If it was always that easy to turn the KPI cynics into KPI advocates, then the world would be a radically different place on account of all of us easily measuring exactly what mattered. But that ain’t the case, is it?

There are a few signs that your progress toward the right KPIs is being held up by people feeling cynical about the whole deal. Here are some of the things you might hear them say, and some tips for how to respond in a way that starts their journey toward KPI advocacy.

We’ve been doing okay without performance measures in the past, so why start now?

Rather than answering their question with a list of reasons to start measuring performance now, try a different tact. Challenge the assumption they’re making that the past was okay, or that okay is good enough today. Try something like this:

“I absolutely agree that we don’t want to change for change’s sake. We just don’t have time. But if we keep going the way we always have, it won’t stay good enough for long because as you know, the market is rapidly changing…”

The hidden agenda is that management are going to start hitting people over the head with the measures, demanding more from us, and cutting jobs.

There’s a bit of mind-reading going on here. Don’t bother trying to placate them with promises that their greatest fears are unfounded. You need to reframe that the measures are for them to use, not for the managers. Try something like this:

“Not if we beat them to it. Our plan is that the measures you guys come up with are for you to use to improve your processes and demonstrate objectively to management what support you need from them to achieve targets. You won’t be reporting the measures to management for them to use. You’ll be engaging them in a discussion about how performance improvement will happen.”

We have “real work” to do.

Poor time management isn’t the problem here. And better time management is not the solution. The problem is the belief that performance measurement isn’t real work. Raise this assumption and explore its implications. Try something like this:

“If performance measurement isn’t part of our real work, then that implies that checking if what we’re doing is adding value isn’t part of our real work. If we don’t believe we’re responsible for adding value through our work, what are we getting paid for exactly?”

TAKE ACTION:
Listen out for the objections that your managers and colleagues and staff offer up against performance measurement. What assumptions are they making that you can raise, and through some genuine questions, test the validity of?

IN THIS EPISODE:

Feature: How to Handle the KPI Cynics.
Q&A: Should you avoid picking the cynics for your Measures Team?
Quick Tip: Questions are sometimes better than answers.

Subscribe at iTunes or listen here:

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And they’ll more than likely fail to find useful performance information to improve their business performance any time soon. If ever. And here’s why:

Buy-in matters more than the perfect KPI.

If you search high and low and up hill and down dale and finally arrive at what you think are the perfect KPIs for your team or goals or organisation, I’ll bet there will be a group of people who don’t agree.

They’ll argue about lack of data availability, or that it doesn’t measure what they can control, or that it’s not appropriate to their unique situation. There won’t be enough buy-in to make the perfect KPIs work.

But if you have that same group of people collaborate to choose a few reasonably good KPIs that they feel confident in (and this IS possible with a good KPI design framework), you’ll be better off because those people will use the KPIs. And when a KPI is used is just about the only time it can add value to the organisation or business.

As time goes by, these people will use the KPIs to make at least some improvements in organisational performance. But they’ll also get better in their ability to choose better KPIs. Most of us learn best through experience than by being told.

It’s much harder to get better buy-in for existing KPIs than it is to get better KPIs when you have existing buy-in.

TAKE ACTION:
Where you’re currently struggling to find the perfect KPIs, stop and think for a moment… Is there a proxy or temporary KPI or performance measure that would give you enough information to get people focused and engaged on improving performance sooner (and finding better KPIs later)?

I opened it, read it and then hit “reply”:

“YOU ARE A COMPLETE NUT GREG!!!! This is fantastic. I was splitting my sides reading it. Is it for real? Are you honestly starting a newsletter for your colleagues? What a tremendous way to get (and keep) people engaged!”

Greg and his colleagues had gotten busy when they left after our Sydney 2010 Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop. They wasted not a moment in setting in motion their KPI development project, and just a few weeks later, Greg’s email arrived with the first edition of his measures newsletter, “The Daily Measure”.

The first section called “Napper Grabs KPI Lead” features a bar graph that shows each division’s progress along the steps of the Performance Measure Blueprint implementation process. Apparently Napper’s division was winning at that point!

The second section called “Results Map Blamed for Pizza Sales Increase” featured a picture of Greg’s organisation’s Results Map (like a strategy map, it highlights the performance results aligned to strategy, showing in one picture all the things worth measuring).

The discerning features of the Results Map are: each result in a circle of its own, results arranged in a hierarchy from strategic to operational levels, results linked to show important cause-effect relationships, and the circular layout to make the links easier to follow. The article was suggesting a link between increased pizza sales and the existence of this new Results Map. You just have to read it, it’s hilarious (the link is at the bottom of this article).

