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5 Stars — Simply & lucidly: the basics of performance measurement

What I like most about this little book is the simplicity and lucidity with which it demonstrates what performance measurement is fundamentally about. Embedded within a fictional but entirely realistic story about one company’s discovery of performance measurement, is a straightforward methodology for designing and implementing a performance measurement system. Largely based around the principles of international business excellence models like the Baldrige Framework and the Australian Business Excellence Framework, the book captures some of the more important ideas of effective performance measurement, like linking measures to strategy and to each level of decision making in the organisation, involving people, focusing on trends and using them to make decisions.

It’s audience is really those people starting out on their performance measurement journey, and doesn’t address the more difficult and detailed aspects that those further along the journey typically struggle with, like more specific approaches to designing measures than brainstorming, the design of cost-effective collection of performance data, the most meaningful analysis and reporting of the data. But it sure does lay the right kind of foundation for a sophisticated organisational performance measurement system. This book is on my list of favourites for this topic.