StrategyDriven » Organizational Performance Measures

StrategyDriven Podcast Video Edition 3 – Framework for Aligning an Organization

StrategyDriven — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:16:15 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the principle, best practice, and warning flag articles found on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 3 – Framework for Aligning an Organization explores the mechanisms needed to create an programmatic framework focusing all employees on the achievement of the organization’s mission goals as well as the benefits these organizations realize over competing firms not so well aligned.

Learn more about how to become truly StrategyDriven by reading: The StrategyDriven Organization.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 16 – System Development

StrategyDriven — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:08:48 +0000

Organizational performance measures work together to illustrate a complex picture of performance; cascading up and down the organization and horizontally across it. Subsequently, it is important that the characteristics of performance measures within the system be well aligned to enable multi-indicator information development and data flow. (See Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice – Common Construction Characteristics and the StrategyDriven whitepaper Organizational Performance Measures – Construction.) Developing performance measures as a system rather than a collage of individually constructed indicators is the most effective way of achieving this alignment.

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Performance Measurement

StrategyDriven — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:23:34 +0000

Performance measurement typically drives much of the way a large company works. We talked extensively in this book about how accounting profits or profit growth as a sole performance metric doesn’t lead to value creation. Supplementing profits with ROIC and revenue growth is a step in the right direction to ensure that the profits a business earns are actually creating value, not simply over-consuming capital that another company could better deploy. However, profits, ROIC, and revenue growth are backward looking. They don’t tell you how well the business is positioned for future growth and ROIC improvement.

Value: The Four Cornerstones of Corporate Finance
by Tim Koller

While you can find numerous books focused on the topic of corporate finance, few offer the type of information managers need to help them make important decisions day in and day out.

Value explores the core of corporate finance without getting bogged down in numbers and is intended to give managers an accessible guide to both the foundations and applications of corporate finance. Filled with in-depth insights from experts at McKinsey & Company, this reliable resource takes a much more qualitative approach to what the authors consider a lost art.

Discusses the four foundational principles of corporate finance
Effectively applies the theory of value creation to our economy
Examines ways to maintain and grow value through mergers, acquisitions, and portfolio management
Addresses how to ensure your company has the right governance, performance measurement, and internal discussions to encourage value-creating decisions

A perfect companion to the Fifth Edition of Valuation, this book will put the various issues associated with corporate finance in perspective.

One company we know had a particular business unit that consistently recorded growing profits and high levels of ROIC for about four years. Since the unit’s reported financial results were so good, the executives at the corporate headquarters didn’t ask many questions about the drivers of the unit’s profits – until it was too late. It turned out that the unit was driving profits by raising prices and cutting marketing and advertising expenditures. Higher prices and reduced advertising created an opening for competitors to take away market share, which they did. So while profits were rising and ROIC was high, market share was declining.

The next thing the company knew, it couldn’t raise prices anymore, and market share kept falling. The company had to reset the business with lower prices and more advertising. It took many years for the company to regain its lost position. If the corporate executives and board had probed into the unit’s sources of profit expansion, they likely would have taken corrective action earlier. This example also speaks to the obligation of management and boards to challenge high-performing units as much as they challenge those that are troubled.

Good performance measurement can help overcome the short- term bias of financial measures by explicitly monitoring how well a company or business unit is positioned to sustain and improve its financial performance. This is what we call a business’s health, and related metrics explain how financial results were achieved and provide causal insights into future performance potential. An example of systematically measuring both performance and health is illustrated in Exhibit 17.1.

The left-hand side of the exhibit shows the financial drivers of value: revenue growth and ROIC. Companies also need metrics that indicate the short-, medium-, and long-term health of the business, as shown to the right of the financial metrics. While every business needs some metrics tailoring, the eight generic categories presented in Exhibit 17.1 can be used as a starting point to ensure that a company systematically manages all the important areas.

Short-term value drivers are the immediate levers of ROIC and growth. They indicate whether current growth and ROIC can be sustained, will improve, or will decline in the near future. They might include sales productivity metrics such as market share, the company’s ability to charge premium prices relative to peers, or sales force productivity. Operating-cost productivity metrics might include the component costs for building an automobile or delivering a package, the rates of rework, and so forth.

Medium-term value drivers look forward to indicate whether a company can maintain and improve its revenue growth and ROIC over the next one to five years (or longer for companies, such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, that have long product cycles). These metrics may be harder to quantify than short-term measures and are more likely to be measured annually or over even longer periods.

Medium-term commercial health metrics indicate whether the company can sustain or improve its current revenue growth, including the company’s product pipeline, brand strength measures, and customer satisfaction. Cost structure metrics measure a company’s ability to manage its costs relative to competitors over three to five years. These metrics might include assessments of continuous improvement programs or other efforts to maintain a cost advantage relative to competitors. Asset health measures might show how well a company maintains its assets and consistently improves asset productivity. For example, a hotel or restaurant chain might measure the average time between remodeling projects as an important driver of health.

Metrics for long-term strategic health include a company’s progress in identifying and exploiting new growth areas and the company’s ability to sustain its competitive advantages against threats. Long- term strategic health metrics might be more qualitative than short- and medium-term metrics, and might be more along the lines of assessments of the company’s ability to deal with changes in the environment. Some examples include new technologies, changes in customer preferences, new ways of serving customers, and disruptive threats.

The final category is organizational health, which measures whether the company has the people, skills, and culture to sustain and improve its performance. As with the other measures, what is important varies by industry. One dimension of this is the needed flows of talent. Pharmaceutical companies have long needed deep scientific-innovation leadership capabilities but relatively few general managers. This may change with trends like the proliferation of personalized therapeutics into product markets. Retailers historically need trained stored managers, a few great merchandisers, and, in most cases, store staff with a customer service orientation.

This framework shares some elements with the balanced scorecard concept that was introduced in a seminal 1992 Harvard Business Review article, The Balanced Scorecard: Measures That Drive Performance, by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. Numerous organizations have subsequently advocated and implemented the balanced scorecard idea. Kaplan and Norton point out that customer satisfaction, internal business processes, learning, and revenue growth are important drivers of long-term performance.

