When you struggle to find meaningful measures for your strategic goals, there are a few problems that have to be fixed. I've written passionately and prolifically about how weasel words make goals immeasurable. And there's another problem too, called multi-focus. Multi-focus is when we blend several performance results into a single goal statement....

The most common question people ask when they need performance measures (for whatever reason) is also the worst question you can try to answer. It's the worst question because it sends everyone down a rabbit hole that's too hard to wiggle out of, and the result is measures that suck.

I've written about two very powerful graphs to use on performance dashboards, or in performance reports that need to be concise: my version of Stephen Few's bullet graph, and my version of Edward Tufte's sparkline (my version is called a smartline). Is one better than the other?

Most managers and executives will never have truly transformational performance measures because they aren't prepared to pay the price for them. The price isn't a consultant's invoice, or a training registration fee, or a swanky dashboard. The price is discomfort. And for many, it would seem, this price is simply too high.