AMS Visual Management: Huddle Boards

Walk into any agency that is deploying the full Arizona Management System and you will see something that just two years could not have been imagined. In these agencies, representing about half of the Governor’s cabinet and more than 75 percent of the state workforce, you will see visual performance management at all levels of the organization, from the unit level all the way up to executive leadership.

Specifically, you will see boards – commonly referred to as “huddle boards” or “performance boards” – where teams routinely gather to discuss progress on their goals and metrics (service, quality, people and cost) and identify roadblocks to achieving success.

Just think about this for a moment. In our largest agencies, totaling more than 25,000 state employees, we are systematically using visual performance management tools and principles to drive the mission work of Arizona government. And in these agencies, units and teams at all levels of the organization are following standard work to track and continuously improve performance.

For the vast majority of Arizona state employees, this is what the work routine looks like today: teams coming together on a regular (daily or weekly) cadence to reflect on how they are doing the work that matters most to their agency’s mission, finding the gaps between actual and expected performance, and deploying countermeasures when necessary to get back on track.

It’s vitally important for us to understand what this all means and why it’s necessary. As state employees, we’re here to do more good for Arizona, and we do this by understanding customer needs, identifying problems, improving processes and measuring results.

The huddle boards themselves are tools of AMS to help teams visualize performance. What they symbolize, however, is how radically Arizona government is transforming for the better.