Every Strategy Management, Organizational Performance Management, and Operational Excellence framework, model, and approach stresses the importance of Key Performance Indicators (performance measures). Unfortunately, none of them provide a way to develop relevant or meaningful KPIs, so we fall back to brainstorming because it seems like an easy and fast solution.
But does brainstorming produce meaningful KPIs?
Does it save time? Is it a good use of resources?
Actually – not so much.
Brainstorming is neither an effective nor efficient approach to develop meaningful measures. In fact, brainstorming KPIs has hidden costs - and these costs are real in terms of time and resources.
Evidence of these costs is clear once we stand back and look. We can see evidence in the brainstorming session itself and even more downstream:
Time wasted in brainstorming sessions spent arguing and debating over which KPI is better, or pushing personal favorites.
Delays and effort spent getting stakeholder agreement and management approval to move forward with brainstormed KPIs.
Wrong measures being implemented and reported because the brainstormed KPIs didn’t have the specifics needed to implement.
Opportunities lost and extra costs from delays in improving performance.
Measures reported that just don’t provide meaningful or actionable insight.
Why does brainstorming KPIs create this waste? Here are just five reasons:
Brainstorming outputs usually aren’t real measures. Brainstorming produces things like milestones, and actions, and vague concepts. This means that in addition to the time spent brainstorming, we waste time and resources designing, documenting, and implementing so-called measures that don’t provide insight to help understand or improve performance.
Brainstorming starts with the wrong question, like “how could we measure this?” Brainstorming sessions almost never take the time to check if the goal is measurable or clarify the results intended.
Brainstorming doesn't use a deliberate approach to identify evidence. Brainstorming becomes more of a popularity contest than a critical analysis of which KPI will provide the best evidence of the goal. Meaningful measures need to be as relevant and feasible as possible – not just popular.
Brainstormed measures are often phrases too vague to be implemented. Outputs of brainstorming sessions are usually just a name, or label, or bumper sticker phrase without enough description or detail to implement quickly or bring it to life.
Brainstormed measures lack coherence as an interdependent set. Brainstorming measures doesn’t validate or visualize the cause – effect logic and interdependent relationships among the goals, measures, and drivers within the organization that make KPIs an insightful management tool.
Brainstorming is a wonderfully useful creativity tool that was designed to help to open minds, enable divergent thinking, and bring a wide range of ideas and possibilities to the table. But KPI development and selection requires a logic exercise to hone goals and identify quantifiable evidence.
We need a different approach to KPI selection, but what should we do instead (and why it works better)
Identifying KPIs and meaningful measures is all about quantifying evidence of the goal and achieving the desired results. The PuMP Performance Measure Blueprint (developed by Stacey Barr) provides techniques to develop and validate a coherent set of KPIs which provide that evidence:
We start by testing and improving goal statements for clarity and measurability.
Then we describe the evidence we’d observe if the goal was happening in the real world.
Next, we convert that evidence into a list of potential measures that quantify the evidence, satisfy the definition of what a measure really is, and follow the recipe for writing good measures.
Then we evaluate the strength and feasibility of each potential measure - with the highest scores of strength and feasibility indicating our best measures; the ones worth implementing.
Next, we draft a 1-page graphic illustrating the goals with their measures, the cause - effect logic, and interdependent relationships among them.
The PuMP Performance Measure Blueprint approach provides deliberate steps that use logic to find the best KPI for a goal. And it works every time, because:
PuMP provides a logical and traceable process to select KPIs, whereas brainstorming is more random and unstructured.
PuMP is collaborative in a focused way and invites contributions from everyone at appropriate times, which builds a lot of understanding, enhancement, and buy-in very early.
PuMP is deliberate in choosing the best evidence of the goal, rather than being a popularity contest based on personal agendas or favorites.
PuMP doesn’t waste time – it takes about 30 minutes to design a KPI for a measurable goal, and with a half-day, high-touch Measure Gallery to engage the wider group of stakeholders, the KPI is virtually always ready to be implemented right away.
PuMP provides a full picture of the logic, drivers, and interdependencies among the goals and their measures throughout the organization.
It’s very common for at least one person on the team using PuMP to say out loud: “This all makes so much sense. I can see the whole picture of how it fits together. I’m actually excited about using these measures!” The buy-in, clarity, and energy to bring their new measures to life is palpable. Brainstorming can’t ever achieve the same depth of meaningfulness and engagement in our measures, so quickly. And that’s why it wastes so much more time than we’re aware.
Learn more about PuMP and how to attend a
PuMP Performance Measure Blueprint Workshop
This post was co-authored with Stacey Barr and is an update of her post from December 19, 2017.
Brook Rolter is the founder of Rolter Associates which provides management, strategy, organization development consulting, and facilitation services to help organizations and managers integrate strategy, performance, and management practices for improved organizational performance. He is the Licensed Partner in the U.S for Stacey Barr, Pty. Ltd PuMP® Performance Measurement Blueprint programs and workshops.
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