Bernie
Buying rugs and broken broadband connections
There’s something curious happens when you write a number down. It somehow becomes “official”. I realised this a few years ago when haggling for rugs in India. The traders would write down the figure on a piece of paper and show it to you when you were haggling. I naively assumed this was to avoid…
First look – Qlikview Review – Version 10 Personal Edition
As promised in my last “first look” review, I’m taking Qlikview 10 for a spin. For those of you not familiar with Qlickview it’s a data visualization tool that’s designed to make the creation of ad-hoc reports and dashboards, from existing data, quick and simple. Installation Getting hold of Qlikview is a matter of registering…
Spooks, Star Trek and KPIs
Like 4.6 million other people, I enjoy Spooks. I do find myself wincing a bit when Harry, or whoever, makes completely random requests of his spy geeks and they always come up with the goods – you know the kind of thing – “can you cross reference that train ticket with his gardening bill and…
First look – Tableau 6.1, Data Visualisation Software
I spend most of my time with clients trying to get more out of their existing tools, more often than not some combination of an ERP tool (JDEdwards, SAP etc.) a selection of more “pure” databases such as Oracle, Access, SQL and a lot of spreadsheets. All of these tools have well understood strengths and…
Building KPI Engagement
KPIs are like gym memberships… KPIs and measures are like scales and gym membership. They are great, but only if you use them (and regularly). No matter how good your management information system is, you must make sure that the team are engaged with it. This means The team use the system regularly to help…
Setting up your meetings well – 10 point checklist
I’ve sat through a lot of meetings. Many of them were terrible and ineffective. There are a lot of different aspects to a good meeting, some are easier to fix than others. Fortunately one of the most common failings is relatively easy to fix with some careful thought and discussion, namely “What is the purpose…
Why being bad can be good – Targets, measures and dissonance
I’ve often found that people often get very uncomfortable if you change a measure to show poorer perfomance even if you lower the target proportionately. Let me give you an example. I worked with a paper manufacturer a few years ago. Their (flawed) efficiency measure showed them bobbing between 95 and 105% efficiency. Anyone with…
Razor burn and pseudoscience
I tend to get sore skin if I shave with the wrong type of shaving gel. I’ve finally found a shaving gel that works (Nivea for Men, Sensitive, in case you are asking). What the hell has this got to do with KPIs? Well you can buy at least a dozen different brands of shaving…
Six KPI selection traps to avoid
Here are some really bad ways to choose the measures you use and report on: Interesting measures – People are driven by curiosity and that’s great, but don’t overdo it. I once worked with a call centre that had 128 KPIs, they just couldn’t bring themselves to leave any out. This is a symptom of…
Data Analysis – 10 Point Checklist
How good is your organisation at analysing the data you produce? Carefully answer these questions (you can use a 1-5 scale to improve the resolution of the checklist, where 1 is low/poor and 5 is high/strong). Are data and reports separate entities? Does revision of reports require manual intervention? Is there flexibility in cutting data…