How business measurement clichés mislead
You get what you measure What you measure is what you get If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it Tell me how I’m going to be measured and I’ll tell you how I’ll perform You cannot improve what you can’t measure Garbage in, garbage out If you don’t measure it, it’s just a [...]
The Operational Dashboard that had no Key Performance Indicators
The “dashboard” is often used as a metaphor by business writers and consultants to explain to managers that they need performance measurement and key performance indicators for their business, just like they do for their cars. Otherwise they’ll drive their business off the road, they (falsely) argue. The problem is, the dashboards on cars don’t [...]
The importance of structural information
Business writers and consultants today typically advise managers to calculate indices and percentages to measure the state of their enterprises. For example, Kaplan and Norton, in the “Balanced Scorecard”, suggest measuring “strategic information availability” with the “percentage of processes with real-time quality, cycle time, and cost feedback available” and “percentage of customer-facing employees having on-line [...]
How dashboards mislead
The dashboards commonly used to display business key performance indicators (KPI) conjure up images of automobile dashboards or airplane instrument panels. Try an Internet search on “dashboard” and you will find dozens of business software products that arrange KPIs on dials on dashboards or instrument panels. The machine or automotive metaphor runs deep through the [...]
When key performance indicators do not indicate what you think they indicate
Often companies develop scorecards or business performance management dashboards that are full of indicators that supposedly indicate what they say they indicate. For example, one metric might be “on time delivery”. I once met a CEO whose company’s on-time performance metrics showed very good performance. When he showed up at a customer, they were furious [...]
Good luck to G-20 leaders with their early warning indicators
Leaders at the G-20 meeting in Korea last week agreed they will establish early warning indicators of economic imbalances. The G20 communiqué said : “We will strengthen multilateral cooperation to promote external sustainability and pursue the full range of policies conducive to reducing excessive imbalances and maintaining current account imbalances at sustainable levels. Persistently large [...]
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