It's often easier to cascade the corporate strategy to customer-facing functions than it is to cascade strategy to support functions. That's because we make a common mistake that's based on a false assumption about how support functions align to strategy.

Many organisations have a KPI mess: too many useless measures, not enough of the right measures, and little idea of exactly how many measures altogether. This mess is an unnecessary cost, and it’s not that hard to clean it up.

One of the reasons why we can't find meaningful performance measures for our goals has to do with whether the goals are about actions or results. Action-oriented goals aren't true goals, since goals should be about making a difference, not just doing stuff. ...

A performance culture - including performance measurement practice - should be led from the top. But it doesn't always happen that way. When leaders won't lead KPIs, the best thing to do is be... courageous.

This is a digest of all that I've written so far on how to make intangible goals measurable. So if you have qualitative, intangible, vague, or any seemingly immeasurable goal, these tips will help!

by Mark Hocknell, PuMP Partner

Every organisation wants a productive workforce. But measuring productivity, which is critical to improving it, is a struggle. It's hard to make it tangible. In his book Smart Work, productivity expert Dermot Crowley gives us a clue about how to measure productivity using a very practical proxy.

Most organisations have lame corporate KPIs. They don't align to strategy, give evidence of impact, or offer actionable feedback. If they can't do these things, they can't really be called corporate KPIs!

Meaningful KPIs are quantifiable, able to be monitored over time, and are direct evidence of the goals they measure. This practical study of 50 organisations reveals just how many organisations do (or don't!) have KPIs that are meaningful.

The purpose of a KPI performance dashboard is to interpret quickly and accurately how an organisation's top priority performance results are doing compared to target, and initiate action to close gaps between actual and target performance. But there are some KPI dashboard design mistakes that derail this purpose.