, slides and seesaws, the playground had been built just the day before by an army of volunteers dispatched by The Home Depot, the national hardware retailer, together with parents and community volunteers. Hammond thought it would be the best place for him to collect his thoughts for his early morning board of directors meeting. This wasn't the way a CEO typically prepared for a board meeting, but KaBOOM!, the not-for- profit Hammond founded in 1995 with partner Dawn Hutchison, wasn't a typical company. KaBOOM! was a splashy, high-profile social enterprise, often featured in local and national news stories for its work-namely, building playgrounds in "kid rich, playground poor" neighborhoods around the country. The organization had overseen the construction of 441 playgrounds (see Exhibit 1 for construction by year) and was working hard to keep up with demand. The board was pleased with the organization's growth and accomplishments but lately was showing signs of being overloaded by the deluge of information it was receiving from management-everything from playground build reports to piles of press clippings. The board wanted to assess the organization's performance without being overwhelmed with data. Hammond knew they needed to develop performance measurement system but how would they get there? Hammond glanced at his watch and realized that the meeting was about to start. He closed the playground gate behind him and headed for the boardroom Building KaBOOM! KaBOOM! was born of a tragedy. After reading a newspaper article about two children who suffocated in a hot car after climbing in to play, Hammond and Hutchison began their quest to fight for each child's right to have a safe and fun place to play. They envisioned that if KaBOOM! was

Answer 1

Answer to 1.

Key strategic issues that need to be monitored ensuring the organisation prospers are:

• To lead by example by building playground through  providing planning expertise, matching funding partners to communicate and managing the playground which place a higher level of responsibility on community group to do it themselves.using training programs, technical assistance, challenge grants and online tools including a project planner provided by the organisation.
• By seeding that means the organisation could not reach its vision by building playgrounds on its own, the human resource and equipment cost as well as the finite  financial resources and its funding partners would limit its growth so they deliberately chose not to open additional offices instead took a cue from the 14000 requests received for technical assistance on building playgrounds.
• The rally strategy which is a sophisticated public relations program which would ripple out its message from local neighbourhood to the city and the national level ultimately generating more playspaces through providing and partnering with individuals called playmakers who would go beyond one time volunteering to serve as a community or national advocates for increasing the number of playgrounds.

Answer to 2.

As a board member we wanted to be able to determine in what ways KaBoom was most successful and healthy. We wanted to know how could we tell if problem existed.The board has ultimate accountability thus need timely, accurate and useful information thus, required to develop a performance management system to report consistent data points, measured over time which would enable the board to evaluate the organisational health and effectiveness which would present and prioritize key performance drivers establish year to year benchmarks, monitor organisational performance and help set strategic goals.

The system should be able to provide detailed measures on day to day basis which can be aggregated and presented as an analysis to the board which can tell the board where the organisation is at the moment and where it needs to go next. which is required for running a successful social enterprise.

The data and the analysis should be presented on annual and semi annual basis and hope that the system should serve them as a signaling system

Answer to 3.

I would choose lead as a well defined strategy and yes lead will continue to grow if the board re-evaluate its strategy and hone its vision and mission.Measurement system would also need to be aligned with its growth strategy so it would need to be flexible and forward thinking as well as shape the advocacy program that form the final piece of its pronged strategy.

For a rapidly increasing seed it needs to design a measurement system that will help to realize the organisation that need to be built and not just the measures the organisation already have . The goal was to create substantial professional measurement tool which could be used to improve organisational performances rather than simply to prove success to external audience.For that measures should be internally driven not funder driven. Measurement system should be supported by the organisational culture so that the board staff own the data from the outset.