Imagine there is a universe of measures. It's the all-encompassing collection of anything an organisation happens to measure. Navigating through the universe of measures, to decide how, when, why and whether to use each of them, is a massively overwhelming task.

Measuring performance isn't about ticking boxes to say you've implemented your strategy. It's much more about continually improving the results that are currently most important to your organisation's success. So when you find resistance to performance measurement, often it's because there isn't a continuous improvement philosophy.

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.

Measure Up reader, Paul O, asks: How do I educate my clients (and win new ones) in SMB of the power and ROI behind great KPIs? (more…)