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.

These are soft and subjective things... love, loyalty, trust, satisfaction, engagement, commitment, pride. They are feelings that people have toward other things, like our products or services or brand. So it's tempting to want a performance measure of these things, as evidence of our success. But I'm not so sure we should bother...

Over the past 10 years of Measure Up's life, over 13,000 subscribers have shared their biggest KPI questions with me. Almost 90% of all those questions come down to a core set of 11 questions. Only one of these is the right question to answer first.