Design Your KPIs

1000 irritations or 1 catastrophe?

By Bernie Smith | February 14, 2011

How most banks complaints systems drive them to fix trivial problems first and ignore the rarer customer disasters.

Why some KPIs are like pasta makers

By Bernie Smith | January 27, 2011

We keep things for lots of reasons. Understanding why we hang on to kitchen gadgets we never use can help us work out tactics for getting rid of unused KPIs.

Three questions to tell if your strategy is broken

By Bernie Smith | December 14, 2010

Imagine going into a map shop and saying “You know a lot about maps, I’d like you to recommend some good ones?”. It sounds pretty silly, and it’s pretty clear that the response will be “Well, where do you want to go?”. Strangely enough, many people and organisations don’t get beyond the first question when…

Too many measures, not enough space?

By Bernie Smith | December 11, 2010

A really common problem I see is that at some point, no matter how small you make the graphs and tables, you run out of space to show everything you want to show in a report or dashboard. What do you do? You can leave stuff out, but that can often unbalance the view you…

Why that call centre wants to get you off the phone…

By Bernie Smith | November 20, 2010

We have all been hurried off the phone by a call centre. Have you ever wondered what made that happen?

When to leave things out and ignore people….

By Bernie Smith | November 8, 2010

Sometimes things jar when you first see them. I see this a lot with dashboards that I help design (or redesign). People become very wedded to the look – but more crucially they are wedded to the logic of how something is laid out. I think a brilliant example of this is the modern tube…