Weasel 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.

Often 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.

Guest 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…)

I'm teaching the Melbourne PuMP Blueprint Workshop this week, and today's content included how to make your goals more measurable. One of the lovely participants in the workshop (thanks Steve!) showed me this video presented by Gerard Braud, at the International Association of Business Communicators 2012 World Conference: "

Weasel 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...

Use these 9 actionable mindset shifts to close the gap between strategy design and execution, to achieve your strategic aims. (more…)

Governments need outcome measures as evidence to prove success. But there are five challenges to overcome, first. (more…)

ESG and DEI are examples of things that are strategically important to business success, but are extremely hard to measure meaningfully. One skill helps us solve this gridlock. (more&h...

If you're not happy with the KPIs in your OKRs or Balanced Scorecard or other strategic plan, then you need to add in this one piece... (more…)

The building blocks of KPIs and performance measures is detectable evidence. And evidence is detectable when it is sensory. (more…)