Personnel satisfaction survey

You need to know if your personnel is satisfied. Either because some are claiming salary raises, or because you are losing people, or because you need to let them know there will be no raise, or because it is said that only satisfied people produce satisfied clients...

Avoid the extensive collection of 60 questions applied every 2 years: use a more practical method, one which provides guidance for simple, necessary and effective actions with more frequent measurements, and which will be part of your routine.

Here comes the question... after all, what does it really mean to be satisfied? The most practical thing is to define satisfaction as the difference between what the person expects (or aspires to have, who knows) and what he or she perceives (feels, receives, believes) to have. It’s about this. It is as simple as that: satisfaction = expectation – perception. And it varies to the extent that expectations evolve (they talked about a raise, didn't they?), or perceptions alter (oh, now I understand how benefits work!)

If it is so, then I just need to seek to know what a person perceives, the things he or she values.

The survey takes 1 minute, I recommend to repeat it every 3 months, and to take the most important actions in the first week after the survey. I've been doing it for more than 20 years. It works. It makes me take important actions, solving problems I didn't even know existed; and it is easy to keep it inn operation, with quarterly control items, on my results chart.

 The image above shows how it works.

Every three months ask supervisors to apply the survey to their subordinates. It is common for all to be in the same room, answer the survey and hand the form in with their names on it; no one keeps any copy or notes on how they responded the survey.

Before handing out the first questionnaire, on a separate copy of the form the supervisor must write down how he or she thinks the subordinate will answer it.

In all surveys the previous one will be used as reference. In the initial survey, the previous one will be his pre-assessment.

The most important actions are originated when dealing with anomalies (strong changes between one survey and the other). In the example above, the biggest difference appeared in the leadership item.

It's sunk in - in the sea quality!

It is very similar to what is written in the New Testament: suddenly the Holy Spirit descended upon the unbeliever. Suddenly, it had sunk in!

At the beginning of the Christian era, people suddenly began to understand and practice to love one's neighbour; at the end of the 20th century, we learned to love our clients as we love ourselves..!

When something sinks in it is a very obvious phenomenon. It brings a lot of attention. If in your company it hasn't "sunk in - in the sea of Quality" yet... read some examples of other people's experiences.

Maybe they will help you realize that some boats are not sailing well in their environment and understand where they have to go to fix the sails...

THE OVEN'S VAULT HAS COLLAPSED - In an electric oven with steel heated to 1600 degrees centigrade, the firebrick vault wouldn't last longer than a week. People learned how to make the most of it: when it collapsed, the maintenance staff would make other repairs, while the bricklayers remade the vault. Since firebricks were very expensive, the production team kept hoping the vault would last a bit longer, as this meant the cost per steel ton decreased. When it finally collapsed, the maintenance team would be called in the middle of the night to save time: the earlier the oven began to produce again, the better the steel mill results at the end of the month.

One day someone decided to interrupt the vault's life every Thursday at 8 a.m. A waste of firebricks, which could endure a few more hours? The stop being well organized, with a relaxed staff and the material at hand, it took way less time and the repairs were made with greater quality. Production increased, firebrick costs decreased. Doing it right was - so people realized - cheaper!

RHYTHM OF SLAG REMOVAL - During the same period there was another surprising finding. The practice was to always remove the slag as fast as possible. A consultant (a retired American) asked how much time was necessary to do it, he was told 80 minutes, but by examining the records he verified that the actual time varied between 75 and 160 minutes! He managed to standardize the time at 90 minutes. But 90, 90, 90, always 90. When the first removal of less than 90 minutes occurred, it wasn't poured - it was left ready and they waited until the 90 minutes was complete - it all began to sink in. When the process of 90 min was mastered, it was decreased to 85, then 80.... I don't know how long it takes today, but 20 years ago a removal was ready in 60 minutes. It was learned then that is faster to do things without haste.

ROLLING MILL INTERRUPTIONS - if a machine is producing for longer, the production increases, which, of course, is good. This is why the time of rolling mill interruptions was carefully examined. When it stopped, repairs were necessary to make it work again. This happened many times a day. The team was trained, engaged and agile: they were able to make it work again in less and less time and the total time of interruptions at the end of the month,... increased!