The point of sharing this with you is to point out that you don’t have to try too hard to create some fun around performance measurement. And that fun can truly feed the progress. Greg’s done it with a bit of casual competition with his KPI Progress Graph, and with humour in his pizza article. What are YOUR fun ideas for inspiring people to make progress with their KPIs?

TAKE ACTION:
Download a copy of Greg’s “The Daily Measure” newsletter [http://www.staceybarr.com/downloads/TheDailyMeasure.pdf] for inspiration for how you can keep your KPI projects on track and have a little fun with it too.

IN THIS EPISODE:

Feature: Inspiring People to Make KPI Progress.
Q&A: How do you keep performance management fresh?
Quick Tip: A cool way to keep track of your KPI project’s progress.

Subscribe at iTunes or listen here:

Download mp3

Here are the ingredients of a good KPI business case:

Part 1. Executive Summary

Write a short summary of your business case to invest time and energy into a robust and deliberate approach to developing meaningful performance measures or KPIs, emphasising the reasons why it’s so important now, what the realistic return on investment is and the recommended actions you want the audience to take in response to the business case.

Part 2. Reason for this business case

List your own reasons (and supporting evidence) for wanting to invest in a robust and deliberate approach to developing meaningful performance measures or KPIs. Consider your vision of performance measurement excellence, deficiencies in the current approach to performance measurement, and any specific performance problems that good measurement can solve for your organisation.

Part 3. Objectives and measures of success

You need to be clear how better performance measurement will impact your organisation’s or company’s performance. It won’t be enough for you to assume that ending up with good measures is an outcome that others will value. They won’t. They need to see the link between good measures and the bottom line impacts that matter to them. And paradoxically, it will help if you can articulate some measures of the success of having good organisational performance measures!

Part 4. Needs analysis

Provide a more detailed rationale behind your reasons for wanting to invest in a robust and deliberate approach to developing meaningful performance measures or KPIs. Consider stakeholder feedback, market forces, governance, continual failure to achieve business targets, and so on.

Part 5. Assumptions and constraints

Identify the most critical assumptions and constraints associated with taking a robust and deliberate approach to developing meaningful performance measures or KPIs. They are likely to include workload constraints, involvement of other key people in a Measures Team, whether existing measures can be challenged, and so on.

Part 6. Change management

Change management, in providing the training and systems to embed new performance measurement practices into the organization so it becomes “business as usual”, should be an integral part of the approach you take. List the ideas you have for ensuring that the new approach can be integrated into the processes and systems of your organisation, and become normal practices for people.

Part 7. Cost benefit analysis

List the various costs and benefits, and their financial impacts, associated with developing and implementing better performance measures. Costs will likely include training, consultants, staff time, new systems or system development. Benefits will likely include reduced rework, real improvements in performance (achieving more targets, more quickly) and savings from streamlining current data collection and reporting. Show the total estimated return on investment in successfully achieving the objectives of your business case.

Part 8. Due diligence

Gather and provide information that evaluates your recommended approach to better performance measurement against alternative approaches. Alternative approaches might include competing methodologies, solutions other than performance measurement, and even doing nothing is an alternative approach. Also include a risk assessment, outlining the significant risks associated with your business case, and how you recommend handling each of them. One big risk, for example, is people not giving the priority to their involvement in performance measurement.

Part 9. Recommended implementation and timing

Provide a moderately detailed description of your recommended course of action, the key milestones and timeframes. The key phases of any performance measurement implementation should include ensuring there is a measurable strategy, designing meaningful measures, getting buy-in, defining and implementing the measures, designing and implementing performance reports, ensuring measures are used to improve performance, and integrating new measurement practices into normal management processes.

TAKE ACTION:
Download my free KPI Business Case Template [http://www.staceybarr.com/downloads/KPIBusinessCase.doc] and work through it, tailoring it to suit your purposes and preparing your argument for the return on investment that good performance measurement can bring.

It will be a torrent of ‘yeah-buts’ – basically, objections to giving time, money or effort to performance measurement. Are you going to sit back and take it, or do something about it before it even happens?

OBJECTION 1: Performance measurement hasn’t worked in the past.

What’s happening with this objection is that the person is assuming that because there has so far been no successful approach to performance measurement, that means there can’t be a successful approach in the future. Your focus should be on raising and challenging this assumption, and offering an approach to performance measurement that acknowledges the causes of failure and show how that approach solves those causes.

