What is P2P?

Performance-to-Plan (P2P) is a powerful approach to improve operational results.

The Navy has teams with great culture and great performance, but we also see examples of teams with poor culture and weak performance. The gap between our best and our worst performers is too large.

The proven P2P method has been employed on some of the Navy’s most important readiness challenges, such as aviation mission-capable performance and shipyard maintenance. P2P provides a structured framework to:

• Clearly define performance gaps
• Identify high impact actions
• Remove execution barriers
• Develop solutions that drive measurable performance improvement

At its core, P2P focuses leaders on the right challenges and using data to solve problems.

Why P2P?

Problem Statement

The Navy is on a journey to increase force generation and performance output to maintain readiness in the face of great power competition. Over the past decade, a tremendous amount of resources has been spent to improve mission performance; however, increased funding has not always translated to better performance.

For example, the Navy continued to purchase new F/A-18 aircraft to bolster total inventory, but the number of aircraft deemed mission capable flatlined – a large number of these aircraft sat in hangars waiting for maintenance to be completed. Similarly, over the past five years Navy’s ships have required longer durations to complete scheduled maintenance. As a result, backlogged work accumulated at shipyards, causing shortfalls in budgets and mission readiness.

Solution

P2P leverages an industry-proven “driver based performance management” approach, coupled with advanced analytics, to bring transparency, accountability, continued learning, and data-driven decision making to the Navy. P2P has ushered in a different school of thought for leadership – being laser-focused on high-leverage opportunities that directly impact mission readiness.

Result

Two initial efforts for Naval Aviation Enterprise and Surface Warfare Enterprise drove marked performance improvements:

• The number of mission capable F/A-18 Super Hornets reached 379 by September 2019, up from the mid-200s – this exceeded the 80% mission capable goal set by the Secretary of Defense
• Surface ship maintenance has seen a significantly higher percentage of on-time completion in FY2020 with data-driven planning and improved execution

Through P2P’s focus on analytical modeling, senior Navy leaders witnessed how data informed decision making, transformed leadership discussions, and yielded tangible results.

What's Next

While celebrating the early success of P2P, the Navy recognizes the need to scale P2P across all levels of the organization, sharing P2P tools and learning to improve mission performance output for the Navy. Every sailor, from deckplate maintainers to Flag Officers, will benefit from the discipline and rigor of P2P.

To allow leaders at all levels to be accountable for achieving their performance goals, P2P adapted different governance approaches to enable scaling. When coupled with the common-sense problem solving methodologies provided through Navy Performance Improvement Education Resources (NPIER), the P2P mindset will be instilled in the Navy.

P2P Core Tenets and Key Principles

P2P Vision

P2P is a mindset to accelerate Navy performance improvement, through data-driven decision-making and the rigorous application of common-sense business insights and practices.
 

Core Tenets of P2P

The core tenets of P2P help drive the positive, problem-solving culture necessary to achieve Navy’s performance objectives:
 

Transparency	Improve understanding of key information, “embracing the red” to solve challenges through teaming
Accountability	Empower a single individual who is accountable and responsible for achieving clearly defined outcomes and elevating performance barriers when necessary
Accelerated Learning	Learn from data to close performance gaps, and then drive this knowledge across the Navy to create continuous performance improvement
Data Driven Decisions	Make decisions with timely, accurate, and credible information

  

Key Principles of P2P

The P2P process centers on a forward-looking, data-driven performance plan – looking ahead to where performance will be in the future and then taking high-leverage actions to improve results. To accomplish this, P2P leverages three key principles:
 

DBPM	A driver-based performance management (DBPM) method involves using performance metrics and cause-and-effect relationships to determine the highest-leverage drivers and predict future performance Click here to learn more about DBPM + Predictive Modeling
C2 Alignment	Command and control (C2) alignment, which defines the single, accountable leader for desired outcomes, and then supports that leader to achieve success Click here to learn more about C2
Barrier Removal	Barrier removal, with a forum where challenges are identified, and high-leverage drivers are swarmed to improve performance and drive learning Click here to learn more about Barrier Removal Forums

 

 

Performance Improvements Methods

In support of P2P, the Navy Performance Improvement Educational Resource (NPIER) provides proven, common-sense problem-solving techniques to help process and system owners throughout the Navy identify and resolve performance challenges. These methods focus on identifying the root cause of problems, reducing complexity and inefficiency, and developing straightforward, measurable solutions to improve performance. Please see the NPIER page for more information.