The indicator was changed. The number of interruptions started to be measured instead of the total time of interruption monthly. The rule was then to repair without haste, and well. The time

spent repairing increased, but the number of stops dropped drastically and the total downtime decreased a lot. We learned then that doing things carefully, even if it means spending more time... make us lose less time!

THE CHEAPEST WORK: I learned with Fúlvio Petracco, and relearned with my son, almost 40 years later: the cheapest work is the one that is not done; the second cheapest work is the one done well!

Doing things with quality is faster, cheaper and it ends up being better.

When the majority of the people who make the decisions in a company learn that and make their decisions accordingly - we can say that, in that company, it has finally sunk in - in the sea of Quality!

How to explain it to a martian? (Non Quality cases)

 

Stanislaw Ponte Preta was the fictitious name of a communicator who created the FBAPa - Festival de Besteiras que Assola o País (Festival of the Nonsense that takes the Country by assault). He presented routine cases weekly that were just ridiculous, but with which we were used to live...

Imagine having to explain to a Martian - or, worst, to an Argentinian - why we accept living with collective icons of non quality such as...

ELEVATORS - from north to south, from east to west, all over the country elevator doors have on their side this highly important warning, that we need to be sure the elevator is in front of us before we step inside them. Extreme lack of common sense, though very competently watched for. Find an elevator that will not display this "fantastic" warning on one of the floors it opens to. Let me know if you do.

SPEED CONTROLLER - the maximum speed limit on roads should simply be obeyed In Brazil, if there is a speed controller, this must be informed in a perfect manner, so that the driver can slow down and avoid a ticket. As a result, you just have to drive within the law when you are in a road stretch that is covered by speed control. This, of course, doesn't mean much for our "safe" Brazilian roads, where so few accidents happen. The word "to occur" (in a word play with the Portuguese "ocorrer" and the word for "run", which is "correr") is especially adequate here.

HIGHWAY POLICE STATIONS- the speed limit allowed (as shown on the road signs) is ridiculous, so no one respects it. If I do not have to obey the safety signs in front of the police station.... will I obey them afterwards, on a dangerous curve?

ZERO HORA (newspaper) SUBSCRIPTION: of course, it is not just this newspaper. But it is an excellent example of my point. I'v had a subscription for 25 years and paid more for it than if I was to buy a new subscription today. With all sales promotions taken into account. The price table is just different. Cancel your old subscription and buy a new one exactly like it was. It's way cheaper!

The way to establish a connection - 1 -

 The way to establish a connection is a free rendering of a gaucho's expression, which can be simply understood as a way of hiring, with the idea that it is the simplest thing: practical and well conceived - nothing to do with red tape, legal counseling and so on.

The way to establish a connection reminds me of delightful stories, which marvel us with the simplicity and effectiveness of the solution found. The book Freakonomics (Campus) presents some more sophisticated cases about the theme, but equally clarifying.

HEALTH - a hospital hired a city's health care at a fixed price - something like 17 R$ / life/ month. The number of C cuts decreased 20%.

STORE SERCVICE - sales commission is for the group, not the individual. People pressure colleagues to help, instead of trying to surpass them. A client can finally touch products without being annoyed by a sales person. It's the end of the I-am-just-looking syndrome. Client satisfaction grows, and sales value grows with it.

TELEPHONE SERVICE - the contractor receives a fixed value for each connected client. If the number of repairs increases beyond the level agreed on, the percentage decreases drastically. WHen receiving for a service rendered, it was usual for a technician to climb a post and simply exchange the bad line with a neighbor's - who would then complain about it, and so one more service would be needed. With the new rule, the contractor gives their best when building a new line - defects will increase their work and put their percentage gain at risk!

GENERIC - when hiring professionals for jobs, quality must be taken care of - the contractor will care for their own productivity. When hiring by the hour, more attention must be paid to the time the person hired is spending, he/she will take their time to do things with a thought for quality. Good ways of establishing connections avoid this dilemma.

THE ROLLING MILL INTERRUPTIONS - when measuring the interruption time, the team hurries, does things wrong, rates don't improve. When counting the number of interruptions, the team gives their best, does things calmly and well - interruption times decrease!

VOLUNTEER GROUPS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS - if the award is based on the result value to the company, and shared among group members, 3 things happen:

* people don't want dead weight in their group, groups are smaller, with only those who are necessary for members - the boss can relax, the group will take good care of this detail;

* the result value is carefully checked by the cost and accounting area, there are no wild guesses;

* the group chooses SMART - relevant, and reachable - goals. They are not likely to work for nothing.