A constructive response: “You’re absolutely right that performance measurement has had problems – we’ve got too many measures, people don’t find the measures useful, they don’t align to our strategy and staff are spending too much time collecting data for these useless measures. So if we want performance measurement to succeed, we obviously need to take a different approach, and an approach that deliberately solves and prevents these kinds of problems. Here’s how my proposed approach does that…”

OBJECTION 2: We don’t have time for performance measurement.

At the foundation of this objection is the assumption that everything people are currently doing is of a higher priority than performance measurement. We already know that people spend a lot of time on urgent things that aren’t in alignment with strategy or that are rework resulting from ineffective or inefficient processes. You simply need to highlight how good performance measures can reduce the time wasted on these kinds of activities, and therefore is of a higher priority than these activities.

A constructive response: “I agree – it seems like we’re all getting busier and busier and the last thing we need is something ELSE to try and squeeze into our days. And yet I can’t help noticing how a good proportion of the things we do can be done so much easier and quicker. For example, [insert some well-research examples from your organisation]. I truly believe that it’s better to risk taking time out from some of these urgent-but-not-important activities, in order to prevent them from continuing to happen in the future.”

OBJECTION 3: We already know what matters, performance measures won’t tell us anything new.

The assumption propping up this objection is that just by looking around or relying on our experience with the work we do, we can see and know everything that matters. But the truth is, we all have biases caused by our values and moods and what we notice and what we don’t notice. And these biases prevent us from seeing objectively the patterns and trends that data can show us more quickly and easily. It’s not hard to demonstrate this with a few examples of how data has led people to surprising and valuable insights they otherwise would have missed.

A constructive response: “Our people have a fantastic knowledge of the work they do and a very strong commitment to doing their best. Our job is to empower them, so they can more easily focus on what will produce the best results. We can’t expect them to simultaneously watch the big picture as well as what’s right in front of them. Performance measures are great for showing them what’s happening in the big picture, quickly and easily, so they can make the best choices about what’s currently in front of them. For example, [insert some examples of how performance measures have produced insights that no-one noticed from just looking around].”

Be prepared, respectful, honest and focused on the big picture.

Handling objections to performance measurement requires that you dig a little deeper to understand the assumptions people are making that lead to their objections, raising those assumptions so everyone realises they are there, and then stimulating some dialogue to move beyond the objection.

It’s not about being a smarty-pants or winning a debate with the person who voices the objection. It’s about elevating the dialogue to a constructive level, so you can all get a better understanding and movement forward.

TAKE ACTION:
Which of these three objections is blocking your path to better performance measurement? Take pen to paper for 15 minutes and prepare some well-informed, respectful and constructive responses to the ways you expect this objection to be expressed by your managers or colleagues.

The Executive Directors hated them. They complained that they were all too academic, measured things well outside their control and rejected them altogether.

During the workshop, we systematically discussed each of the Corporate Goals and what the important results were that they would see if the Goals were successfully achieved. We discussed the evidence of those results and the Executive Directors suggested potential measures, evaluated them, and then chose between one and three measures for each Goal.

The measures the Executive Directors selected were very, very similar to the measures that Michelle and the Strategy Team had been recommending for the past year!

What happened? I certainly didn’t have any magical influence over the Executive Directors’ choice of measures. Something else was going on, and that “something else” is the secret to buy-in and engagement in performance measurement:

For someone to buy-in and have ownership of performance measures, they have to be personally and actively part of the dialogue that designs, discusses and decides on those measures.

Don’t give people measures. Give them time and space to discuss the real meaning of the results they are to achieve, and to design and select the measures they believe are the most meaningful and feasible.

The sophistication of your performance measures is not nearly as important as people’s ownership of them. You can improve the sophistication when people have ownership, but it’s much harder to increase ownership of measures that they didn’t take a hand in creating.

TAKING ACTION:

Rather than putting effort into selling a suite of measures, put that same effort into involving people in a workshop to design their own measures. There is one simple but very transformational tool I can suggest to help you do this: Designing Meaningful Performance Measures How-to Kit, which will help you design and run a measure design workshop just like the one I ran for the Executive Directors in this story.

A pilot is a small and focused trial run to test an approach, before deciding if and how to implement that approach more fully. Pilot tests are often used to test new business procedures, technology, medications and even market research questionnaires and surveys. They’re a bit like a fishbowl – you contain it in a small time and space and watch what happens.

If you’ve decided to start with a pilot test of the PuMP Performance Measure Blueprint – or any other measurement methodology – then, as with any pilot, you’re not only implementing the approach but you’re also evaluating the approach too. So even though it’s a quick and simple version of what you’re hoping to implement more fully later, don’t get blasé and think that your PuMP pilot doesn’t need careful planning. It does, if you’re going to get the most leverage from it.

