measure

banana skin as a metaphor for KPI selection traps

The wrong KPI. Dangers of the ‘obvious’ measure

By Bernie | March 8, 2014

  A powerful example of  wrong KPI is a measure used in call centres. Many of us have experienced a call centre agent who is clearly dying to get us off the line (even if they are scripted to hurriedly ask you ‘Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr Smith?’). The…

sulky businessman

Do not shoot the messenger

By Bernie | June 12, 2012

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…

A plain English guide to OEE

By Bernie | April 30, 2012

OEE stands for Overall Equipment Effectiveness. It is a very commonly used efficiency measure. What do we mean by efficiency? Put simply, it is “How much did we make, compared with how much we could have made.” OEE splits our efficiency down into three categories. The idea here is that we can get some understanding…

shave gel

Razor burn and pseudoscience

By Bernie | September 7, 2011

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…

Data Production – 10 Point Checklist

By Bernie | September 6, 2011

How good is your organisation a producing the data you need? (we aren’t talking about analysis, see this analysis checklist for that). 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). Does data arrive in a structured way, ready…