44 Posts Found

Relying on averages, for anything, is a sure-fire method to cover up little differences that might have big meaning. An average removes the most interesting data from the discussion.

Don’t you want to know who is best, and who is worst, at something? Averages disguise this. Don’t you want to know what accounts for outlier performance, on either end? Averages cover this up.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sydney Finkelstein | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Management, Measurement

When measures are displayed in isolation of each other rather than with a chain of cause-and-effect linkages, then one cannot analyze how much influencing measures affect influenced measures. This is more than just leading indicators and lagging indicators. Those are timing relationships. A balanced scorecard reports the causal linkages, and its key performance indicators (KPIs) should be derived from a strategy map. Any strategic measurement … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Gary Cokins | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Strategy

While most companies find these four perspectives to be sufficient and logical, there’s no rule that says you can’t have more or different perspectives. Some companies feel their scorecards should specifically address corporate social responsibility, so they have introduced a fifth dimension called “environmental perspective” or ‘societal perspective.” Others add a perspective for suppliers and partners to cover this important constituency. Not-for-profit organizations often flip … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Frank Buytendijk | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Measurement

A good metric excels in eight different areas: business alignment, honest assessment, consistency, repeatability and reproducibility, actionability, time-series tracking, predictability, and peer comparability.

Content: Quotation | Author: Forrest W. Breyfogle III | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Just as companies parse KPIs into different buckets, the KPIs themselves can be fragmented into insightful silos of information, says Karen O’Leonard. “Many businesses use ‘employee turnover rates’ as a key metric, but we suggest you break down this KPI into more meaningful components like the turnover rates for critical roles—the high performers [who], were you to lose them, would cause significant business and financial … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Russ Banham | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Management, Measurement

The [Balanced Scorecard] article compares flying a modern jet aircraft with its many instruments and controls to managing a complex firm. Indeed where the relationship between an action and its result is well known, it is possible for humans to handle a large number of measures simultaneously. But success for a firm is not an easy matter of cause and effect. Some actions of considerable … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Ivor Morgan, Jay Rao | Source: Babson Insight | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Measuring the wrong things always happens in times of great change.

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Yankelovich | Source: Context Magazine | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Measurement

Most organizations are choking on performance data and have little understanding of what data are important (need to know) and what data are merely interesting (nice to know).

Many companies find it relatively easy to add new metrics to scorecards and dashboards, but few are good at weeding out metrics that are no longer relevant. The result is a bloated scorecard with more data points than … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jay Freeman | Source: Gallup Management Journal | Subjects: Management, Measurement

In business, it is often said that you manage what you measure. But it is also true that what we measure is a window into what we value—and into our values. Since most leaders remain comfortable managing only what they can measure, in a more interdependent world it has become important to develop a new framework for analyzing, and an independently confirmable method for measuring, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dov Seidman | Source: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Social Responsibility (ESG)

A CEO… should be tracking and managing by the numbers—the nonfinancial numbers. By the time financial results turn downward, it is far too late to act. Financial numbers measure the past and lead to “rearview mirror management.”

The numbers that predict the future are the Four Rs-employee retention and referrals, returns to labor (productivity), and relationships with customers (exhibited by loyalty and ownership behaviors such as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: James L. Heskett | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subject: Measurement

Reality is what we pay attention to, but measurement requires classification and classification requires abstraction. By paying attention to abstractions, we grasp the generic, but only at the expense of understanding the particular. This means that we lose the smell, feel, and touch of what’s going on right here, right now. And with that loss of the sensual, we lose our ability to respond quickly … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: David K. Hurst | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Measurement, Observations

The IEEE standard glossary of software engineering provides the following definitions of measures and metrics. A measure is a standard, unit, or result of measurement. A metric is a quantitative measure of the degree to which a system, entity, or process possesses a given attribute. Without a trend to follow or an expected value to compare against, a measure gives little or no information. It … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Atreyi Kankanhalli, Bernard C.Y. Tan | Subject: Measurement

Most organizations are good at collecting internally focused data, but few systematically provide insight about a company’s external environment. For example, only 21 percent regularly track how their competitors are performing. Business is not an us-vs.-us exercise, yet management reports rarely touch on the world outside.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Competition, Competitive Intelligence, Management, Measurement

We think we know what innovation means, but to study it, we use fiscal measures that don’t actually tell you much about innovation or invention. Consider patents. What are patents? They’re legal documents. They’re not in themselves a measure of inventiveness. Research and development spending is a measure of how much you spend on research and development. It doesn’t tell you anything about outputs.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Measurement

Every company has metrics that track performance. The key question is whether these metrics really provide visibility to performance as viewed by the customer.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Customer Related, Measurement

Marketing has a long history of paying attention to measurement and the creation of metrics, especially when it comes to claiming success, but little has been done to standardize the way that marketing defines success. The problem is that most of the metrics used to assess the outcomes of marketing activities are tactical and not directly relevant to the overall financial performance of the firm. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Measurement

Performance is dependent on ability, but the reverse does not hold true. Because an individual or group has the ability to do something does not necessarily mean they will do it. When competencies focus on abilities, values, or beliefs, they begin to stray from what is observable, understandable and measurable. And the link to performance becomes highly tenuous.

Content: Quotation | Source: TheWorkingManager.com | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Metrics can be a dangerous thing. Everyone is good at attaining a metric goal that’s given to them. If we drove a bad behavior to reach that number, are the metrics that we’re measuring correct?

Content: Quotation | Source: InformationWeek | Subjects: Management, Measurement

In a knowledge economy, am I measured by ideas per minute? That’s silly. It makes perfect sense to measure a field worker in bushels per hour, but in the emerging network economy, the measurement problem has become profound. We are not driving our economy very intelligently on the basis of a real-world set of measures. They’re way off the mark. People are saying, look, we’re … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Business 2.0 | Subjects: Management, Measurement

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Content: Quotation | Source: CEO Refresher | Subjects: Measurement, Wisdom