How to align KPIs to strategy and cascade throughout the organisation...

One of the most important keys to successfully aligning KPIs and performance measures to strategy is make sure your strategy is measurable in the first place! In particular, look out for:

• weasel words (like efficient or effective or quality or outcome) - they don't have clear enough meaning
  
  
• action-oriented goals that fail to articulate the intended performance results
  
  
• what exactly you are trying to measure (people versus process)

These resources will help you take a more critical look at your strategy, and make it measurable before you go on the search for meaningful measures and KPIs:

RESOURCE: How to make your strategy measurable (digital how-to kit)

This is one of my PuMP How-to Kits, and it's about how to make your strategy measurable. It's not about designing or setting your strategy, but about how to articulate it in a way that's easier to measure, easier to communicate and easier to cascade. It will teach you a technique called Results Mapping. Read more or buy this tool.

RESOURCE: How to Design Meaningful Performance Measures (digital how-to kit)

This is one of my PuMP How-to Kits, and it's about measure design. It's not about brainstorming or benchmarking or some vague approach to finding measures. It will challenge your thinking at the same time as walking you through 5 powerful steps to ensure you create the most meaningful measures that align to your strategy. Read more or buy this tool.

ARTICLE: Are you cascading your strategy, or fragmenting it?

The typical approach executive teams use to cascade, or roll out, their strategic direction is to produce a clear set of goals, objectives, critical success factors or a scorecard and then get each departmental or functional manager to take this on board and customize it for their part of the organisation. The trouble then begins… Read this article to get tips for what cascading strategy actually means.

ARTICLE: Are you measuring something meaningful?

If people don’t share a single, sharply focused, easily imaginable vision of a result they want to create, any effort to measure that result will waste time. And if you do successfully get some measures established, it’s likely they just won’t stimulate the excitement and motivation needed to make the result happen. Read this article and get tips for making your results easier to measure.

ARTICLE: Should you measure individual people's performance?

Performance Appraisal, Individual Performance Review, Personal Performance Development Plan. There are numerous names for this artifact of the post-1990’s organisation, but they are names for basically the same concept: the measurement, review, evaluation and management of the performance of an employee. And it is one of the most contentious management processes of them all! Read some thoughts about two schools of thought about measuring people.

AUDIO: Don Watson Radio Interview

The power of language when you write your strategy (that is, your goals or objectives) cannot be stressed enough. If you don't describe the outcomes you want to create in sensory rich, motivating language, you will likely measure the wrong things. Listen to what Don Watson, author of "Death Sentence" has to say about the impact language has on how we manage, in this 612 ABC Brisbane radio interview.

Want more?

If you'd like more information about designing meaningful measures, contact me.

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