Although our concept of health metrics resembles Kaplan and Norton’s nonfinancial metrics, we don’t advocate their off-the-shelf application. We advocate that companies choose their own set of metrics tailored to their industries and strategies. For example, product innovation may be important to companies in one industry, while in another, tight cost control and customer service may matter more. Similarly, an individual company (or business unit) will have different value drivers at different points in its life cycle.

About the Authors

McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm that helps leading private, public, and social-sector organizations make distinctive, lasting, and substantial performance improvements. With consultants deployed from more than 90 offices in over fifty countries, McKinsey advises companies on strategic, operational, organizational, financial, and technological issues.

Tim Koller leads the firm’s research activities in valuation and capital market issues. He advises clients globally on corporate strategy, capital markets, M&A, and value-based management. Tim is a coauthor of Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies. To read Tim Koller’s complete biography, click here.

Richard Dobbs is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s business and economics research arm. He advises Korean and other Asian companies and governments on strategy, economics, and M&A issues. Richard is an associate fellow of University of Oxford’s Said Business School. To read Richard Dobbs’ complete biography, click here.

Bill Huyett advises clients in healthcare and other technology-intensive industries on corporate strategy, M&A, product development and commercialization, and corporate leadership. He is also a leader in the firm’s corporate finance practice. Bill is active on several not-for-profit boards in basic life sciences research. To read Bill Huyett’s complete biography, click here.

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Everybody Loves Bob – Faster Cheaper Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done

StrategyDriven — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 11:43:57 +0000

Everybody loves Bob. He’s a corporate hero. Just last week Bob was watching television after dinner, but he wasn’t really watching. Instead he was thinking about work, as he does most nights. Suddenly it hit Bob: he hadn’t checked to make sure engineering had included the new wiring diagram in the customer’s shipment that was due to go out first thing in the morning. Without the diagram the equipment would be useless.

Faster Cheaper Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done
by Lisa W. Hershman and
Dr. Michael Hammer

Based on more than a decade of research to understand the nuts and bolts of how work gets done at companies in every imaginable business – from oil refineries to software developers, factories, retailers, and hospitals – Faster Cheaper Better shows how to harness the amazing power of end-to-end processes to become more profitable and competitive. Michael Hammer and Lisa Hershman provide the tools for focusing on work that creates real value for customers, including:

How to get people to move from ‘worm’s-eye view’ of thier jobs to a ‘bird’s-eye view’ – to understand what the company really does and the role they have in achieving results.
How to start measuring the factors that are most critical to the success of the business and identify the metrics that express them.
How the new job of process owner can tie together the separate silos that characterize the traditional organization to change the way work is done and how people relate to one another.
How to create a cadre of professionals at every level – people who focus not just on limited tasks but the overall outcome and ensure that the company gets and keeps happy customers.

Faster Cheaper Better provides the pragmatic program for change that will endure; change that enables you to prosper in good times and bad.

“I don’t know what time I’ll be home,” he shouted to his wife as he bolted out the door, jumped into his car, and sped to the plant.

Jerry was on guard duty at the gate and greeted Bob warmly. He was accustomed to Bob showing up at all hours of the day and night. Bob went straight to the shipping dock. Sure enough, the box was sitting there ready to go, and it didn’t contain the wiring diagram. It took Bob an hour to track down a copy of the diagram, put it in the box, and reseal it for shipment. He got home at midnight.

That’s the kind of thing Bob does all the time. And the bosses recognize his devotion and applaud it often. He’s gotten raises and been promoted, and he’s been named Employee of the Month five times in the past two years. Many of his co- workers now emulate Bob and give an extra measure, too.

No doubt about it, Bob’s a great guy. Trouble is, his company’s approach to getting work done is a raging disaster.

Bob is forced to be a hero because he’s a loyal and ambitious employee struggling to overcome his company’s chaotic processes for getting things done. He gets lots of credit for making the fix to save the customer, but he’s constantly creating dramatic work-arounds because the existing processes create problems that shouldn’t exist. Worse still, Bob’s behavior and the accolades he receives simply reinforce the notion that everyone should work around the system. No one seems to grasp that if the system were fixed, there would be no need for heroes like Bob.

There are lots of companies like Bob’s, fragmented and inefficient. They survive despite themselves only because people like Bob are constantly fixing things. It may take thirty days to fill a customer order, but only three of those days involve real work. The rest of the time people are arguing about who’s responsible for some part of the order or the order is languishing in someone’s in- box.

For well over a century managers have achieved increasing productivity on ever larger scales by dividing and subdividing work into smaller and smaller units. The modern corporation that has evolved as a result consists of many specialized functional departments, such as sales, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, operations, and finance. The people who work in a given department all focus on the same departmental goal— advertising promotes sales, shipping moves the product, procurement buys the parts— and they report to the executive in charge of their department, who measures their performance and rewards or penalizes them according to the department’s own metrics.

Most companies get metrics all wrong. They allow each department to determine what it wants to measure. And because you get what you measure, each department gets a different and often uncoordinated result.

There is an alternative to the fragmented work process, and it allows us to be faster, cheaper, and better. It isn’t easy and it won’t happen overnight, but for those who master it the results are astounding.

The only way to survive in this ever-changing, expanding, globalizing economy is to continually adapt. Often this requires examining our processes from a macro-level. Getting a 50,000-foot picture of our operations illustrates outdated, cumbersome, inefficient processes. Rather than a series of discrete steps, work becomes an end- to- end continuum. People no longer focus entirely on their own jobs with no notion of how their work affects their colleagues’ ability to do their jobs or even the customer. Instead, they are thinking about the whole and not the parts, about outcomes instead of activities, about the collective rather than the individual.

About the Authors

Michael Hammer was a bold and revolutionary thinker, the coauthor of Reengineering the Corporation, the most important business book of the 1990s. Named to Time magazine’s first list of the twenty-five most influential Americans, the business world lost one of its rare geniuses when he passed away in September of 2008. Dr. Hammer was also the author of The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade as well as articles in the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, MIT Sloan Management and other publications. To read Michael’s complete biography, click here.

