One of the reasons why we can't find meaningful performance measures for our goals has to do with whether the goals are about actions or results. Action-oriented goals aren't true goals, since goals should be about making a difference, not just doing stuff. ...

Justine G. asks: "How do you identify good KPIs for lofty strategic goals, like 'improve the health of citizens'?" (more…)

Questions like "Why did you choose that KPI?" and "Why didn't you choose this KPI?" and "What were we thinking?!" shouldn't be answered with "Um, I dunno!"

Does this sound back-to-front to you? It's not. Knowing your results before you look for measures is the only way to get the measures you need. (more…)

M William (Bill) Sermons, Director of the Alliance’s Homelessness Research Institute, specializes in cross-disciplinary research and program evaluation. As Director of the Homelessness Research Institute, he is responsible for advancing the Institute’s aim of building and disseminating knowledge that informs policy and practice.

In the Harvard Business Review this month, Martin Reeves of the Boston Consulting Group writes an interesting piece on how our increasingly uncertain world requires us to have a more deliberate strategy. He says our strategy needs a strategy. But with increasing uncertainty, is there still ...

Surveys are one of the common methods we use in business to gather data. We have customer surveys, employee surveys, corporate image surveys, and surveys just about anytime we want to collect data from people. And often you'll see these surveys listed in the KPI column in the business plan. BIG MISTAKE! Here's why:

Too many organisations measure what they can, because the data is available. But how do you measure what you need, even if the data isn't yet available? (more…)

As practitioners in the Land of Performance Measurement, we have our own version of Dorothy's 'Lions and tigers and bears' in the Land of Oz. We have activities, outputs and outcomes. Creatures that seem so much more frightening than they truly are, and mostly because we don't really understand whether and how we are supposed to measure them.

Don't even try and work out how much time, effort, money and opportunity we waste by investing in business strategies that don't truly work. Let's instead talk about how exactly we can go about executing our strategies in a way that tests if they're working, by isolating their effect on our desired performance results.