Rules for Assuring Poor Performance

Imagine I took over the management of a poorly performing organization and wanted to keep it that way. For example, I might not want it to grow so quickly that it would leave me less time to pursue my hobbies and golf. What steps would I take?

First, I would ensure that all of the managers and employees are totally ignorant of the executive team's strategy. That way no one will understand how the work they do each week or each month contributes to successfully achieving the strategy. Next, I would figure out ways to insure that managers and employees don't trust one another. I would discourage dissent and debate. It would be tricky to preserve some level of harmony by not allowing healthy conflict among managers that are already distrustful of each other, but I think I could do it.

I have recently heard about this new trend of “business analytics.” I will stop any employee trying to use software for analysis. My IT department should have some sort of software to detect it.

Next, I would avoid holding anyone accountable. That would be fairly easy because I would disallow reporting of performance measures. Anyone mentioning the phrase “the balanced scorecard” would be summarily fired. I would try to disallow setting of targets, but some managers have a nasty habit of liking them. I think those managers believe that if they could make it appear that they are better performers than others, that I would then reward them with a “pay for performance” bonus system. If I allow people to be motivated this way, performance might improve. I'm not going to fall for that trick.

I would freeze our managerial accounting system to remain in its archaic state. It was probably designed in the 1950s, but our external financial auditors would always be giving us an OK grade. I'd allow managers to hire more support overhead to manage the resulting complexity, but I'd preserve the primitive overhead cost allocations to processes, products and customers using those distorting and misleading broad averages, like product sales volume or number of units produced. Using activity-based costing (ABC) would be forbidden. Most employees would already know that these cost allocations cause big cost errors, but I would want to keep them guessing about which products and customers make or lose money and what it actually costs to perform our key business processes. I don't think my financial controller will correct this, but I need to keep a watchful eye because my accountants are getting much smarter about how to improve operations and serve as strategic advisors to me.

We would need to be careful about how much information we collect and report about our customers. Obviously we'd report their sales volume data, but I would not segment our customers into any groupings. I'd keep sales reporting at a lump sum level. I don't want anyone asking questions like, “Which types of customers should we retain, grow, acquire or win back from competitors?” To keep our company from tanking, I would encourage sales growth by putting big signs in the marketing department saying, “More sales at any cost!” I'd prevent the CFO from any thoughts of measuring customer profitability. But that would be easy because our arcane cost accounting system wouldn't be capable of calculating that information. The marketing people typically spend their budget with a “spray and pray” approach, anyway. Targeting specific types of customers and getting a high-yield payback from our marketing spend would be outside their level of thinking. I'd maintain our advertising spending as the “black hole” that no one understands.

I would, of course, implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. I wouldn't want to be at a cocktail party with other executives and admit I don't have one. That would be too embarrassing, like a teenager without an iPod. Luckily, ERP systems alone won't improve performance; they produce mountains of transactional data for daily control but not meaningful information from which anyone could make wise judgments or good decisions.

Our budgeting system would be another way to assure our poor performance. Since the budget numbers are obsolete a couple of months after we begin the fiscal year, assembling the budget for six months during the prior year would provide a great distraction and prevent anyone from working on more important things. Plus I love sending the budget back down a few times to be redone to lower the budgeted costs. Everyone moans – more assurance for poor performance.

We'd squeeze our suppliers. We could talk about partnering and collaboration, but any attempt to actually do so would be squashed immediately. Never trust a supplier. If you drive one out of business, you can always find another.

I don't think I could stop employees from using spreadsheets. They are contagious. But since every department would have their own spreadsheets, it would be like a Tower of Babel. Employees would waste a lot of time trying to make their numbers match. Those employees with secret spreadsheets might want to use them for forecasting and planning. I'd put a stop to that by calling it gambling and promote our company as being conservative. Gambling is for fools, so I'd set a policy forbidding risk taking.

I know that operating a poorly performing business is an extremely difficult job, but I think I'd be up to the task. Suppressing the efforts of all those employees and managers who want to think, analyze, contribute and make the business successful requires constant vigilance. The business world is full of subversive ideas that could hamstring my efforts to keep the business floundering aimlessly.

