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...

Slacklining is the skill of balancing, walking and executing tricks on a thin strap of webbing that is suspended between two fixed points. It's a bit like tightrope walking, except the webbing is about an inch or two wide, and it has some stretch or 'slack' in it which makes it wobble and bounce as you move on it.

Annual planning has a few drawbacks that result in unachieved targets, wasted time, and exhaustion in the end. We set the goals and targets for the end of the year, but that feels so far away that we often delay our start, fail to respond as the world around us changes, and consequently lose momentum and interest.

Many of us struggle to get the support and buy-in to establish a proper and deliberate performance measurement methodology in our organisations. The timing just isn't right, or you just don't have a compelling enough case yet. One way to get started is to practice your own advice, personally.

Hoarding is a disorder where people have incredible difficulty parting with possessions, or an incredible compulsion to acquire more possessions. They, and everyone close to them, drown in clutter. Are you a hoarder... of KPIs?

Robert D. Behn is a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a passionate advocate for public sector performance. His regular Performance Leadership Report is always succinct and salient. His definition of performance management, versus performance measurement, clearly puts the responsibility on leade...

Work stress, projects behind schedule, and low productivity are all symptoms of an underlying problem with workload variability. You'll feel it as some months you can't get the important things even started, and other months you're pushing productivity past the redline. The solution lies in measuring the variation in workload, and not just the amount of it.

In NASCAR racing, you might be forgiven for thinking that a speedometer is a very important gauge for the driver. After all, racing is about speed, right? And speed should therefore be measured. But ironically, NASCAR drivers don't use a speedometer at all.

Guest author Martin Klubeck, author of Metrics: How to Improve Key Business Results, reminds us just how easy it is to fall into the trap of making our measures the end goal, and why we must make sure we stay connected with our intended results.

One of my performance measures is Measure Up Unsubscribe Rate, the proportion of readers who unsubscribe from this newsletter. Sometimes it's what I write about that makes them unsubscribe. And that can make the Measure Up Unsubscribe Rate will spike up. Should I worry about this?