It's not hard to spend millions on setting up new data management and business intelligence systems. And it can take years to implement, too. Plus there's the tricky piece of getting people to buy in to collection and capturing all that data. But we need to do it, before we can start measuring what matters... Or do we?

It's the week of Christmas and so I don't want to be too heavy and serious. So if you feel inclined to lightly ponder, let me share with you what measuring performance is going to mean for me in 2016. (more&h...

A reasonably frequently asked question about performance measurement is how to find KPIs or measures that you are guaranteed to achieve successfully. Is presupposes that KPIs and measures should be achieved successfully. Is that true?

Too many clichés tell us that we measure performance to manage, to control, to improve, to learn, to monitor, to hit targets. But what if there was a simpler reason to measure performance, that still paid off? That could really help out those people who are still a bit fearful or skeptical of measuring, don't you think? I reckon the simplest reason to measure is to notice. T...

Have you ever designed a new performance measure - a powerful one you felt excited about - and then discovered the data you needed was not in the right format or detail? Of course you have! It's a common challenge when you decide to measure something more deliberately or more meaningfully than you have in the past. But don't let the data problems put an end to your powerful new measure!

by Michel Dekker, Nova Silva

Enrico Bertini explains in his recipe¹ that studying plays an important role in becoming a Data Visualization expert. However, he also emphasizes it is just the beginning. This was probably the reason why Ben de Jong approached me a year ago to help him improve data visualizations at the bank he works for.

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.

Management guru Peter Drucker is quoted over and again for his message that the key to strategy is omission. Good strategy is ruthlessly about what not to do, than it is about what to do. The same goes for KPIs. We must be ruthless about what to measure.

Nijntje, 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.

The step in your performance measurement process at which you set targets has a critical impact on how sensible and achievable those targets will turn out to be. (more…)