Why You Should Start Small With a New KPI Methodology

One mistake organisations make in performance measurement is to not have a real methodology. They treat measuring performance as an ad hoc activity or event. But when you do adopt a performance measurement methodology, another mistake is to do too much too soon. Starting small is important for a few reasons...

Rushing into a full implementation of your new performance measurement methodology, without a strong enough performance culture (and how many of us can claim to have that?), is a recipe for failure:

You'll overwhelm people and burn them out.

You'll make mistakes without noticing, and leave them uncorrected.

You'll feel out of your depth and lack confidence when you need it most.

You'll fail to get a measurable return on investment for your measurement approach.

Starting small, just like a pilot test, has some very worthwhile advantages:

Advantage #1: Learn and master first.

Attending a training course doesn't make anyone a master. You have to implement and practice, fail and learn, before you can say you've earned your stripes.

Advantage #2: Prove a return on investment.

If you start with striving for an ROI on your measurement effort with a simple and small pilot implementation, it will be easier to keep that emphasis as you roll out more fully. Otherwise, you've just a found a way to waste more resources.

Advantage #3: Handle setbacks more easily

When you give yourself the opportunity to learn in a safe environment - like starting small - there is less consequence if you fail (and you will). So you will have more emotional energy to observe those failures stoically and collect up the learnings into a kit-bag o

f tips and tricks for when you facilitate others.

Advantage #4: Build real engagement, naturally.

Telling people to be involved in something new rarely builds buy-in. Teaching them, even, isn't enough to build buy-in. But when you can show them, that's when you start building buy-in. Believe me, attempting performance measurement without having buy-in first is a tremendously difficult endeavour that rarely works.

DISCUSSION:

Where would you pilot test a new performance measurement methodology? What performance challenge would be an ideal candidate to measure more meaningfully and produce a measurable improvement

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Article from Stacey Barr's blog