Start small. Choose just one team or one process or one strategic goal to develop measures for. Don’t give in to the temptation of scope-creep! The more ruthlessly you focus the first time through, the more success you’ll likely have.

Involve a small group of about three to five willing volunteers so you don’t have cynicism fighting the momentum first time through. They’ll be valuable to involve in subsequent performance measure projects, because they’ll become the strongest advocates. But for now, give yourself all the conditions you can which will support your short-term success.

Set a short timeframe and darn well stick to it! I find that with a small focus, a six-week timeframe is realistic to select, implement and start using your first meaningful performance measures.

Have a plan that draws on the simplest application of PuMP or your chosen performance measurement methodology, but make sure you work all the way through the process, don’t just stop after designing some measures. Bring them to life and use them to test their true value.

Build time in to reflect and review the approach you took, and design your way onward and outward with the next phase of implementation.

Write up your pilot experience as a case study, and share it around with the people you’d like to get involved in next phase of performance measure implementation. Encourage the interest and ownership to grow organically – don’t force it.

Build the critical mass by taking a few more “pilot approaches”, until you get enough support and leadership to make PuMP your corporately adopted measure development framework.

TAKING ACTION:
Get a very quick and easy KPI success by choosing just one area your team needs to improve and monitor, and follow the 12-step Getting Started With Performance Measures process to pilot test a good measurement approach. Build up the momentum through small successes!

Want to know how to boost your authenticity?

What do you BELIEVE about performance measurement?

Why do you believe we should measure performance? What do you believe a performance measure really is (and is not)? Do you believe it’s more important to measure people, or processes? Your authenticity comes from well grounded beliefs, not just adopting someone else’s views (not even mine!).

A sample of my beliefs about performance measurement are:

• the purpose of performance measures is to focus us, to give us feedback and to be a fulcrum to leverage faster performance improvement
• milestones, like “implement Project X by December 2011″, are not performance measures
• measures are tools to help people improve performance, not tools to measure people’s performance

What do you KNOW about performance measurement?

How many of the popular performance measurement frameworks do you have a working knowledge of, like the Balanced Scorecard or Performance Prism? What are your favourite performance measurement resources, which you look to regularly to grow your knowledge? Do you know what the most common struggles are that people have with performance measurement? Who are the authors that have most influenced your views of performance measurement?

For me, I relentlessly continue to grow my knowledge about performance measurement. In fact, that’s one of the reasons I love my Measures & More Mastermind Program so much – I get to personally interview and learn from the world’s thought leaders on performance measurement and related subjects.

What are your SKILLS in performance measurement?

Do you know how to make a seemingly immeasurable strategy or goal or objective measurable? Can you design meaningful performance measures when it’s not obvious what the right measures are? Can you define the details needed to ensure that a performance measure is implemented as it was intended to be? Can you design engaging and sensible reports and dashboards?

Much of my own performance measurement skill developed through an eclectic mix of training and experience, including post-graduate study in statistics, quality management and process improvement, neuro linguistic programming, testing and experimenting. These are the roots from which PuMP and the Performance Measure Blueprint have evolved.

What is your EXPERIENCE in performance measurement?

Have you got a journal where you record your personal learning and insights in performance measurement? How have you tailored other people’s approaches to work better for your organisation? Have you got some measurement stories or anecdotes from your personal experience that you use to share performance measurement learning and insights with others?

I create my own mottos, which distill some of the most important lessons I’ve had in performance measurement into simple, shareable reminders:

• patterns, not points (don’t compare this month to last month)
• useful, not just interesting (don’t measure it unless it really matters)
• engagement matters more than excellence (a perfect measure is useless if no-one owns it)

What is your PASSION for performance measurement?

Why do you care about performance measurement? Do you feel compelled to make a real difference in the world? Do you love to help people get focused on goals that matter? What’s your personal vision for performance measurement in your organisation, or in your career?

My personal passion for performance measurement comes from a love of clarity and focus, an intense desire to know rather than assume, a disdain for the waste that comes from uninformed decisions. And my vision is to professionalise the Performance Measurement Practitioner role so we can work together to make performance measurement a natural part of doing business.

Authenticity = Beliefs + Knowledge + Skill + Experience + Passion

When you’re authentic, people are drawn to you. They listen to you, they seek your advice, they ask for your help, they do what you suggest. Authenticity is of paramount importance to every Performance Measurement Practitioner.

TAKING ACTION:
Where could you deepen your own performance measurement authenticity? Pick one thing, do it, and see how you feel, and how others respond to you.