Admit it - you've either heard or uttered these words when faced with a goal that was intangible or fluffy: "That's not measurable!" (more…)

Sometimes hard-to-measure strategic goals can be fixed in the measurement process (like how Step 2 of PuMP fixes the weasel word problem). But strategy can be hard to measure due to poor logic and poor structure, and this can't be fixed in the measurement process. We have to go back and rework the planning process to make the strategy sensible.

While this won't teach you how to implement PuMP for great KPIs, it will give you a snapshot of every thinking step in PuMP, that makes it such a great KPI methodology. (more…)

When we want people to understand and adopt a new idea, often we rush in, guns blazing, and overwhelm them with too much "how to", too soon. We might be excited about the new idea, but they will be wary. Another band wagon, another fad, another distraction from their "real work". So we need a gentler approach that starts from where they are, not where we are.

One of the main reasons that our performance measurement practice fails to produce good KPIs is that we rush through it to quickly. (more…)

I'm teaching the Melbourne PuMP Blueprint Workshop this week, and today's content included how to make your goals more measurable. One of the lovely participants in the workshop (thanks Steve!) showed me this video presented by Gerard Braud, at the International Association of Business Communicators 2012 World Conference: "

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.

Activity measures are easier to identify and implement, but they aren't good proxies for outcome measures. Follow these 7 logical steps to move from activity to outcome measures.