by Mark Hocknell, PuMP Partner

When we want people to understand and adopt a new idea, often we rush in, guns blazing, and overwhelm them with too much "how to", too soon. We might be excited about the new idea, but they will be wary. Another band wagon, another fad, another distraction from their "real work". So we need a gentler approach that starts from where they are, not where we are.

Often, new performance measures can't be constructed on existing data. We've not measured them before, so not thought to collect that kind of data before. Sadly, too many important and useful measures are not brought to life because of too much procrastination in gathering the data. Guest author, Jerry, shares a great example of how to handle this problem, from his experience w...

In this case study with Jennifer Pontzer, we discuss a practical and powerful tool that can help you get people interested in KPIs and measuring performance, and build their buy-in and ownership from the start.

To make useful progress with KPIs, we have to get over our obsession with getting it right, doing it perfectly and waiting for all all the planets line up before we get started. We’d be waiting for ever. And one way to get over these types of procrastination is simply to start where the energy is.

Problem: You have to sit down with your team, and work out your performance measures. You want it to be collaborative and fruitful, but you're dreading it because in the past it's generally been cumbersome and futile. Solution: You have to do something different.

Are you holding back from better performance measurement because your leaders aren't open to it, or because your colleagues are too busy, or because your organisation isn't ready for it? What's really holding you back is YOU and not them...

Guest author Jerry Stigall, Director of Organizational Development at Denver Regional Council of Governments, has written a guest post on what to say when they say "we're not measuring that because it's outside our control".

If you don't have time to measure what matters, poor performance will continue to use up more of your time. Here are 5 strategies to give a higher priority to measurement.

Measure Up reader, Srini, asks this question: "Is there a set of KPIs limited to 3-6 which can help ALL businesses and non-profits?" Most people ask questions like this when they're just getting started with measuring performance. So while you take the time to also learn the process of designing the best measures for your organisation, here's my sug...