Lisa W. Hershman is the Chief Executive Officer of Hammer and Company. She is a seasoned business professional and author, who brings a wealth of real-world experience and an innovative style to her position at Hammer and Company. Lisa is the co-author of the business guide Faster Cheaper Better: The 9 Levers for Transforming How Work Gets Done (rated 8 out of 10 by Inc. Magazine) and an inspirational and sought-after speaker and conference moderator/leader both in the United States and internationally. She is a regular contributor to BusinessWeek and her columns have appeared in Forbes.com and Foxnews.com. She has appeared as a business expert on Fox Business News, the Jim Bohannon Show, the Ron Insana Show, and other nationally syndicated business radio programs.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 15 – Map Performance Measure Ownership

StrategyDriven — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:12:13 +0000

Too often, creation and maintenance of organizational performance measures becomes an administrative exercise accompanied by lifeless, mundane monthly review meetings. Real ownership of a performance measure means an individual is not only accountable for the performance indicated but is dedicated to improving that performance over time. Such ownership seldom exists when performance measures are assigned based on what appears to be a reasonable or logical association. Rather, true ownership occurs when performance measure inputs are assessed and responsibility and accountability deliberately assigned to the individual or work group whose actions and decisions most significantly affect the indicated performance. And as all accountabilities, ownership of performance measures should be documented and communicated to the respective owners.

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The Unnoticed Analyst: Can analytics succeed while going unnoticed?

StrategyDriven — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:40:16 +0000

The classic Harvard Business School case “Otisline (A)”¹ begins with the quote, “… our objective is to go unnoticed.”

Bob Smith (not his real name), source of the quote and Chief Operating Officer at Otis Elevator, knows that elevators tend to remain well under the radar screen until they break. In the elevator business, you can be hugely successful and highly profitable by going unnoticed.

SAS – Providing organizations with THE POWER TO KNOW^®

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW^®. To learn more about SAS, its products and services, visit www.sas.com.

sascom Magazine

sascom Magazine is the quarterly publication of the SAS Institute, Inc. Each issue is packed with thought-provoking content and insight into the business issues that affect all companies competing in today’s technology-driven marketplace with recent contributions by best-selling author and researcher Tom Davenport; social media guru Chris Brogan; and Myron Scholes, world renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner. Subscribe now to get your subscription to this award-winning quarterly magazine. sascom Magazine can also be accessed online at www.sas.com/sascom.

In the global economy, can analytic practitioners be hugely successful in their careers while going unnoticed?

Midway through an ethnographic analysis of the role of analytics in large, global enterprises, I find myself struck by the relative invisibility of analytics and analysts, the people who specialize in analytics.

Despite the laudable efforts of analytic evangelists such as Michael Lewis (Moneyball), Tom Davenport (Competing on Analytics), Jim Davis (The Information Revolution) and Ian Ayres (Super Crunchers), analysts, for the most part, remain hidden in the shadows while analytics remains a mystery to most C-level executives. Should we, as a community, be mobilizing to capture more mind share at the top of the enterprise?

Selling Analytics

It would be interesting to commission a study from one of the big research firms and ask a broad subset of the planet’s population what first pops to mind when they hear the word “analytics.”

Researchers at the IT Leadership Academy are doing just that in Global 2000 enterprises. The CIO’s response tends to be “reports” (61 percent of the population). Successful CMOs give an answer that includes a subset of “how I do my job/how we generate value/how we deliver on the promise of the brand.” And the people who actually do analytics give all kinds – and lengths – of responses.

However, no one is saying “before we can do analytics we must explain the take-to-the-bank value of analytics to decision makers.” In other words, analysts, the practitioners, have to sell analytics, the discipline.

Our Blind Spot

If one were to write the definitive history of analytics in the modern age, the RAND Corporation would receive significant ink. Like the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, the Central Michigan University Research Corporation BI Forum and the SAS campus in Cary, North Carolina, RAND is a haven for high-intellect practitioners of quantitative problem solving.

Many sacred spaces of analytics have historically had a blind spot – understanding the behaviors of the humans who materially affect the creation of analytical outputs (primarily bosses and funding sources). Often in our profession we become so intent and so fascinated with quantitative problem solving that we lose sight of the human context in which those problems reside.

Franklin R. Collbohm, former test pilot, right-hand man to the head of Douglas Aircraft during World War II and founder of RAND, recognized this blind spot and asked for help:

“Well, we think we know a lot about planes, and other devices, but there’s one thing we don’t know much about, and that is a certain machine that weighs – oh, between 160 to 185 pounds, is between five-feet-eight and six feet, and is called a ‘pilot.’”²

Remember – RAND’s sole funding source was Air Force generals (i.e., pilots). If we are to optimize the value generated by analytics, we are going to have to humanize our in-organization behaviors. In today’s world, analytics is a product/service that must be sold.

Salespeople will tell you that the basis of sales success is having a great product (which we have) and a strong relationship beachhead from which to pitch the product.

George Washington knew that ultimate victory would not be accomplished on the battlefield, but in the hearts and minds of those engaged. In other words, public relations matters. Washington, despite losing more battles than he won, was eulogized as being “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” When you are gone, will analytics be first in the hearts and minds of your CEO, your CMO and your board of directors?

True victory lies in capturing the imagination, respect and energy of a broad and diverse set of stakeholders, including suppliers, customers and executives.

As analysts, we need to expand the organization’s “smartwidth” – its capability to understand and act on information. Broadband gives us more information. Smartwidth gives your organization more understanding regarding what all this information means.

That’s what executives are looking for: meaning and insight from existing information sources. And that’s what analytics provides. It’s up to us to make that connection clear and start getting noticed as the smartwidth source. Our objective, after all, is NOT to go unnoticed.

This article was republished with the permission of sascom Magazine.

Sources

F.W. McFarlan and D.B. Stoddard (July 15, 1990). Harvard Business School 1995-96 Catalog of Best-Selling Teaching Material; Ref No. 9-186-304. The case instructs students in the value of deconstructing an industry into its component parts. (The elevator industry can be divided into two buckets – new equipment sales and service.) The case illustrates how information technology, innovatively, insightfully and courageously deployed, can change the structure of an industry.
Alex Abella, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (NY: Harcourt Inc., 2008).