I am particularly concerned about this new concept called “enterprise performance management.” Whatever it is, I will stop it from happening. I believe that with hard work and dedication, I could keep any company from reaching its profit-making potential.

Gary Cokins, CPIM (gcokins@garycokins.com; phone 919 720 2718) http://www.garycokins.com

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and book author in business analytics and enterprise performance management systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC, an advisory firm located www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. He then worked 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, EDS, and SAS.

Simplifying... innovation!

As on previous occasions, we are as if coating the old to sell it better. Treaties, lectures, studies, discussions, norms, awards... innovating - is it a novelty?

I asked professor Falconi, on the PGQP (The Quality Program in Southern Brazil) awards event stage, and he gave me the same answer I stand for: "innovating" is something we have always done, and in the language of quality this has been explained since the middle of the past century as a consequence of Juran's trilogy.

But how do we conceive, measure or evaluate it? I've asked many people and happened to received from an young man (the young are the ones who best understand this) an answer that defeats all theories: Innovation has 3 evaluation vectors: originality (from an inconsequential idea to a radical one), coverage (it can reach me, or it can reach the world), and the results it generates (affecting my pocket or the whole of civilization). Rate this as you wish and change the subject...

In the end, what matters in innovation is to speak less and do more.

It is not worth doing anything else if in your environment three processes will fail to be working properly:

collaborator suggestions - one piece of consistent feedback is enough for surveys to multiply, it is not necessary to have a marketing campaign;

new product development - as a robust process, managed as though it were the most important process in the company;

a stimulating climate - one in which errors are accepted and the PDCA runs the other way: instead of avoiding error repetition, one acts to repeat what is being done right.... 

The Higher You Are, the Less You Know

I recently participated in a provocative discussion thread of a website where the question was asked, “Why do executives fail to act on proposed ideas that could save a company substantial amounts of money?” I was expecting a debate between defenders of an executive team’s prudence and attackers of an executive team’s complacency and competence. To my surprise, all of the comments were of the latter type. Maybe every one of them took angry pills the day they posted their opinion.

I am unsure of the correct answer. I do want to give executives the benefit of the doubt. I sense that an explanation for less risk taking by executives involves the emergence of business analytics and Big Data. It can be explained with a pyramid depicting how power and influence of individuals affects types of decisions.

A power and influence pyramid

The savvy executives are realizing they must now delegate and distribute decision rights deeper down into their organization to empowered managers and employees. This is because of the exponentially growing mountain of data, both structured (numbers) and unstructured (text) including social media, and a speed-up and volatile world. Executives can no longer hoard decisions at the C-suite level. In my pyramid the executives are at the top just like in an organization chart. Their decision types are strategic ones. As examples, what is our organization’s mission? What products and services should we offer to maximize value to our constituents? What altered strategic direction should we navigate our organization toward?

In contrast, at the lower levels of the pyramid are operational types of decisions that should be made by employees who ideally have had the strategy communicated to them by the executives (via a strategy map, scorecard, and dashboards).

With expanding Big Data, the base of this pyramid is widening, and executives are realizing it is futile for them to be able to explore, investigate, and comprehend this massive treasure trove of data. This is why the role of analysts (think “data scientist”) is emerging as being mission-critical. Executives cannot do it all. They must now delegate decision making, and provide analytical tools and capabilities for decisioning to their workforce.

Performance improvement levers

An impediment on improvement is an organization’s approvals process. Too many managers may be involved. Performance improvement actions are the consequence of thousands of daily decisions made by employees. There are two powerful levers for performance improvement and more specifically the execution of the executive team’s formulated strategy: (1) as mentioned, clarifying decision rights, and (2) designing effective information flows.

1. Clarifying decision rights – As organizations grow in size, the approval process gets complex and foggy. Employees become unsure where one person’s accountability begins and another’s ends. Workarounds then subvert formal hierarchical reporting relationships. Clarifying who has what decision-making authority and empowering decentralized decisions lower into the organization brings mission-critical agility – as long as trust is given by the executives and second-guessing by supervisors is minimized. But with more decision rights must come more accountability with consequences. This is the domain of performance indicators against targets and motivational methods.

2. Designing effective information flows – Decisions are based on information. Too often information flows are blocked by organizational silos. Collaboration is important and enabled by cross-functional information flows. To complicate matters, logical and judicious decisions are constrained by the type and quality of information available to employees. Some organizations simply have inconsistent and poor-quality data. Even with a new transactional business system, such as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) system, organizations drown in oceans of data but starve for information in a form that business analytics can mine and that can be quickly interpreted in the context of a problem or needed decision.

