While formerly leading a CPM office and now assisting companies in establishing their CPM offices, the question of staffing is always front of mind. How many people? What are their skills? What are some examples? Let’s review two aspects of the CPO team, the size and their leadership skills. The good news is that CPM offices and their staffs are self-funding: They bring in multiples of their annual budget. (Otherwise, why establish one?)

CPM office staff size: The research shows that the number of individuals is pretty highly correlated with the number of CPM competencies and processes they lead. While leading the award-winning team at Crown Castle International (in the office of the CEO), we had a portfolio of strategic planning, Balanced Scorecard management, knowledge management, Six Sigma, and global leaders training/event. The Crown office of global performance consisted of an SVP (me) and five direct reports, who included a vice president, three directors, and a manager. Research has shown that executives in performance management offices tend to surround themselves with three to eight senior, mature, and experienced individuals. This size does not deviate significantly among enterprises that have a wide variation in their number of employees (anywhere from 500 to 80,000). It’s common for the CPM office to have a small staff, but for those people to have influence across the organization.

Leadership: The CPO team’s ability to influence is key! Although CPM office staffs tend to be lean in terms of their direct reports, they are very effective in their ability to mobilize large numbers of employees as performance management initiatives call for shifts in strategy and tactics. What’s important to the office’s success is its ability to influence and multiply its talents. For example, at one point, the Crown CPM office’s team was overseeing more than 15 performance management project teams with membership rosters totaling over 400 employees in three countries. A Deming and Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame award-winning Ricoh team directed numerous Six Sigma teams throughout the company. ###