About the Author

Thornton May, Executive Director and Dean at the IT Leadership Academy, is one of the premier visionaries in the IT industry. His book, The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics (Wiley and SAS Business Series), positions analysts as heroes of the age we are about to enter.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 14 – Run New and Old Performance Measures in Parallel

StrategyDriven — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 11:28:59 +0000

The outcomes of substantive change can seldom be fully anticipated; and changes to organizational performance measures are no exception. Performance measures drive executive and managerial decisions and personnel actions and, over time, shape these behaviors to achieve optimal results relative to the established measures. Thus, changes to performance measures serve to change behaviors in predictable and sometimes unpredictable ways.

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Eight Levels of Analytics

StrategyDriven — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:22:03 +0000

Not all analytics are created equal. Like most software solutions, you’ll find a range of capabilities with analytics, from the simplest to the most advanced. In the spectrum shown here, your competitive advantage increases with the degree of intelligence.

	1. STANDARD REPORTS Answer the questions: What happened? When did it happen? Example: Monthly or quarterly financial reports. We all know about these. They’re generated on a regular basis and describe just “what happened” in a particular area. They’re useful to some extent, but not for making long-term decisions.
	2. AD HOC REPORTS Answer the questions: How many? How often? Where? Example: Custom reports that describe the number of hospital patients for every diagnosis code for each day of the week. At their best, ad hoc reports let you ask the questions and request a couple of custom reports to find the answers.
	3. QUERY DRILLDOWN (OR OLAP) Answers the questions: Where exactly is the problem? How do I find the answers? Example: Sort and explore data about different types of cell phone users and their calling behaviors. Query drilldown allows for a little bit of discovery. OLAP lets you manipulate the data yourself to find out how many, what color and where.
	4. ALERTS Answer the questions: When should I react? What actions are needed now? Example: Sales executives receive alerts when sales targets are falling behind. With alerts, you can learn when you have a problem and be notified when something similar happens again in the future. Alerts can appear via e-mail, RSS feeds or as red dials on a scorecard or dashboard.
	5. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS Answers the questions: Why is this happening? What opportunities am I missing? Example: Banks can discover why an increasing number of customers are refinancing their homes. Here we can begin to run some complex analytics, like frequency models and regression analysis. We can begin to look at why things are happening using the stored data and then begin to answer questions based on the data.
	6. FORECASTING Answers the questions: What if these trends continue? How much is needed? When will it be needed? Example: Retailers can predict how demand for individual products will vary from store to store. Forecasting is one of the hottest markets – and hottest analytical applications – right now. It applies everywhere. In particular, forecasting demand helps supply just enough inventory, so you don’t run out or have too much.
	7. PREDICTIVE MODELING Answers the questions: What will happen next? How will it affect my business? Example: Hotels and casinos can predict which VIP customers will be more interested in particular vacation packages. If you have 10 million customers and want to do a marketing campaign, who’s most likely to respond? How do you segment that group? And how do you determine who’s most likely to leave your organization? Predictive modeling provides the answers.
	8. OPTIMIZATION Answers the question: How do we do things better? What is the best decision for a complex problem? Example: Given business priorities, resource constraints and available technology, determine the best way to optimize your IT platform to satisfy the needs of every user. Optimization supports innovation. It takes your resources and needs into consideration and helps you find the best possible way to accomplish your goals.

The best analytics for your business problem
The majority of analytic offerings available today fall into one of the first four areas, which report historical data on what happened in the past but no insight about the future. For simple business problems, these analytic solutions will be all you need. But if you’re asking more complex questions or looking for predictive insight, you need to look at the second half of the spectrum. Even better, if you can learn to use these technologies together and identify what type of analytics to use for every individual situation, you’ll really be increasing your chances for true business intelligence.

This article was republished with the permission of sascom Magazine.

About SAS – Providing organizations with THE POWER TO KNOW^® since 1976.

SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions delivered within an integrated framework, SAS helps customers at more than 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW^®. To learn more about SAS, its products and services, visit www.sas.com.

About sascom Magazine

sascom Magazine is the quarterly publication of the SAS Institute, Inc. Each issue is packed with thought-provoking content and insight into the business issues that affect all companies competing in today’s technology-driven marketplace with recent contributions by best-selling author and researcher Tom Davenport; social media guru Chris Brogan; and Myron Scholes, world renowned economist and Nobel Prize winner. Subscribe now to get your subscription to this award-winning quarterly magazine. sascom Magazine can also be accessed online at www.sas.com/sascom.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 13 – Identify the Measures First

StrategyDriven — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:20:31 +0000

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Albert Einstein
Awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, named Time’s Man of the Century in 1999, and best known for his conception of the theories of special and general relativity

Organizations today seem to have a never ending supply of performance measures. Our data rich environment feeds the need of many managers to have all things counted. Yet as Albert Einstein suggests, not everything that can be counted matters. And just because something is counted doesn’t make it important. Thus, not everything that is measurable should be assigned its own performance indicator; rather only those things that are truly important, whether currently counted or not, should be measured. The identification of performance measures should therefore start with the identification of the key factors critical to the organization’s success.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 12 – Multiple Action Thresholds

StrategyDriven — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:47:30 +0000

Recovery from a significant event is costly and disruptive. While an expense, mitigating and preventing activities taken to prevent the event’s occurrence are typically far less expensive. From a business perspective, the challenge becomes that of balancing the value of risk reduction with that of the mitigating and preventative activities’ cost.

