December 5, 2004.

Mr. Steve Montague,
Partner, Performance Management Network (PPN), and
President, Planning and Performance Exchange (PPX),
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Dear Steve,

Re: Appreciation For Your Outstanding Presentation at our Annual Strategic Alliance Dinner

On behalf of the Canadian Association of Management Consultants Eastern Ontario Chapter, I would like to thank you very much for your outstanding presentation at our Annual Strategic Alliance Dinner held at the National Arts Centre last evening.

Our members found the following elements particularly insightful and helpful:

• The superb international survey of professional and academic practice, and key authors and practitioners and their points of view, over several decades, from Ackoff to Kaplan to Senge.
• The historical evolution of performance measurement and program evaluation in the federal government, and elsewhere, over the past three decades.
• The substantive differences between Program Evaluation and Performance Measurement, and the diverse instruments used for documentation, analysis, synthesis, improvement, etc.
• The need for professional evaluators to hold inter-active dialogue with executives, managers, operational personnel, clients, the general public to gain a wider appreciation of issues.
• The need to contrast and question any single approach, whether logic model, systems flow diagram, didactic strategic plan, observed gap model, etc.
• The need to consider performance management as a progressive event, a dynamic learning system with multiple stakeholders, conscious of responsibility, committed to progress.
• The need to consider all perspectives, multiple components, to integrate diverse thinking, even seeming divergent models and systems, which in the ensemble add considerable value.
• The importance of being open-minded and innovative, to create new mental models, to explore heuristically the possibilities of fresh perspective and new approaches.

The many excellent questions and suggestions from the very well informed audience, half of which were not our members, added considerably to the high value of the presentation.

I believe last evening's Annual Strategic Alliance Dinner showed us that bringing together individuals from multiple different professional backgrounds can produce a highly effective concentration, synergy, and acceleration of innovative ideas. Our organization will offer to continue to bring together divergent professional groups into a single audience, to offer a dynamic platform for the exposure and incubation of practical ideas and frameworks which all can use beneficially.

Hopefully we can continue to collaborate on such interesting subject matter, and perhaps we can create a highly unique professional development day, with multiple presentations and diverse innovative perspectives, which continues to enhance perspective, integrate differences, and accelerate progress.

Once again, let me express our very deep appreciation for your wonderfully stimulating presentation last evening. Can we get a copy to post to our web site?

Yours sincerely,

Philippe Roy, CMC,
Canadian Association of Management Consultants, Eastern Ontario Chapter.