There is a statistically proven sweet spot for how many KPI data points you need before you can start using them and accurately interpreting signals from them.

When KPIs are not achieving their targets, performance improvement is needed. But rather than rushing to solutions prematurely, we need measurement for diagnosis. (mo...

The most useful way to see true signals of change in your KPI is to use an XmR chart. Here are five easy steps to build an XmR chart for your KPI. (more…)

We can't know if performance improves unless we know where it started. That's why we set a KPI baseline. Here's how to set your KPI baseline the right way! (more…)

This is a case study about the Area Agency on Aging at the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) use of XmR charts. It's by Kirsti Klaverkamp and Jerry Stigall, of Denver, Colorado. (more&h...

The tick-and-flick approach to reviewing KPIs, one at a time down the scorecard, won't ever reveal the insights about how to truly improve performance.

No KPI can ever give you perfect evidence of your goals. But too often we overestimate how good a KPI needs to be, to be "right". The truth is, KPIs aren't ever "right". You just want to be sure they are "not wrong".

People occasionally ask me whether we should measure the positive, or what we want more of, rather than the negative, what we want less of. Mostly they believe it should be the positive. But when does it matter? Or does it ever matter?

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...

Consider the measures your organisation currently uses. How many are calculated annually? Or quarterly? Or monthly? Or weekly? What's the rationale for having chosen that cadence of calculation? One of the bad habits of performance measurement is measuring too infrequently, and this means we miss important signals in our measures.