A key contributor to the cost factors associated with this balanced equation is the implementation timing of risk mitigating and preventing actions. Delaying such actions defers their cost until and only if such activities are needed to reduce risk. Subsequently, the better the organization’s ability to detect and respond to performance degradation evidencing an impending event the greater the deferment related cost savings. Without this predictive capability, risk mitigating and preventing actions need to be in place at all times, heightening short-term expenses and forfeiting the opportunity to avoid these costs should the associated performance degradation never occur.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 44b – An Interview with David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators, part 2 of 2

StrategyDriven — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:39:49 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 44b – An Interview with David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators, part 2 of 2 explores how to create a winning key performance indicator system that transforms these reports into decision-making tools supporting achievement of superior bottom line results. During our discussion, David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

Critical Success Factors, their role in connecting business strategy to performance measurement, and how to identify them
key steps to developing a performance measurement system
benefits of using a database to catalog the organization’s performance measures and the type of data this database should contain

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights David shares in Key Performance Indicators and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.DavidParmenter.com. David’s book, Key Performance Indicators, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

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About the Author

David Parmenter is author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs. David is an internationally renowned speaker, author, and advisor known for his work in the development of performance measurement systems that transforms these reports into a decision-making tool. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and has delivered workshops to thousands of executives and managers around the world. To read David’s complete biography, click here.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 11 – Predefined Action Thresholds

StrategyDriven — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:23:17 +0000

The value of organizational performance measures isn’t simply that they inform leaders and individual contributors of past and present state performance; rather, the power of performance measures comes from the actions they drive to improve future results. Therefore, organizational performance measures are most effective when they indicate when specific actions should take place. Predefined thresholds accomplish this objective.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 44a – An Interview with David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators, part 1 of 2

StrategyDriven — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:32:13 +0000

Special Edition 44a – An Interview with David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators, part 1 of 2 explores how to create a winning key performance indicator system that transforms these reports into decision-making tools supporting achievement of superior bottom line results. During our discussion, David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs shares with us his insights and illustrative examples regarding:

differences and relationships between key performance indicators, key results indicators, performance indicators, and results indicators
characteristics of key performance indicators that makes them both unique and powerful measures of performance
dangers associated with treating all performance measures as key performance indicators

Additional Information

Final Request…

About the Author

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The New Thinking on KPIs, part 4 of 4

StrategyDriven — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:45:20 +0000

Removing the lead / lag confusion

Many management books talk about “lead and lag indicators” which I believe merely clouds the KPI debate. Using this new way of looking at KPIs we dispense with the terms lag (outcome) and lead (performance driver) indicators. I have presented to nearly two thousand people on KPIs and I always ask “is the late planes in the air KPI, a lead or lag indicator?” The vote count is always evenly split. Surely, this is enough proof that lead and lag labels are not a useful way of defining measures.

Key result indicators replace outcome measures, which typically look at activity over months or quarters. PIs, and KPIs are now characterised as either past, current or future measures. The new concept called “current measures” are those monitored 24/7 or daily. You will find the real KPIs in your organization are either “current” or “future” measures.

Past measures	Current measures	Future measures
(last week / fortnight / month / quarter)	(24/7 and daily)	(next day / week / month / quarter)
e.g. number of late planes last week/ last month	e.g. planes over 2 hours late (updated continuously)	e.g. number of initiatives to be commenced in the next month / two months to target areas which are causing late planes.

The lead lag division did not focus adequately enough on the timing of the measures. Most organizations who want to create alignment and change behavior need to be monitoring what corrective action is to take place in the future. In other words if quality improvements are to happen we need to measure the number of initiatives which are about to come online in the next week, fortnight, month. If we want to increase sales it is important to know what meetings have already been organised/scheduled with our key customers in the next week, fortnight, month.

Finding the critical success factors

Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs
by David Parmenter

Key performance indicators (KPIs), while used commonly around the world, have never until now been clearly defined. Management personnel have identified measures as KPIs though these measures have never been KPIs. The lack of understanding of performance measures has led most monitoring and reporting of measures to fail. The casualty has often been the balanced scorecard, a brilliant tool that can only work if the appropriate measures are in it.

Fully revised and updated, Key Performance Indicators represents a significant shift in the way KPIs are developed and used, with an abundance of implementation tools. By exploring measures that have transformed businesses, this proactive guide has developed a methodology that is breathtaking in its simplicity and yet profound in its impact. Written by KPI expert David Parmenter, it has been said that this book is the missing link between the balanced scorecard work of Robert Kaplan and David Norton and the reality of implementing performance measurement in an organization.

Most organizations know their success factors, however few organizations have:

worded their success factors appropriately
segregated out success factors from their strategic objectives
sifted through the success factors to find their critical ones – their critical success factors
communicated the critical success factors to staff

Finding the success factors and narrowing them down to no more than five to eight CSFs is a vital step in any KPI exercise. If your organization has not completed a thorough exercise to know its critical success factors (CSFs) performance measurement will be a random process creating an army of measurers producing numerous numbing reports, and who often “measure” progress in a direction very remote from the strategic direction of the organization.

Next steps

Listen to the webcasts KPIs I have recorded on www.bettermanagement.com search “parmenter” using the search engine on the site
Acquire my KPI starter kit, available on www.davidparmenter.com
Engage an in-house or external public relations expert to help sell concept
Deliver a PowerPoint presentation to the SMT to get buy-in for your KPI / BSC project
Start the exercise to list all the success factors and then sort out which ones are critical – the CSFs
Link with an external expert who can contribute to brainstorming sessions designed to ascertain the CSFs for your organization

About the Author

David Parmenter, author of Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs and Pareto’s 80/20 Rule for Corporate Accountants, is an international presenter who is known for his thought provoking and lively sessions, which have led to substantial change in many organizations. He is a leading expert in developing winning KPIs, replacing the annual planning process with quarterly rolling planning, accelerating month-end processes, and converting reporting to a decision based tool.

David’s work on KPIs has received international recognition with clients in Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Tehran, Prague, Dublin, London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh. David is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and has worked for Ernst & Young, BP Oil Ltd, Arthur Andersen, and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at parmenter@waymark.co.nz or telephone +64 4 499 0007.

This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs“ whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)

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The New Thinking on KPIs, part 3 of 4

StrategyDriven — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:08:16 +0000

The four types of performance measures

I have come to the conclusion that there are four types of performance measures, as shown in Figure 3. This conclusion has come from: the research I have conducted; workshop feedback across diverse industries; and as a by-product of writing my book “Key Performance Indicators – developing, implementing and using winning KPIs”.

Figure 3: A scorecard with six perspectives

key result indicators (KRIs) – give an overview on past performance and are ideal for the Board as they communicate how management have done in a critical success factor or balanced scorecard perspective
performance indicators (PIs) – tell staff and management what to do
result indicators (RIs) – tell staff what they have done
key performance indicators (KPIs) – tell staff and management what to do to increase performance dramatically.

Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs
by David Parmenter

I use an onion analogy to describe the relationship of these four measures. The outside skin describes the overall condition of the onion, how much sun, water and nutrients it has received, how it has been handled from harvest to supermarket shelf. The outside skin is thus a key result indicator. The layers represent the various performance and result indicators and the core is where you find the key performance indicators.

Another way to look at it is to say there are two groups of measures, result indicators that summarize activities and performance indicators that are tied to a precise activity.

The 10/80/10 rule

Kaplan and Norton recommend no more than 20 KPIs, and Jeremy Hope (of beyond budgeting fame) suggest less than 10. To aid those involve in performance measurement I have developed the 10/80/10 rule. This means an organisation should have about 10 KRIs, up to 80 PIs and RIs and 10 KPIs. Very seldom is there a need for more measures than these numbers, and in many cases, less measures can be used.

Key Result Indicators (KRIs)

The common characteristic of KRIs is that they are the result of many actions. They give a clear picture of whether you are travelling in the right direction, and of the progress made towards achieving desired outcomes and strategies. They are ideal for governance reporting as key result indicators show overall performance and help the Board focus on strategic rather that management issues.

KRIs do not, however, tell management and staff what they need to do to achieve desired outcomes. Only performance indicators and KPIs can do this.

KRIs are measures that have often been mistaken for KPIs include:

Customer satisfaction
Net profit before tax
Profitability of customers
Employee satisfaction
Return on capital employed

Separating out KRIs from other measures has a profound impact the way performance is reported. There is now a separation of performance measures into those impacting governance (up to ten KRIs in a Board dashboard) and those RIs, PIs and KPIs impacting management.

A one page dashboard with the KRIs going in the right direction, will give confidence to the Board that the management know what they are doing and the “ship” is being steered in the right direction. The Board can then concentrate on what they do best, coaching the CEO, as required; focusing on the horizon for icebergs or looking for new ports to call. This is instead of parking themselves on the “bridge” and thus getting in the way of the captain who is trying to perform important day-to-day duties.

Performance and Result Indicators (PIs and RIs)

The 80 or so performance measures that lie between the KRIs and the KPIs are the performance and result indicators (PIs). The performance indicators while important are not “Key to the business”. The PIs help teams to align themselves with their organization’s strategy. PIs complement the KPIs and are shown with them on the organization’s, divisions’, departments’ and teams’ scorecards.

PIs could include:

% increase in sales to the top 10% of customers
# of employees’ suggestions implemented in last 30 days
Customer complaints from key customers
Sales calls organized for the next week, fortnight
Late deliveries to key customers

RIs could include:

Net profit on key product lines
Sales made yesterday
Weeks sales to key customers
Debtor collections in week
Bed utilization in week

Looking at the differences between KRIs vs KPIs and RIs vs PIs

Often in workshops one question emerges time and time again. “Please explain again the difference between KRIs and KPIs, and RIs and PIs. Figures 4 and 5 will hopefully clarify the differences.

KRIs	KPIs
Can be financial and non financial, e.g. Return on capital employed, and customer satisfaction percentage	Non financial measures (not expressed in $s, Yen, Pds, Euro, etc)
Measures mainly monthly and some times quarterly	Measured frequently e.g. daily or 24 by 7
As a summarize of progress in an organization’s critical success factor it is ideal to a Board.	Acted upon by the CEO and senior management team
It does not help staff or management as no where does it tell what you need to fix	All staff understand the measure and what corrective action is required
Commonly, the only person responsible for a KRI is the CEO.	Responsibility can be tied down to the individual or team
A KRI is designed to summarize activity within one CSF	Significant impact e.g. it impacts on more than one of top CSFs and more than one balanced scorecard perspective
A KRI is a result of many activities managed through a variety of performance measures	Has a positive impact e.g. affects all other performance measures in a positive way
Normally reported by way of a trend graph covering at least the last fifteen moths of activity	Normally reported by way of an intranet screen indicating activity, person responsible, track record etc so a phone call can be made.

Figure 4: The difference between KRIs and KPIs

A car’s speedometer provides a useful analogy to show the difference between a result indicator and a performance indicator. The speed the car is traveling is a result indicator since the cars speed is a combination of what gear the car is in and what revolutions the engine is doing. Performance indicators might be how economically the car is being driven e.g. a gauge showing how many kilometers per liter, or how hot the engine is running e.g. a temperature gauge.

RIs	PIs
Can be financial and non financial	Non financial measures (not expressed in $s)
Measured weekly, fortnightly, monthly, some times quarterly	Same
Cannot be tied to a team or a discrete activity	Tied to a discrete activity, and thus to a team
Does not tell you what you need to do more or less of	All staff understand what action is required to improve PI
Designed to summarize some activity within a CSFs/SFs	Specific activity impacts on one of the CSFs /SFs
A result of more than one activity	Focuses on a specific activity
Normally reported in a team scorecard	Same

Figure 5: The difference between RIs and PIs

About the Author

David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at parmenter@waymark.co.nz or telephone +64 4 499 0007.

This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs“ whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)

Relate Articles:

The New Thinking on KPIs, part 2 of 4

StrategyDriven — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:08:59 +0000

The characteristics of KPIs

KPIs represent a set of measures focusing on those aspects of organizational performance that are the most critical for the current and future success of an organization. There are only a few KPIs in an organization (no more than 10) and they have certain characteristics.

Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs
by David Parmenter

KPI characteristics include:

Non financial measures (not expressed in $s, Pds etc)
Measured frequently e.g. daily or 24/7 (KPIs are not measured monthly)
Acted upon by the CEO and the senior management team on a daily or 24/7 basis
All staff understand the measure and what corrective action is required
Responsibility can be tied down to a team
The KPI has a significant impact on the organization e.g. it impacts on most of the critical success factors and balanced scorecard perspectives
Positive movement affects all other performance measures in a positive way

When you put a Pound or Dollar sign to a measure you have not dug deep enough. Sales made yesterday will be a result of sales calls made previously to existing and prospective customers, advertising, amount of contact with the key customers, product reliability etc. I label any indicator expressed in monetary terms as result indicator, see below for more explanation.

