Bernie SmithBernie Smith is an experienced improvement professional and self-confessed measurement and KPI geek. He's worked all round the world in a variety of industry sectors from chemicals production, through banking to aerospace and healthcare. If you are interested in the services he can offer contact him here.

Building a KPI Habit

By Bernie | August 25, 2022 |

Why a KPI habit is essential A KPI that is never reviewed or acted upon might as well not exist. Worse than that, an unreviewed KPI is a kind of ‘tax’ on the organisation, a costly piece of information that was never looked at or acted upon. Forming a ‘KPI habit’, particularly for short-term KPIs,…

Teaching to the test

By Benjamin Wann | January 9, 2022

Benjamin Wann Guest author Teaching to the test On October 19, 2009, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution broke a story with the provocative title “Are Drastic Swings in CRCT Scores Valid?” The CRCT acronym referred to the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, which were, as the article specified, “Georgia’s main measure of academic ability through eighth grade.” The report…

Keeping Score & Rats in Hanoi

By Benjamin Wann | September 27, 2021

Benjamin Wann Guest author Keeping Score “If a strategy is to be achieved, it must be publicly tracked, measured, and monitored. If you are trying to lose weight, you must get on the scales regularly.” -David Maister “What Gets Measured, Gets Done.” -Unknown Think about the last time you watched a casual game of pickup…

ROKS in the wild…

By Bernie | December 7, 2019

Teradata like the ROKS KPI Canvas… It looks like Dan Simerlink, of Teradata Business Value Consulting, read KPI Checklists and really liked the KPI definition template I shared, check out page 8 of his PDF white-paper below. Click on the image to download the original PDF.

Your strategic objectives are probably not unique. That’s a good thing

By Bernie | November 27, 2019

It’s always said that there are two things that everyone thinks they possess – good driving ability and a sense of humour. I’d like to add one more to that list – thinking ‘their business is unique’. After a frightening number of hours running KPI selection workshops, I realised I had a problem. To build…

Are you making these five classic dashboard design mistakes?

By Bernie | September 19, 2018 |

Mistake 1: Using pie charts (or their trendy cousin) Pie charts get used a lot more than they should. The main reasons for this seem to be… They are easy to understand (good reason) You can make 2 data points look impressive and take up a lot of dashboard space (bad reason) They look a…

How to avoid this common Excel disaster…

By Bernie | September 11, 2018 |

On 4 January 2010, in the Marriott hotel in Atlanta, two giants in the world of economics, Prof Carmen Reinhart and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, were presenting their research paper, ‘Growth in a Time of Debt’. Their message from their research turned the heads of global leaders and pushed…

Did an Excel mistake cripple the world economy?

By Bernie | September 6, 2018 |

On 4 January 2010, in the Marriott hotel in Atlanta, two giants in the world of economics, Prof Carmen Reinhart and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, were presenting their research paper, ‘Growth in a Time of Debt’. The headline message was clear and head-turning… When the size of the country’s…

The worst Excel user ever?

By Bernie | September 4, 2018 |

At the start of my career, I worked with someone who used to moan ALL the time about how terrible Excel was. After weeks of complaints, I decided to see if I could help, just to stop the complaining. I sat down next to him and quickly discovered he was using the ‘shapes and lines’…

Interviewing KPI Stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts

By Bernie | August 21, 2018 |

It is usually best to have a mixture of semi-structured interviews and stakeholder workshops. A semi-structured interview is one where you ask open questions and then listen carefully to the answers. When I conduct an interview I include: Introductions About you (the interviewer), who you are and why you are here. What your objectives are,…