Business intelligence does equate to an intelligent business

Executives may be brilliant strategists. But strategists need foot soldiers to carry out tasks. The higher the executives are, the less they can know about what is happening. Yes, there can be summarized reporting and executive scorecards and dashboards. But monitoring the dials is not the same thing as moving the dials.

The era of widespread use of analytics is in its earliest stage. If competency by the work force with analytics is not now a top five priority with an organization, just wait a couple of years. It will be. It is a competitive edge. 

Gary Cokins, CPIM (gcokins@garycokins.com; phone 919 720 2718) http://www.garycokins.com

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and book author in business analytics and enterprise performance management systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC, an advisory firm located www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. He then worked 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, EDS, and SAS.

A mission is a flame to be taken forward

Respecting or cultivating tradition does not mean to be carrying ashes. It means to continue taking the flame forward!

All organizations are created to solve a problem that a group of people could not solve by acting in an isolated manner.

However, changes in the environment, changes in command and financial pressures may cause this focus to be lost with the passage of time.

Clubs start living on the income coming from the rental of their facilities, or change course in trying to meet their current members' demands - and end up losing their soul.

Business associations end up losing their meaning entirely due to the evolution in their founders' businesses.

There are companies built to explore a mine that is gradually extinguished, or a technology that becomes obsolete.

When the mission ends or is abandoned, an almost obvious option is to rebuild the organization.

Rebuilding means to reunite what is left from the time of the entrepreneurs and presenting the crucial question: considering the current conditions, would it be wise for us to gather and create an organization like the one we have?

Is it worth to continue carrying these ashes, or do we have the strength to continue taking a flame forward?

Exceptional EPM / CPM Systems are an Exception

Many organizations over-rate the quality of their enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM / CPM) methods and supporting software systems as well as exaggerate how comprehensive and integrated they are. For example, when you ask executives how well they measure and report their costs and non-financial performance measures, most proudly boast that they are very good. However, this is inconsistent and conflicts with surveys where anonymous replies from mid-level managers candidly score their scaled answers as “needs much improvement.”

Every organization cannot be above average!

What makes exceptionally good EPM / CPM systems exceptional?

Rather than try to be a sociologist and psychiatrist to explain the contradictions of executives boasting superiority while anonymously answered surveys reveal inferiority, let’s simply describe the full vision of an effective EPM / CPM system that organizations should aspire to.

First, we need to clarify some terms and related confusion. EPM / CPM is not a system and is definitely not a process. It is the integration of multiple managerial methods – and most of them have been around for decades arguably even before there were computers. EPM / CPM is also not just a CFO initiative with a bunch of scorecard and dashboard dials. It is much broader. Its purpose is not about monitoring the dials but rather moving the dials.

What makes for exceptionally good EPM / CPM is that its multiple managerial methods are not only each effective but also they are seamlessly integrated and imbedded with analytics all flavors. Examples of analytics are segmentation, clustering, regression, and correlation analysis.

EPM / CPM is like musical instruments in an orchestra

I like to think of the various EPM / CPM methods as an analogy of musical instruments in an orchestra. An orchestra’s conductor does not raise his or her baton to the strings, woodwinds, percussion, and brass and say, “Now everyone play loud.” They seek balance and guide the symphony composer’s fluctuations in rhythm and tone.

Here are my six main groupings of the EPM / CPM methods – its musical instrument sections:

Strategic planning and execution – This is where a strategy map and its associated balanced scorecard fits in. Together they serve to navigate the organization to fulfill the organization’s mission and vision and the executive team’s strategy to meet the mission’s calling. The executives’ role is to set the strategic direction to answer the question “Where do we want to go?” Through use of correctly defined key performance indicators (KPIs) with targets, then the employees’ priorities, actions, projects, and processes are aligned with the executives’ formulated strategy.

Cost visibility and driver behavior – For commercial companies this is where profitability analysis fits in for products, standard services, channels, and customers. For public sector government organizations this is where understanding the costs of their outputs that consume processes and resources fits in. Activity-based costing (ABC) principles are foundational by modeling cause-and-effect relationships based on business and cost drivers. This involves progressive not traditional managerial accounting.