KPIs should be monitored and reported 24/7, daily and a few perhaps weekly. How can a KPI be measured monthly? This surely is “shutting the barn door well after the horse has truly bolted”. KPIs are “current” or “future” measures as opposed to “past” measures. When you look at most organizational measures, they are very much past indicators measuring events of the last month or quarter. These indicators cannot be and never were a KPI. That is why a satisfaction percentage (e.g. 65%) from a customer satisfaction survey performed every six months can never be a KPI.

All good KPIs that I have come across, that have made a difference, had the CEO’s constant attention, with daily calls to the relevant staff. Having a potentially “career limiting” discussion with the CEO is not something staff want to repeat, and in the airlines case, innovative and productive processes were put in place to prevent a recurrence.

A KPI should tell you about what action needs to take place. The British Airways “late plane” KPI communicated immediately to everybody that there needed to be a focus on recovering the lost time. Cleaners, caterers, ground crew, flight attendants, and liaison officers with traffic controllers would all work some magic to save “a minute here and a minute there” whilst maintaining or improving service standards.

A KPI can be tied down to a team. In other words, the CEO can ring the manager and ask “why”. Return on capital employed has never been a KPI as it cannot be tied down to a manager, it is a result of many activities under different managers. Can you imagine the reaction if a GM was told one morning by the CEO “Pat, I want you to increase the return on capital employed today”.

A KPI will affect more then one critical success factor and most of the balanced scorecard perspectives. In other words, when the CEO focuses on the KPI, and the staff follows, the organization scores goals in all directions.

A KPI has a flow on effect on other performance measures. Reducing late planes would improve performance measures around improved service by ground staff as there is less “fire fighting” to distract them from a quality and caring customer contact.

About the Author

David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at parmenter@waymark.co.nz or telephone +64 4 499 0007.

This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs“ whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)

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The New Thinking on KPIs, part 1 of 4

StrategyDriven — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:06:18 +0000

“Show me a company who thinks they have KPIs, which are measured monthly and quarterly, and I will show you measures that do not create change, alignment and growth and have never been KPIs”

David Parmenter
Internationally renown presenter and expert on Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators: Developing, Implementing, and Using Winning KPIs
by David Parmenter

From my research, very few organizations really monitor their true KPIs. The reason is very few organizations, business leaders, writers, corporate accountants, and consultants have explored what a KPI actually is. This brief paper hopefully will help you unearth what a KPI is and point where to look for them in your organization.

Let me explain what a KPI is through two KPI stories.

An airline

My favorite KPI story is about Lord King who set about turning British Airways (BA) around in the 1980s by reportedly concentrating on one KPI.

Lord King appointed some consultants to investigate and report on the key measures he should concentrate on to turn around the ailing airline. They came back and told Lord King that he needed to focus on one critical success factor (CSF), the timely arrival and departure of airplanes, see Figure 1. Lord King was not impressed as everybody in the industry knows the importance of timely planes. They pointed out to Lord King that British Airways knew it was a success factor, along with 30 to 40 other success factors. The difference was that they were informing BA that it was the most important success factor. The consultants then pointed out that this is where the KPIs lay and they proposed that Lord King focus on late plane measures.

Figure 1: The importance of knowing your critical success factors

He was notified, wherever he was in the world, if a BA plane was delayed over a certain time, say two hours. The BA airport manager at the relevant airport knew that if a plane was delayed beyond a certain “threshold”, they would receive a personal call from Lord King. It was not long before BA planes had a reputation for leaving on time.

The late planes KPI was linked to most of the critical success factors for the airline. It linked to the “delivery in full and on time” CSF namely the “timely arrival and departure of airplanes”, and it linked to the “increase repeat business” CSF etc. The importance the CSF “timely arrival and departure of airplanes” can be seen by its impact on all the six perspectives of a modified balanced scorecard, see Figure 2.

I have added ‘employee satisfaction’ and ‘environment & community’ to the traditional four perspectives. These two perspectives were underestimated in the original work of Robert Kaplan and David Norton. Having a separate employee satisfaction perspective emphasizes the importance of measuring the key drivers of employee satisfaction such as the amount and regularity of recognition (e.g., how many recognition events are planned for the next week/fortnight, how much recognition has been made this week, the past two weeks, and this month). It will also support the need for more regular staff satisfaction surveys performed on a rolling sample basis.

The environment/community perspective will help create a major asset for the HR team, assisting the organization in becoming an employer of choice. Long-term successful linkages with the community, both local and national, are extremely valuable. Also, initiatives in this area feed into positive customer perceptions.

Figure 2: Balanced scorecard with six perspectives

“Timely arrival and departure of planes” impacted all six balance scorecard perspectives. Late planes:

increased cost in many ways: including additional airport surcharges, and the cost of accommodating passengers overnight as a result of late planes being “curfewed” due to noise restrictions late at night (financial perspective);
meant unhappy customers and alienated those people affected by the late arrival of the passengers -possible future customers (customer perspective);
created a negative impact in the wider community and thus reduced the potential pool of future employees (community perspective);
incurred created wastage of food – hot food has a short serving window and wastage of fuel as planes endeavoured to make up for lost time and operated outside their most economical flight speed (environmental perspective);
had a negative impact on staff development as staff would repeat the bad habits that had created late planes (learning and growth perspective);
adversely affected supplier relationships and servicing schedules resulting in poor service quality (internal process perspective);
led to employee dissatisfaction as they had to deal both with frustrated customers and the extra stress each late plane created (employee satisfaction perspective).

A distribution company

A CEO, of a distribution company, realised that a critical success factor for their business was trucks leaving as close as to capacity as possible. Large truck and trailer units capable of carrying more than 40 tonnes were being sent out with small loads as dispatch managers were focusing solely on “deliver in full on time” to customers.

Each day by 9am, the CEO received a report of those trailers that had been sent out under weight. The CEO rang the dispatch manager and asked whether any action had taken place to see if the customer could have accepted that delivery on a different date that enable better utilization of the trucks. In most cases the customer could have received it a day or two earlier or later, fitting in with a past or future truck going in that direction. The impact on profitability was significant.

