Track employee
progress

Alex Lukianov
chairman and CEO, NuVasive Inc.

“To create an environment predicated
on high standards and excellence, you
have to let everyone know why it’s
important, so they become emotionally
invested in the outcome,” says Alex
Lukianov, chairman and CEO of
NuVasive Inc.

To show his employees how important the culture is, he measures them
against his standards regularly. He
reviews dashboards each month that
track the company’s responsiveness on
all its deliverables, and he uses a balanced scorecard for holding people
accountable.

Each dashboard measures the company’s progress in specific functional
areas, from the 40 products currently
under development and their anticipated release dates to the degree of sales
force penetration for each product the
company sells in every market.

“We measure four key areas on the
scorecard, including financial results,
adherence to internal processes, customer knowledge, and personal growth
and development,” says Lukianov, who
was featured in August. “There’s a
progress review, and every employee is
graded each quarter, but what really
makes our scorecard different is that it
not only measures achievement of
short-term financial goals but progress
toward the company’s long-term
objectives. We have a goal of reaching
$500 million in revenue and to be GAAP
profitable, and every person in the
organization can tell you how we’re
going to get there and what their part
is in reaching the goal. In many organizations, senior management is well-versed on the long-term objectives, but
it’s critical for everyone to understand
their role.”