To Greater Opportunity

La June Montgomery Tabron

06.16.21

How did La June know that the Kellogg Foundation was the right fit for her career? For her, the foundation was a mirror: she could easily see how she could have been one of the children on the other side of the equation.

Summary:

How did La June know that the Kellogg Foundation was the right fit for her career? For her, the foundation was a mirror: she could easily see how she could have been one of the children on the other side of the equation.

Thuy

How frequently do you measure the performance of your team and what do you think are the most important factors to measure, factors of performance?
La_June_Montgomery_Tabron

La June Montgomery Tabron

So, yes, we have quarterly KPIs that we review, but let me step back because the KPI is part of a journey, and let me start at the beginning of the journey and walk you through. So, our board wanted to improve its own governance, effectiveness, and in 2014 committed to adopting the Carver model of governance. First of all, the board represents the owner, and in our case, Mr. Kellogg and his vision, and it's the board's role to steward the legacy of that owner, and then the board works with staff to set the ends for the organization, what are the ends that we're trying to achieve? And then, it says to the board, the staff can achieve the ends by any means so long as those means are not immoral, illegal, etc., but by saying the staff is responsible for the means and the board creates the ends, it puts the board in a governance space, they don't micromanage the team but those ends are measured, and so our key performance indicators are the measurements that align with the ends that we negotiated with our board, so now, then the board says, okay, your end, for example, is you're going to collaborate in communities and support organizations that reflect the community that is allowing children to thrive, and that looks like children gaining greater ability to enter kindergarten ready or children having health outcomes that are more at part and equitable. So, our measures are about the work, we measure child outcomes, we measure how we are doing in our programmatic work, and funding those projects that achieve the ends that we've created. It may look like more people of color getting jobs in a community and addressing the inequality of opportunities, and so we are tracking whether our work is leading to greater opportunity.