Just with the airline example, staff some did their utmost to avoid a career-limiting phone call with their CEO.

About the Author

David’s recent thinking is accessible from www.davidparmenter.com. He can be contacted at parmenter@waymark.co.nz or telephone +64 4 499 0007.

This articles is an extract from his “Implementing winning KPIs“ whitepaper which can be downloaded from http://davidparmenter.com/how-to-guides)

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 10 – Get Data Directly from the Source

StrategyDriven — Tue, 18 May 2010 11:21:58 +0000

The accuracy and subsequently the trustworthiness of organizational performance measures is founded on the quality of their underlying data. While performance measures are uniquely sensitive to changes in data, even the smallest error in data accuracy undermines a metric’s credibility if not its output. Therefore, emphasis must be placed on maximizing data accuracy.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 9 – Predefined and Reinforced Data Standards

StrategyDriven — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:17:50 +0000

You’ve heard it a million times, “garbage in, garbage out.” But this axiom couldn’t be more true than in the case of organizational performance measures where in so many instances even a minute change in the data entered results in a profoundly different indicated performance. So how can an organization’s leaders be confident in the accuracy of their performance measurement data and the resulting measures? By defining and reinforcing a comprehensive set of organizational performance measure data standards.

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Organizational Performance Measures Warning Flag 1 – Source Data Manipulation

StrategyDriven — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:19:07 +0000

All organizational performance measurement systems rely foundationally on their source data. And like a house built on sand, these performance measurement systems fail if their source data becomes corrupt.

Source data manipulations occur for many reasons; some innocent and others malintent. Regardless of the reason, altering metric data necessarily generates a measurement output different than that expected; driving decision-making in a potentially dangerous direction. Therefore, unintended or purposeful performance measure data manipulation should be avoided.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 8 – One Change at a Time

StrategyDriven — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:45:36 +0000

An organization’s performance and the environment in which it operates change dynamically. Subsequently, most measures reflecting these performance variables are also dynamic; challenging analysts to interpret historical and predict future movement. Altering what or how a given variable is measured or the manner by which the resulting data is manipulated introduces an additional complexity to the data analysis. Implementing more than one change to a performance measure further compounds this challenge; often making the resulting output difficult to explain, complicated to understand, and generally confusing to decision-makers. Therefore, when altering a performance measure, only one change should be made at a time.

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Organizational Performance Measures Best Practice 7 – Documenting Performance Measure Drivers

StrategyDriven — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:37:11 +0000

Organizational performance measures help leaders drive behaviors, trigger actions, and create alignment. In addition to providing timely decision-making information, performance measures serve as mechanisms to quickly communicate results-based performance information throughout the organization. To maximize these benefits, however, effected organization members must understand what drives performance measure outcomes in order to properly interpret indicated results and appropriately act on them. Common understanding and interpretation of performance indicators is most effectively achieved through precise documentation and broad communication of their drivers and results.

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 12 – One Source of the Truth

StrategyDriven — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:25:30 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 12 – One Source of the Truth elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 5 – One Source of the Truth. This discussion…

defines what one source of the truth is
identifies the benefits of applying the one source of the truth principle
describes the guiding principles to put one source of the truth into practice

Final Request…

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast !

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 11 – Diverse Indicators

StrategyDriven — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:04:45 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 11 – Diverse Indicators elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 6 – Diverse Indicators. This discussion…

defines what diverse indicators are
identifies the benefits of using diverse indicators to assess performance
highlights the situations during which diverse indicators are needed
describes the guiding principles to create diverse indicators

Final Request…

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast !

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
FREE COPY of a StrategyDriven Expert Contributor book^†
EVALUATE how StrategyDriven gives you a competitive advantage

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 10 – Core Performance Measures

StrategyDriven — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:56:47 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 10 – Core Performance Measures elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 4 – Core Performance Measures. This discussion…

defines what core performance measures are
identifies the benefits of employing a performance measurement lattice
describes the guiding principles used to create an organizationally aligning measurement system

Final Request…

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast !

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 9 – Horizontally Shared Organizational Performance Measures

StrategyDriven — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:39:24 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 9 – Horizontally Shared Organizational Performance Measures elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 2 – Horizontally Shared. This discussion…

defines what horizontally shared performance measures are
identifies the benefits of employing shared measures
describes the steps taken to create comparative measures

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 8 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 3 of 3

StrategyDriven — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:24:17 +0000

Episode 8 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 3 of 3 elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 1 – Vertical Cascading. This discussion focuses on how to assess a performance measurement system for completeness and align it to individuals at various levels of an organization.

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You just finished reading StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 8 - Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 3 of 3! Consider leaving a comment!

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 7 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 2 of 3

StrategyDriven — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:04:21 +0000

Episode 7 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 2 of 3 elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 1 – Vertical Cascading. This discussion focuses on the five step process for creating a vertically cascaded performance measurement system anchored on the organization’s mission goals.

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You just finished reading StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 7 - Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 2 of 3! Consider leaving a comment!

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 6 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3

StrategyDriven — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:32:45 +0000

Episode 6 – Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3 elaborates on Organizational Performance Measure Best Practice 1 – Vertical Cascading. This discussion…

defines vertically cascaded performance measures
explores the reason vertically cascaded performance measures are critically important to the strategy driven organization

Final Request…

The strength in our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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You just finished reading StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 6 - Vertically Cascading Organizational Performance Measures, part 1 of 3! Consider leaving a comment!

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StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 5 – Introduction to Organizational Performance Measures

StrategyDriven — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:03:31 +0000

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve better results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag posts on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 5 – Introduction to Organizational Performance Measures serves as a foundation for the upcoming series of podcasts on the best practices associated with organizational performance measures. This discussion…

defines organizational performance measures
examines the primary uses of performance measures
identifies the common characteristics of well constructed performance indicators

Final Request…

The strength in our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership

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FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days
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You just finished reading StrategyDriven Podcast Episode 5 - Introduction to Organizational Performance Measures! Consider leaving a comment!

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