Statistical thinking is not so much about having knowledge of and being able to apply statistical techniques. It’s NOT about knowing how to perform a regression analysis or knowing the formula for putting a trend line through a time series.

Hundreds of subscribers to Measure Up ask me how to successfully measure staff performance. If you've known me for long enough, you'll know I will say: DON'T!! (more…)

To find the right performance measures, we must start with a clear definition of what a performance measure really is. How does your definition compare to this one? (more…...

Business Intelligence vendors are all about Big Data, Analytics and agile BI. They have all the answers for how to manage, analyse and report data faster and fancier, to enhance performance management. But are they really performance management experts?

It's getting close to becoming a natural law of performance management that performance reports only know how to grow, not how to shrink. Despite the fact that we all know large reports just won't be read, we still struggle to take information out of them.

They're so hot right now, sparklines. They thankfully bring some sanity to performance dashboards (goodbye goofy gauges). But they do have a limitation no-one seems to be talking about. (more…)

There are still managers around who think that the way to make performance improve is to hit people over the head with KPIs or performance measures. We know they're doing far more harm than good, but what can we do to stop them?

Alessandro asks: "If I'd like to build a BI product from scratch, I need to define specific KPIs divided by industry in order to have just a "big-picture". Instead of asking people specific questions, are there any standard KPIs for each industry?"

With the help of Doug Hubbard, author of "How to Measure Anything", we'll explore why you can abandon the pursuit of perfectly accurate data and measures. (more…)

There is a LOT of information out there about how to develop KPIs and measure performance. Most of it is impractical, unproven or doesn't work. How do you find the good advice, then? (more…)