Customer intelligence – This is where powerful marketing and sales methods are applied to retain, grow, win-back, and acquire profitable, not unprofitable, customers. The tools are often referenced as customer relationship management (CRM) software applications. But the CRM data is merely a foundation. Analytics, supported by software, leverage CRM data to define actions to create more profit lift from customers. They impact the behavior of customers from being satisfied to being loyal.

Forecasting, planning, and predictive analytics – Data mining typically examines historical data “through the rear-view mirror.” This EPM / CPM grouping shifts attention to look forward through the windshield. The benefit of more accurate forecasts is there is reduced uncertainty. Forecasts of future volume and mix are core independent variables from which so many dependent variables have relationships and can therefore be calculated and managed. Examples of dependent variables are the future headcount workforce and spending levels. CFOs increasingly look to driver-based budgeting and rolling financial forecasts grounded in ABC principles using this group.

Enterprise risk management (ERM) – This cannot be omitted as a main group of EPM / CPM. ERM serves as a brake to the potentially unbridled gas pedal that EPM / CPM methods are designed to step hard on. Risk mitigation projects and insurance requires spending which reduces profits and also steers expenses from resources the executive team would prefer to provide earn larger compensation bonuses.

Process improvement – This is where lean management and Six Sigma quality initiatives fit in. Their purpose is to remove waste and streamline processes to accelerate and reduce cycle-times. They create productivity and efficiency improvements.

EPM / CPM as integrated suite of improvement methods

CFOs often view financial planning and analysis (FP&A) as synonymous with EPM / CPM. It is better to view FP&A as a subset. And although better cost management and process improvements are noble goals, an organization cannot reduce its costs forever to achieve long term prosperity.

The important message here is that EPM / CPM is not just about the CFO’s organization; but it is also the integration of all the often silo-ed functions like marketing, operations, sales, and strategy. Look again at the six main EPM / CPM groups I listed above. Imagine if the information produced and analyzed in each of them were to be seamlessly integrated. Imagine if they are each imbedded with analytics – especially predictive analytics. Then powerful decision support is provided for insight, foresight, and actions. That is the full vision of EPM / CPM to aspire to.

Today exceptional EPM / CPM systems are an exception despite what many executives proclaim. If we all work hard and smart enough, in the future they will be standard practices. Then what would be next? Automated decision management systems relying on business rules and algorithms. But that is an article I will write about some other day. 

Gary Cokins, CPIM (gcokins@garycokins.com; phone 919 720 2718) http://www.garycokins.com

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and book author in business analytics and enterprise performance management systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC, an advisory firm located www.garycokins.com . He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. He then worked 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, EDS, and SAS.

Your KPIs do not seem to be very Key...

A friend of mine is a sales manager in a large retail store and recently he came up to East Putney to meet me for some lunch. Following on from our usual discussions and a random sighting of Greg Wallace from Masterchef (being his restaurant, maybe it was not that random) we began talking about his recent frustrations at work.

It seems his company has a rather different outlook to how KPIs should be implemented, and this in particular seemed to be his biggest cause of recent frustration. “I have been given 16 KPIs and not one of them is related to the sales”

I was very surprised with this statement. There were so many things wrong with it, it was genuinely difficult to know where to begin. After a few moments to gather my thoughts, I pointed out the following observations:

16 KPIs?! Nobody ever should have this many KPIs; 7 at most. They are designed so you focus on what really matters, so how can anybody focus on and manage 16 KPIs simultaneously to improve performance? It can’t be done and most of his time will be used (and wasted) in reporting.

No sales KPIs? Hang on…I thought you worked in a sales retail store? I found it incredible that in a retail store where it all about sales that there cannot be a single sales KPI. KPIs measure the key processes of your role to improve what you already do. In no circumstance should it conflict with your day-to-day work.

Given to you? Anybody who understands KPIs will be able to tell you that KPIs should never just be ‘given.’ For a manager to take full ownership of their KPIs, they need to feel engaged and accountable. Therefore they need to be involved during the KPI Implementation process. If this part was considered, it may have even stopped the other 2 situations occurring.

My friend agreed with my observations and even offered his own. Despite this, and as we all know, changing policies in large companies is certainly not an easy process. Therefore as it stands, he will continue to manage his not-so-key performance indicators.