<p>Organizations face increasing pressures to improve, and document, their performance. Good performance management systematically identifies desired ends, selects reasonable indicators of progress through means to those ends, and promotes continuous improvement over time. Key preconditions include assessing organizational measurement-readiness and overcoming inertia and fear among middle managers and front-line staff. To succeed, performance measurement must be seen as helping people do their jobs better, not creating new chains for yanking. Nurses and their employers have far to go to figure out how best to organize their caregiving and their administrative supports so as to improve quality and safety while constraining costs. <em>Journal of Nursing Regulation</em> 1(2):60 (July 2010); Marr, Bernard. <em>Managing and Delivering Performance</em>. Elsevier Ltd, 2009.</p>