Bernie
KPI report design checklist. How good are your reports?
Introducing the KPI Design Report Checklist You may be trying to work out why your current reports aren’t working properly or wondering if you missed anything on your newly created masterpiece. This design checklist encourages you to consider each element of your design and to score it if you are feeling brave. You can use…
30 Second Tip: Do you spend too much time looking backwards?
Look at your main KPIs, do they look forwards or backwards? Do you spend most of your time looking at financial measures that tell you how things were a few weeks or months ago? It’s good to include a number forward-looking measures, that indicate how you will do, as there’s still time to change the…
Putting the Key into Key Performance Indicators
How many “top level” KPIs do you have? If you have more than 10 top-level measures then you probably have too many. Building a measurement hierarchy (using a KPI Tree) can help show which ones are crucial. Remember to focus on the indicators that support your strategy. If you want to find out how to…
Do the “blink” test on your reports
Review your reporting, can you tell at a glance how your business is performing? Can you (and the rest of your team) easily tell how your organisation is doing, even after coming back from holiday? If you can’t, consider designing a report template and making things visual, with more charts and performance icons. Here is…
30 Second Tip: An obvious thing that never gets done….
Define you measures. Make sure each measure is clearly described, has an owner, has a documented way of calculating it, the source of the information, what it’s intended to do, how it should be reported and what action should be taken based on what it’s saying. Here is a KPI Definition Checklist that will help you do…
KPI Report Design – Using Science to Improve Readability
Using brain science to design better reports and dashboards The challenge with dashboards is that we are trying to convey an insanely large amount of information in a very small space. A dashboard I built for a client a couple of years ago had nearly 2,000 pieces of information on an A3 sheet. To be…
Time to be be brutal….
Ditch measures that are not useful. Often measures are retained as they are “interesting”. If the measures are not useful, and used, consider ditching them.
30 Second Tip: Seek out pain
Measure things that are not in control. Organisations tend to shy away from this, as the message initially looks grim. If you are trying to improve things then it’s essential to measure the things that are not working properly.
Do not shoot the messenger
I have witnessed more debates about KPIs and measures than any human really should. They normally settle into a few clear families. We shouldn’t measure -insert controversial topic- because: It’s too hard/expensive to measure We tried that before and it didn’t work It doesn’t have a causal link with the thing that we are interested…
Measures, behaviour and the “Cobra Effect”
I learned something new yesterday. I heard about the “Cobra Effect”. When Britain ruled India there was a problem identified with the number of [venomous] cobra snakes in the country. The government decided to offer a reward for every dead cobra brought to the authorities. Initially it had the desired effect, reducing the number of…