5 Comebacks When People Want the Weasel Words
November 24, 2015 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentWeasel words are the enemy of measurability. When a goal is written with them - agile, benefits, capacity, diversity, efficiency, fit for purpose, holistic, livability, productivity, sustainability, and so on - that goal is impossible to meaningfully measure. But yet there is often resistance to removing those weasel words.
Filed Under:
Getting Buy-in, Making Strategy Measurable
Weasel Word Whimsy
March 17, 2015 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentGuest author Terry Fagg, a local government manager, writes a short marketing brief from a fictional consulting firm called Weasel Words Inc. Be warned: this is bad advice!! (more…)
Filed Under: Making Strategy Measurable
Why You Can’t Measure Your Performance Outcomes…
May 17, 2010 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentFiled Under: Making Strategy Measurable, Meaningful Performance Measures
The Single Best Thing You Must Do To Find Useful KPIs
March 5, 2013 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentWeasel words are words that have no specific and obvious and singular meaning. They bring no clear images to mind of what is meant. Words like: effective, sustainable, harnessed, connectedness and leveraged. Weasel words have a stupifying effect on people's understanding of goals that are written with them, as well as rendering...
Filed Under: Meaningful Performance Measures, Performance Culture
The Nijntje Principle for Measurable Goals
November 5, 2015 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentNijntje, or Miffy as she is known in English-speaking countries, is the little rabbit character who is drawn with only a few simple lines and primary colours. Yet she's meaningfully recognisable as a little rabbit. She doesn't need any more detail to be meaningful. But any less detail and she looks incomplete. Goals that are meaningfully measurable are just like Nijntje.
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Meaningful Performance Measures
My Biggest Tip for Better KPIs
December 20, 2016 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentIf there was just one thing I could share with you that would have the biggest impact on the ease of finding meaningful performance measures or KPIs, it's this: use words better. It's impossible to get meaningful numbers until you know exactly what you're trying to quantify.
Filed Under:
Making Strategy Measurable
Great Measures Start With Great Words
May 5, 2015 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentOften in measuring performance we ask a question too soon: so, how do we measure that? As soon as you answer that question, you're tumbling down the rabbit-hole toward a world of silliness and subjectivity. The characters you're surrounded by are pretentious goals claiming to be too complex to measure, and confused goals draped in trivial counts and milestones.
Filed Under:
Making Strategy Measurable, Meaningful Performance Measures
How PuMP Helps Beyond Measurement
January 5, 2021 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentCanadian government colleagues Shannon Sanford and Janet Norman share seven ways PuMP helped beyond performance measurement. (more…)
Filed Under: Performance Culture, Uncategorized
Why Leaders Mustn’t Delegate the Design of KPIs
October 12, 2021 by Stacey Barr | Leave a CommentIf your organisation's leaders write the strategic direction, but delegate the strategic KPI design, the strategy won't be executable. (more…)