ThemeMoney & Finance
CardCard 43 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Performance & KPIs

What you want to perform on & how you measure it

Performance and KPIs are the agreed measures that tell you whether the organization is doing what it set out to do, and the record of what those numbers actually showed over time.

Most organizations have more metrics than they need and fewer that they actually trust. The company brain is not the place to house a full analytics dashboard; it is the place to record which measures the organization has decided matter, what they are measuring and why, and who is responsible for tracking them.

KPIs shift over time, and the history of those shifts is worth keeping. If the organization tracked revenue per employee for three years and then switched to gross margin, there is probably a reason for that. If a target was set and consistently missed, that is a signal too. The record lets future operators understand whether the current numbers reflect a considered choice or just whatever was easiest to measure.

Performance review cycles are another piece of this: when does the organization formally look at how it is doing, who is in the room, and what decisions come out of those reviews? That rhythm is easy to take for granted when it is running well and very hard to reconstruct after a leadership change.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Active KPIs

List the measures the organization currently tracks with intent: what each one measures, how it is calculated, where the data comes from, and what the current target or benchmark is.

Review rhythm

Note how often performance is formally reviewed, who participates, and what format is used: weekly standup, monthly board pack, quarterly business review, or something else.

Historical performance

Keep a short record of how key metrics have moved over time, including periods where targets were not met and the explanation that was offered at the time.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Which three numbers does the leadership team look at first to know whether the organization is on track?
How were the current KPIs chosen, and when were they last reviewed to check they still measure the right things?
Who is responsible for each metric, and what happens when a number is off?
Are there important things the organization cares about that it does not currently measure well?
What has the trend on the most important metrics looked like over the past two years, and what drove the changes?

Things to notice

Measuring too many things leads to measuring nothing: when a dashboard has thirty metrics, people scan it without reading it.
KPIs that are easy to game without being explicitly gamed tend to get gamed; if the measure becomes the goal, the original goal gets lost.
A metric that nobody ever acts on is not a KPI, it is a report; the distinction is whether the number actually changes decisions.