A high-leverage strategic change initiative promises so much more than an ordinary one. But what exactly defines high-leverage? (more…)

A relevant KPI measures direct evidence of your goal. It tells you the degree to which your goal is being achieved. But when you look closer, many KPIs fail to do this. It's because of three mistakes in how we design those KPIs.

Meaningful KPIs are quantifiable, able to be monitored over time, and are direct evidence of the goals they measure. This practical study of 50 organisations reveals just how many organisations do (or don't!) have KPIs that are meaningful.

The purpose of a KPI performance dashboard is to interpret quickly and accurately how an organisation's top priority performance results are doing compared to target, and initiate action to close gaps between actual and target performance. But there are some KPI dashboard design mistakes that derail this purpose.

The implementation of evidence-based leadership is iterative. It's too profound a shift to happen in one go. And it will never happen if we wait to thoroughly research our current state, detail a change management plan, save enough budget to resource it all, and delay until the time is just right and the planets have lined up.

Measurement is the most practical way to create a performance culture that is capable of taking the journey to become a high-performance organisation. But it won't work quickly enough, or nearly as well, if it doesn't start with the senior leadership team.

The top two duties which only Senior Leaders can perform are building culture and setting strategic direction. That's no surprise. But what is a surprise to most leaders is that measuring the right things gives transformational leverage to building the right culture and setting a strategic direction that gets executed. And this needs some new mindsets for leaders, in order to tap into this tran...

They will never admit it out loud, or even to themselves, but many leaders are scared of KPIs. And it's for the same reasons most people are scared of KPIs. (more…)

One person that always seems to have fun around failure is Adam Savage, from Mythbusters. He’s like a big kid, wide-eyed and giggling, as he and his more stoic co-star, Jamie Hyneman, test all kinds of pop-culture myths, like whether you can ride a motorcycle on water, escape a turtled car under water, and put your hand into molten lead and not be injured. Adam routinely says that he doesn’t ca...

"Business decisions, as many of our colleagues in business and your own experience can attest, are frequently based on hope or fear, what others seem to be doing, what senior leaders have done and believe has worked in the past, and their dearly held ideologies - in short, on lots of things other than the facts... If doctors practiced medicine the way many companies practice management, there w...